The 975x chipset's main feature over the 955x, is that it has enough PCI lanes to run crossfire. The 955x chipset can only run 1 graphics card (even with the Asus P5WD2-Premium, you have two 16x slots, but the second one is controlled by the southbridge, which only provides 4x lanes). Short of that, I couldn't tell you any other differences the 975x has over the 955x.
Sorry, I missed this earlier. I ordered all the stuff from Overclockers UK, they seem to be pretty good on price and had everything I wanted in stock, although I did notice that Scan had the motherboard I ordered for £20.00 less - OUCH! - but not in stock. I've made my existing PC last and have held off upgrading for a while, I was waiting for AMD socket AM2 to arrive before making up my mind what to buy, but when I saw the THG article about the Pentium D 805 I decided to go for it and splashed out a bit. I ordered: Pentium D 805 CPU Asus P5WDG2-WS i975X Motherboard 2 x 1Gb OCZ PC2-8000 Dual Channel Extreme Edition XTC Platinum Series EL-DDR2 RAM PowerColor ATI Radeon X1900 XT-X 512MB Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB 2500KS SATA-II 16MB My existing set up is an AMD XP2600M @ 2575Mhz, DFI Infinity Nforce2 MB, 1Gb RAM, Nvidia 6600GT, so even if I don't manage to overclock the Pentium D as high as 4Ghz and only get to around 3 or 3.5Ghz it should still comfortably outperform my existing PC. I have a pretty good watercooling rig: Danger Den CPU, Chipset and Graphics card water blocks, Eheim 1260 pump and a car radiator from a Mini with 4 x 120mm fans. My existing Athlon never gets over 40 celcius, even with a 575Mhz overclock under full load. However, the Pentium and the X1900 grahics card are furnaces in comparison to the Athlon and 6600GT and it will push the watercooling a lot harder. Provided I get a good CPU I don't see why I shouldn't be able to achieve similar results to THG - fingers crossed. Athlon FX-60 performance for £80 would be very nice.
While you may not break any records, the ECS C19a will run that chip, and it is very cheap. It may or may not get you to 4.1 but honestly if you read the article, you probably do not really want to pass 3.6 or so due to heat output and your electric bill anyway. I have heard of at least one other person with similar results with this board as well, which is why I grabbed it. I gotta admit though, it is not that bad of a board. Mine is at 3.5 with no hickups. I have pushed it further but something is overheating or running too far out of spec, I suspect either the video card or the voltage regulator, in either case the vga output shuts down. Hopefully I can find the issue soon. I have not had it long (a day) and have spent most of my time getting windows up and running. I am running a Thermaltake Big Water plus gpu cooler, Ati Radeon X700, and Kingston ValueRam 533 (4 sticks of 512mb) and it is running great all at stock voltages. Not a killer rig, but it gets the job done cheap. I figure I will upgrade the board, vid card and ram soon anyhow. Just don't assume you need a top of the line board or ram to get good results. I spent less on the board and chip than many guys are spending on the board alone.
I'm sure I read of someone with an Asus AGP board running the chip (and at 3.6) on another forum with DDR memory rather than the DDR2.
Yes, you're correct. They were using this motherboard and got good results for air. Priced at £44 from ocuk , it's a bargin
sorry - getting a server error with the motherboard link there Koola; could you write which one it is please mate.
sorry to hijack the thread a little,, but too unimportant to start a new thread for- I'm thinking of upgrading to an d805 and a 975x board as I believe this will allow me to use conroe when it's released, correct? and should give me a good boost from my current pc c.u.later
yes it will, might need a BIOS update tho. P.s. can anyone post up a link to the Asus board running with a AGP card(not the ASUS website but the forums or other site)
Were did you find it? I have been looking for the Asus P5WD2-WS Premium for a long time, and I cant find it anywhere.
I'm not sure where to get it in the US, I seem to remember reading something in the THG article about it not yet being available in the US, but it's available at a couple of places in the UK that I know of: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Online_Catalogue_Asus_177.html - Bottom of the page. http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=337843
hey guys , just been reading this thread, since i can get much for selling my CPU, i have gone and bought an 805D for £70 4ghz!! now i am after a mobo, from reading this and THG it seems Asus P5WDG2-WS i975X Motherboard , or the Asus P5WD2-E Premium seems to be where its all happening, but how about this board >> http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=405133 Abit AW8D i975X, S775, PCI-E looks like chipset 975i is the best also i may be picking up some DDR2 ballistix £140 any advice, should i go for an asus?
Should be OK, but check the Abit web site for processor compatibility to make sure. The reason that I chose the Asus board was for its 8 phase CPU voltage regulation, which the THG article suggested might have some benefit when overclocking. It's about £35.00 more than the Abit board at Scan, but my thoughts were that when saving so much on the processor, compared to higher end dual cores, the extra £35.00 for the motherboard wasn't worth worrying about.
I was thinking of the same but no one is certain yet if all 975x boards will support conroe. So I bought a cheap board to tide me over and i will buy a new mobo when conroe comes out
the only board that is spose to support conroe is the "intel bad axe", they have them at scan for £160 and look very nice, little heat sinks in the style of flames (lets hope it dosnt go up in flames lol) they have to be revision 304 (which scan informed me they are) then when conroe hits the streets, all you will need is a bios flash.