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Building a Core 2 Duo gaming system for under $1000

Published January 3, 2007
By Steven Walton

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Memory Performance

Affordable AM2 Gaming System
AMD Athlon64 3800+ (AM2)

1GB Corsair Value Select DDR2-667 (CAS4)

ABIT NF-M2 nView (Nvidia GeForce 6150)

- OCZ GameXStream (700 watt)

Seagate 320GB 7200RPM (Serial ATA II)

ASUS GeForce 7900GS (256MB)

Software
- Microsoft Windows XP Pro (SP2)
- Nvidia Forceware (91.47)
- Nvidia nForce4 430 (8.22)

Expensive high-end Core 2 Duo system
Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 (LGA775)

2GB Corsair XMS DDR2-800 (CAS4)

ASUS P5W Deluxe (Intel P965)

Seagate 320GB 7200RPM (Serial ATA II)

ASUS Radeon X1950XTX (512MB) CrossFire

Software
- Microsoft Windows XP Pro (SP2)
- ATI Catalyst (6.11)
- Intel System Drivers (7.2.2)

Core 2 Duo $1000 gaming system!
- Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 (1.86GHz) LGA775

- OCZ Gold Series 1GB (2x512MB) DDR2-533

- ASUS P5VD2-MX (VIA P4M890)
replaced by "Gigabyte 965P-DS3 2.0" because
of poor performance!

- Samsung SpinPoint T 400GB 7200RPM (Serial ATA II)

- ASUS Radeon X1950 Pro (256MB)

Software
- Microsoft Windows XP Pro (SP2)
- ATI Catalyst 6.11
- Intel System Drivers (7.2.2)

The memory performance is not all that important given the fact that the Athlon64 3800+ is able to equal the memory bandwidth of the much faster Core 2 Duo E6700. However, when the E6300 produces 5.4GB/s on one motherboard and then just 3.8GB/s on another, you know there is a problem, so where?

The problem lied on the VIA chipset not supporting dual-channel DDR2 memory. Although the ASUS P5VD2-MX is an incredibly cheap motherboard, we re-evaluated the situation and felt that spending almost three times more on the Gigabyte 965P-DS3 2.0 motherboard was a much wiser choice. As you can see, in terms of memory bandwidth the 965P-DS3 2.0 is a far superior motherboard.