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Well, I'm finally rebuilding my desktop system after my CPU fried couple of months ago and I need your advice on what kind of CPU to choose. For starters, I'm going with Intel LGA 775, but not sure what kind of CPU to get, i.e. which core. I'll be buying CPU from Newegg (unless you know another good site), and I'm looking into Dual-Cores (need advice on that too, if its a good idea now or not). I deal a lot with graphics, i.e. pretty much whole Adobe CS3 suit and other web design programs. Intel has all these cores so I don't really know which one to go with, so I would like to get some ppl's opinions/experiences and then finally buy the CPU.

I was looking to buy this one ----> Intel Pentium D 930 Presler, but my another question is will dual-core CPU, like the one in a link, do any good if I'm using graphic design programs.

Thank you all for your help and advices. Greatly appreciated.

With that kind of software the more cores the better....CS2 is multi threaded meaning it can use mutiple CPU cores.

Id suggest a core 2 duo E6400 or higher model CPU, they are the best in the buisness at the moment, however if you have the cash go for a quad core, they start at about $550

However I know that a PentiumD's price tag may be very tempting and I do think I read somplace that they do work well with CS2.

Lets see if somone else can second my opinion as I am not a big CS2 user...


Athough you can pick up a Pentium D 930 for about $75, it may be worth just taking the gamble and seeing if it meets your needs, you could always just see it as having an spare CPU if you need to upgrade to somthing more powerful....

Intel Core 2 dual would be the best, if I were u I would go for at least a 6600 the slower would probably work fine today but u will want more.

I use CS2 daily on my dual core.
BUT go for the core 2 duo, it'll eat up CS2 easily.
If you were knowledgeable enough; Gigabyte DS3 mobo, Conroe E6300 and overclock the hell out of it to over 3GHz per core.
Save loads of money and get speeds in excess of the E6600, just not quite the fsb.

Thank you for your early replies...any more ppl got opinions/advices?

BTW, forgot to mention, mobo that I got is Asus P5P800-MX, and the only reason I got it is because my video card is AGP and my HDDs are ATAs...don't want to spend too much money upgrading....

Anyone else?

Any ideas on what other moherboards could be like P5P800, i.e. have AGP slot and EIDE + SATA?

Thanks in advance.

will these two be a good combo?

ASUS P5VD2-X

and

Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 Conroe 2.13GHz

If not, what other mobo/cpu combo would you recommend? (for graphic design and gaming)

P.S. As of right now, this is what I got so far...

Case

Cooler

+ 5 HDDs that are EIDEs...and AGP video card, that's gonna get upgraded to PCI-e

Anyone got an advice? Suggestion?

You really will save yourself a lot of second guessing and no upgradeability if you just dump the AGP now. I know this first hand because I picked up a C2D board with AGP about a year ago and now I'm ready for something better. Only being able to overclock reliably about 150Mhz on a 6400 is terrible. If you REALLY can't afford the jump then see if you can possibly spend $35 or so on a 7300 card.

If you were originally thinking a Pentium D, any of those Core 2 Duos are going to kill it, so you don't need a 6600 or even the quads, a 6420 would be fantastic.

Look into this board, its less than $100 (barely) and is a great board if you aren't hung up on nForce or SLI: GIGABYTE GA-965P-DS3 (rev. 1.3)

How about these two, will it be a good combo?

MSI P6N SLI Platinum

and

Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 Conroe 2.13GHz

If not, what other mobo/cpu combo would you recommend? (for graphic design and gaming), might be doing some OC....

P.S. As of right now, this is what I got so far...

Case

Cooler

+ 5 HDDs that are EIDEs...and AGP video card, that's gonna get upgraded to PCI-e