P45 boards mostly come equipped with the newer ICH10R southbridge though...
when it comes to motherboards I am more interested in proven stability then I am in performance. I am always leery about trying something new in boards as it rarely works out well.
You could use Server 2003 Enterprise with PAE, but yeah, mostly for x64 users. There are an ever-growing number of us, though. :)
I wouldn't mind but it apparently can't support the stuff I need to use. But maybe I should get a matching 4GB while it is still real cheap.
> Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 Yorkfield 3.0GHz 12MB L2 Cache LGA 775
I don't think the QX9650 really hits the 130w TDP, but that's an awful lot of heat to dissipate. You're probably looking at third-party HSF solutions for acceptable noise levels.
Yeah, well, I have been dealing with that kind of heat off my Xeons for the past four years. When I first bought them the fan noise was so bad I thought the PC was going to go airborne. I went to third party coolers which dramatically reduced the noise, but the most significant thing I did was to build a small room behind my office that is a large vented computer room with a three inch tunnel into the office wall my desk is up against for cabling. I don't hear any noise, and the only heat is off the monitors. Heat and noise is a moot issue for me.
Frankly though, unless you're using an encoder
that supports >2 threads, a 2-core Wolfdale may be a better fit--and would certainly provide lower thermals.
Actually, I am, I checked today with TMPGenc and their new apps, which I own do fully support Quad. Surprisingly they recommended I use XP SP3 over Vista SP1.
At the very least, while I know you're generally an EE CPU fan, I can absolutely say that the extra 170MHz between it and the Q9550 is definitely not worth the $500 premium.
yeah, I know that, but I want a 3.0 processor. Four years from now I won't be thinking about I wish I had a 3.x. And something else I have learned along the way is while in four years the Q99550 is likely to be about a third of it's cost today, the Extreme will only go down about 30 percent. I don't have a good reason for this other then I can afford it, I won't miss the 500, and I want the 3.0 :)
The XHD300 does indeed seem to be fairly well received.
I will probably order this pretty soon. Here is a really good review of it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNiSWVFK_IQ
