Preface:
If your not a performance user, or you are trying to keep your costs
low, AMD is a better choice right now. Otherwise Intel with it's
Core 2 is the way to go.
Regarding motherboards with integrated video, do NOT use motherboards
with Intel integrated graphics (or at the very least, get a separate
video card). Intel integrated graphics (and the drivers they use) are of such poor quality
it can cause crashes with various programs, and actually slows the rest of the system down, even in normal every day
tasks. Stick with either Nvidia or ATI integrated video (if you
want integrated video), or use a Pci-E video card outright.
One final cost consideration: all things being equal, good quality motherboards
for Intel cpu's tend to cost more ($30-$50 extra) compared to a similar
board for an AMD cpu. Those trying to stay on a budget will want
to keep that in mind.
Intel CPU recommendations
Totally avoid the Intel P4 (and Pentium D variant) cpu's, they are very old, run way too
hot, and cost too much
for
the price/ performance level (a $50 AMD X2 will blow em out of the water and run much cooler to boot). The Celeron
Conroe and Pentium E variants aren't horrible, but AMD cpu's at the
same price point tend to perform a tad better, so for budget users you are
much better off looking at AMD.
Be aware that the current LGA 775 heatsink mounts just
BLOWS compared to the AMD AM2, and extreme caution should be used when working with it. Just
adding or removing a heatsink off a LGA 775 socket can damage the socket or
heatsink mounts unless you are
extremely careful.
The good news
is that Intel has released the Core 2 Duo's(and Quad core versions as well), which are a HUGE
improvement over the piss poor Pentium 4/D designs. Core 2 also has
HUGE overclocking capabilities, as good as if not better then the
original Celeron's 8-9 years ago. The one
negative issue to be aware of is that Core 2 still uses the LGA
775 socket, which as mentioned above, utterly sucks. If
you get a Core 2, my suggestion is to avoid the super high end motherboards (the over
$150 crowd), as
these are usually loaded with piles of features that very few people
actually use.
With the Intel cpu's, go for the 45nm variants, these generate far less heat compared to the older 65nm versions.
The
current best bang for the buck as of 8/05/08 is the
E8500,
which is a 3.16 ghz native cpu with 6 meg cache. These can often
be pushed well past 3.5ghz on the right board with standard
cooling and no extra voltage.
Current price is about $185. The higher end Core 2's (including the "Extreme" crap models) aren't
worth the price, they are not much
faster then E8500, and cost double or worse.
For people doing extreme number crunching (video and 3d editing,
some scientific computing, high end linux servers, very intensive
compiling) that is multi threaded, the quad core
series starting at $200ish and up is a very interesting option. Most users
including gamers will not be well served by the quad core (most
applications and games are not threaded well enough to use it), but for the type
of users listed above, its never been easier or cheaper to have an
insane amount of power in a desktop box.
12/11/08 update:
The new Intel Core i7 cpu looks very
interesting from a performance and technology point of view, but is
still VERY new, and rather pricey. The motherboards that have
been released for it are extremely overpriced and immature at this
time. Unless money is no object, I would avoid this platform for
the next 6 months or so until it becomes more mature and price
effective.
Socket 775 Boards:
The best choices in motherboards use either a Nvidia or Intel chipset.
Be advised that Intel in one of the most
idiotic chipset / platform decisions in years (probably the worst since
the early 8xx series fiascoes) decided to NOT include ANY native pata
channels
on
their current ICH8 / ICH9 / ICH10 southbridges for the Core 2,
forcing all the
Intel
chipset MB
oem's
to use
3rd party controllers (and these usually have lots of performance and
compatibility issues) to provide this functionality.
If you go with an Intel chipset, MAKE SURE to ONLY use sata hard
drives and have at least one sata optical drive. If you have
additional pata optical drives, its usually safe to stick them on the
3rd party controller.
Performance on the Nvidia solutions appears to be decent, so for people
who are unwilling to give up their PATA hard drives, this may
be the best option for a Core 2. The Nvidia boards do
occasionally have wierd NCQ problems with some hard drives (see the
hard drive section above for details), so be prepared to disable NCQ if
you run into issues. A file that makes disabling NCQ easy is
here.
If you're not sure if the Nvidia or Intel based boards would be
better for you, I'd recommend the Intel chipsets as long as you
do not need native pata support or plan to run Nvidia video cards in SLI
(which requires an Nvidia board). My reason for this is that the
Intel chipset drivers are a bit more polished and better supported
compared to Nvidia's chipset drivers. People planning to run
server versions of Windows (like Windows Server 2003, 2008, etc) should
definitely stay with Intel based boards due to Nvidia's refusal to
properly support these OS's (you can sometimes get the XP drivers to
work on the server variants, but its a pain, and there's no reason for
Nvidia to not support them, its just plain laziness on their part)
Also, the Nvidia sata controller can occasionally show weird bugs
on some hard drives, whereas the Intel sata controller is pretty solid.
Try to make sure your board has official 1333 bus speed support (and
not just the cheezy "OC" support). Many of the newer Intel cpu's
require this. Avoid older chipsets that don't support this (like
any of the Intel chipsets prior to the P35 series). As a final note, avoid the DDR3 only boards at this time. There
is little or no real world performance gain with these boards or ram, and DDR3 sticks
are quite a bit more expensive compared to DDR2 (see the ram section above).
MSI P7N SLI
Based on the Nvidia 750 chipset. Moderate cost.
Feature
wise, you get average IO plate options, 2 pata ports that are fully
compatible (unlike the Intel 3rd party pata controllers), firewire, and some
rather
impressive passive cooling heatsinks on the board. Users who have a lot of
old pata devices they don't want to give up, or people wishing to use
Nvidia video cards in SLI mode will want to consider this board.
This board is currently untested at the
moment.
Newest bios update for this board can be found
here.
Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3L
Based
on the Intel P45 chipset. Fairly cheap by intel chipset
standards. Features are fairly vanilla, 6 sata ports, lots of
pci-e slots, and the IO plate offers
an impressive 8 usb ports.
Ethernet and audio are both realtek, so no wierd drivers to be
concerned about there. The bios can be flashed right off a usb
flash drive without needing to boot into dos (very handy!).
Overclocking features appear to be very impressive as well.
Stability is excellent, even while overclocked during heavy
gaming or dvd encoding. One minor caveat, the early bios
revisions were QUITE buggy, so
make sure to flash your bios to the
newest version when you get this board.
Newest bios updates for this board can be found
here.
GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3R
If
you need firewire, this board is virtually identical to the above
board, except
it includes firewire as well. The heatsink cooling is slightly
improved as well. Usually runs about $10-15 more then the non
firewire variant. Untested at the moment, but should be no
different (other then the firewire) compared to the above model.
Newest bios updates for this board can be found
here.