I guess it's not such a new idea, but I am planning to use a portion of my tax return towards a new mobo and CPU, in the s939 family. My s754 mobo/CPU will be swapped over to the wife's case, and I plan to phase her P4 1.8/ECS mobo out of the house.

My question is this: If it is at all possible to stay with an Nvidia chipset, which motherboard would the majority recommend, for all-around overclockability? Once we figure out the motherboard question, which s939 CPU would appear to be the best bang for the buck? Keep in mind I *do* plan to OC the CPU, so buying an A64 4000/FX55 when I could just as easily get an A64 35/3800 and OC it up to 4K/FX55 stock speeds seems a bit spendy.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Steal of a deal?

Any Winchester core A64 (3000+, 3200+, 3500+; the 90nm versions) will OC just fine.

Motherboard wise, the DFI SLI Ultra-D is the best but it requiers a PCI-Express video card; if you don't/can't go PCI-Express then the MSI K8N Neo2 Plat or the Epox 9NDA3+ will be the best with the nForce 3 Ultra chipset.

Thanks for the tips, Ark

After spending the money I spent on the 6800GT, my RAM, and the NV68 block, I think the mobo will *have* to be AGP for a little while longer... The reason being, my tax return won't be all that much, so about $500 for the CPU/mobo will be about all I'll be able to get away with, maybe a little more if I'm lucky...

If anyone else has some ideas and/or suggestions, I would be happy to hear them. Unless, of course, they involve me sending someone else my "upgrades" share ...

MSI has a good AGP overclocker, in fact most performance oriented 939 boards will go 250-300FSB.

The DFI PCI Express is the cream of the crop for sure, reaching speeds of 350FSB is pretty comon.

Going with a AGP vid card now is kind of going to limit the usefull lifespan of the board, all next gen cards are going to probably be PCI Express only...

I'd go DFI PCI Express and sell off old stuff on EBAY, and pick up a cheap vid card for now (6200 or something)

I personaly like the 3200+ for a somehwat budget build, you don't have to crank the FSB quite as high as a 3000+ to get over 2.5ghz
(Good memory for massive FSB is expensive, it can be sometimes cheaper to use a faster CPU to begin with)

I guess I should have put it all out there to begin with, my bad...

I got my wife to agree to let me have some of our tax refund towards upgrading my machine to s939 from s754, under the condition that I would also get her some DDR to put on the s754 mobo/cpu that are in my machine right now, which will be her upgrade from a P4 1.8+SDRAM.

AFA old parts for sale, it almost seems like more trouble than it's worth to try and sell an ECS mobo, P4, and 1GB SDRAM... Might as well keep it, build a whole 'nother rig around it, and use it for folding...

I guess I could also open my mind to other chipsets, as long as the price and OC potential is right...

Well, got the green light from the missus, headed over to ZZF and popped down my money for:

Gigabyte K8NS Ultra 939
A64 3500 (Winchester)
Kingston Value RAM for her "new" computer.

All told, just under $470, no shipping.

I went looking for the MSI Neo Plat 2 on pricegrabber and couldn't find it in stock anywhere that I would consider "reputable". The GB and EPoX came up on the same search, with more positive user reviews for the GB. The fact that I've owned GB boards in the past and they've been good to me also weighed in.

Again, thank you for your help, Solid and Ark. I truly appreciate your input and advice. Just because I ultimately chose differently is not a reflection on the quality of your advice, just on the size of my wallet ...

EDIT: Solid, I just realized you appear to be a Disturbed kinda individual. Do you "Believe" that as well? Or perhaps you just question the "Meaning of Life"?