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umm winchester/venice cores on the socket 939 are the only ones with the 90nm die and supposed reduced power consumption.. NewCastle is still on the larger die...



i would go with the AMD Athlon 64 3000+ "Venice" (This is the Revision E you speak of.) it has a revamped memory controller and SSE3 support.



also depending on your budget the absolute best bang for the buck video card out today is the ATI Radeon X800 XL MSRP: $300.. it outperforms the NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT which is MSRP $400...



and i don't recommend getting less than 1GB of PC3200 ram.. 2x512MB configuration.. the reason people are doing 2x512MB instead of 1x1024MB is because of the Socket 939 it is Dual Channel, aka 128-bit memory interfance which is twice the memory bandwidth of the Socket 754 processors...

winchester 90nm socket 939 does not support SSE3 and has an older memory controller..

newcastle is on the larger die socket 939 " " " " " (etc)



the only core that supports SSE3 is Venice.

winchester core has MOST of the SSE3 instructions, but not a full implementation... and is unfortunately unusable and not detected by any cpuid identification program...



flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 pni syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt lm 3dnowext 3dnow





pni = Prescott New Instructions the codename for SSE3... this what the Winchester core has.. like 9/10 implementation of SSE3...

Keep in mind Ray that it was based off of "Budget Specs, meaning hes not wanting to dump $400+ for a Geforce 6800 Ultra.



i was thinking cheaper...

Umm.. are you going to tell us what you're thinking about or not Ray??

i got da hookup, holla if ya hear me!

i was suggesting the X800 XL for $300.. looks like Raybdbomb's opinion means more to Aragon...

for $200- you can go with last year's greatest today's value Radeon 9800 Pro...

Man.. where can I find recommendations for motherboards??



I looked up a few motherboards and they looked awesome to me but I googled them for reviews and they weren't so hot.



I looked up a version of the DFI LanParty - it had pretty good reviews but they said it's only a good buy if you're overclocking - i'm not.



Then I looked up the Asus A8V-E Deluxe K8T890. It seemed cool.. but extremetech (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1812949,00.asp) says it more or less sucks.



Anyways I'm tired of searching so is there a site that lists which ones are recommended??



Here is what I want:



AMD 64 3000-3500 (whatever is best deal) rev E. 939

2x512 RAM (support for fastest ram out today..)

1 firewire

atleast 2 usb

3 pci

1 pci express? (is it necessary?)

sata hd connections

more ports=better



I only want to spend around 300 for cpu+mobo

Oh yeah, i just bought a Dell UltraSharp 1905FP (http://reviews.cnet.com/Dell_UltraSharp_1905FP/4505-3174_7-31232074.html)





should be getting it next week!! :bravo:

stay away from VIA (KT* anything)... DFI makes good motherboards.. nForce 3 250Gb or nForce 4 Ultra... you don't need PCI Express for Graphics unless you have a video card for that bus.. and they don't come with AGP slots and PCI Express for Graphics slots on the same motherboard... i have the EPoX 9nda3+ nForce3 250Gb been running since christmas without a hitch. so i can personally recommend it.