crazijoe

PCChips, ECS and Biostar are all the same company. When you start combining unusual options, usually these are the manufacturers that would produce them. I have had my share of bad boards from PCChips, however I believe that the boards go through a little more QA to get an ECS or Biostar name put on them as I haven't had that many problems show up with the systems I have built.

I do however think that I would not go full bore on a Conroe setup unless I had appropriate hardware that can take advantage of the technology, to go with it (i.e. PCI-e, dual channel DDR2, etc.).

If I was in the situation where I would have to retain AGP, I would go for an AMD setup. (What did these words come out of me? Yes they did.). Because everyone knows that a comprable AMD kicks butt on a P4 or Pentium D.

floydfan

thats not true, amd is not going haywire at all... am2 will be useable for at least another year, if not more. s775 is a complete con by intel, they keep the same socket, but try using a conroe with the first generation of 775 boards... socket f is the high end socket, for opterons and now for the fx series, doesnt really affect 99.9% of people. am2+ is not out yet, and when it does come out, it will be 939 pins, with the same orientation as am2 without one pin, so you will be able to use an am2+ cpu in an am2 socket, without ht3 support, and later ddr3. as for the system i would recommend, i would say a cheap dual core amd, as they are fast enough, and there are better quality agp boards than there are for conroe.