Is this a good deal?

[megaerik00]

I originally planned on getting a

Newegg.com - ECS NFORCE4M-A (V3.0) Socket AM2 NVIDIA nForce4 4X ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
and
Newegg.com - AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ Windsor 2.4GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 Processor - Retail
for a total of $179.98

But today I saw a combo for these two
Newegg.com - MSI K9VGM-V Socket AM2 VIA K8M890 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
and
Newegg.com - AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ Brisbane 2.5GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 Processor - Retail
for only $189

Is that a decent board? Is there a big difference between the 4600, and the 4800?

 

[darksideleader]

Athlon 64 x2 have gone really cheap....
4600+ is clocked at 2.4ghz and uses 90nm technology Windsor Core.
4800+ is clocked at 2.5ghz and uses 65nm technology Brisbane Core.
You can expect the 4800 to run with less energy and over clock just slightly better.

Their both crappy boards. The ECS one doesn't even have a south bridge. The MSI mobo deal should be better overall.

 

[Trotter]

Both boards look good.

• The ECS has 4 RAM slots, while the MSI has 2.
• The ECS has 2 x1 PCI-E and 3 PCI slots, the MSI has 1 x1 PCI-E and 2 PCI slots.
• The ECS has no onboard video, the MSI does.
• The ECS has 4 SATA connections, The MSI has 2.
• The ECS has NV RAID 0/1/0+1 JBOD, the MSI has RAID 0/1.
• The ECS has 4 USB rear/3 USB headers, the MSI has 4 USB rear/4 USB headers.
• The ECS is ATX, the MSI is microATX.
• The ECS has 6 channel audio, the MSI has 8 channel audio.

Like I said, both are good. The ECS overall has more to offer, but both would do you good. It's hard to beat the price of the MSI, though.

 

[saltynay]

the core 2 duo route is faster......

 

[kmote]

both the 4600 and the 4800 are brilliant CPUs but it is obvious which one is better
both motherboards are rubbish ECS are tat. MSI are good but that one...bleh
i would never use JBOD because it is rubbish
even if the ECS really does have working 01 it still would not sway me because 01 isnt as good as 10 and also you need at least 4 drives. im just guessing of course but i dont think that will be the most useful feature for him lol

BTW of course ECS board has a southbridge lol

 

[Sora]

Holy **** what a Deal...Take the MSI deal as you wouldn't use most of those features anyway on the ECS.

The C2D route may be faster but it would also be about 50 bucks+ for one.