New Micro ATX mobo reccomendation

[Wonderman]

I have a Sony desktop water cooled running a Pentium D 2.8 / Vista 32 Micro
ATX and
wanted to get the groups ideas on replacing the board / chip / memory with
something that will beat the current Vista score of 4.7 for the CPU. Rest
of components run at 5.9. No gaming at all I just want to be able to use my
CAD and rendering programs much faster which are now using 100% CPU.
Current PS is 385 watts. Planning to go to 64 bit with next CAD update.

Appreciate all ideas

 

[Dustin Harper]

Not sure how well your CAD program uses multiple cores (probably pretty
well), but you might look into an i7 board and CPU. Not sure when a good
mATX board will be released, but it is the best out there so far. Otherwise,
you may just look into a nice quad core Intel CPU. The Intels seem to do
better with the CAD/Video Editing/Gaming than AMD lately.

 

[DL]

The primary question would be, is your Sony version of Vista locked to your
Sony hardware?

 

[Wonderman]

No. This is the last of their desktops that was sold with XP and I am
running a clean install of Vista Ultimate.

 

[DL]

Then as you are doubtless aware its the combination of components that
impact on performance.
Perhaps look on Toms Hardware for comparisons
And whether upgraded software is going to be true 64bit or quad/dual core
enabled may be relevent, if not now but in the future

 

[Wonderman]

CAD really only uses one core but to render the object will pin it at @ 100%
for up to 18 minutes straight till its done.

I used to build all my own machines but stopped about 5 years ago. My only
concern is plugging in my current HDD with the new system. I presume it
will boot up then I can go in and add chipset drivers ? Vista will find the
correct Lan drivers etc ?

I'm really looking to get the CPU speed up to a 5.9 Vista score like the
rest of the machine. Not a screamer but a very stable system is all I need.