Ok so a little insight to my situation. For some god awful reason or another I decided to get back into playing WoW, but my old pc isn't quite up to snuff and has piss poor frame rates and latency spikes from hell. My internet is not the greatest but working towards getting that rectified. The conundrum I face is, with limited fund if $400-500 is only going get me a entry level system that I'll have trouble upgrading later on. I am on the fence about getting some used parts off eBay and putting together a system that I can utilize my current RAM and processor, and hopefully the hard drive with OS intact.
So I am trying to compile side-by-side data to see if I can get away with a drop in replacement board that I can ad parts to later on as I acquire cash. And by re-using my processor, and RAM I can save a little bit of money for a video card.
Essentially, the board I have is the middle of the road version of (what I can currently determine is a group of three motherboards. Aria (stripped drown base model), Apricot (some extra features, and the board I have), Alpinia (fullest featured of the three). Still unable to determine the mass-controller device information that would ultimately tell me how hosed the OS would get with a board swap.
In trying to compile the information for side-by-side comparison, I have encountered some information that contradicts HP and quite honestly stumps me as I have not dealt with PC building for years.
What I have found for the Apricot board:
According to HP
Max Processor - AMD Phenom II X6 10xxT Six-Core (Thuban core) - 95W TDP
current processor - AMD Phenom II X2 250 Dual Core - 95W TDP
What I have been able to find for a comparison between that fastest 6-core (1065T) and my current processor.
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/AMD-Phenom-II-X ... -II-X2-250
HP says the max ram is:
8GB PC3-10600 [DDR3-1333] (DIMMs run at PC3-8500 [DDR3-1066]). Then why would Sisoft Sandra say my 8GB of ram is recognized as PC3-10700? And Crucial shows compatible maximum as 8GB of PC3-14900
http://www.crucial.com/ProductDisplay?d ... reId=10151
So is it more of a benefit to go with a lower speed and more cores or less cores and .1GHz faster speed for the processor? And as far as the RAM would I see an increase in performance going with the PC3-14900 over the current PC-10700?