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Recommend a motherboard for me

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s_busby_uk:
I have an old computer with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ (2.8GHz)  and an Asus M2V DUAL DDR II motherboard. With the 512MB Geforce 8800GT PCI Express I have in it it's pretty decent and I've had Super Street Fighter IV running on it with fairly high settings.

However, I get the feeling the motherboard is a bit clunky. Boot time takes a bit too long nowadays and I have to do some fiddling to get the chipset working whenever I do a fresh install. Plus it's been hanging lately for no particular reason. Generally, I feel like it's time to upgrade.

So I've just received my first ever Xmas bonus and I'm thinking of upgrading. This is what I'd like to achieve:

Keep the Geforce 8800GT in there.
Maybe keep the AMD Athlon 64 X2 processor but not if it's too outdated to find anything for.
Run Hyperspin with fairly competent settings (doesn't have to be MAX settings, but with some of the pretty boxes ticked and no slow down - yes I'm a sucker for appearances).
Competent MAME emulation, but doesn't have to do too much of the latter-year 3D stuff.
PS2 or PSP-level emulation would be an added bonus but I definitely don't want to break the bank to get there.

Can anyone recommend a motherboard (and CPU combo, if necessary) that can get me all that for less than £150?

Thanks in advance!

lilshawn:
your DDR2 is your bottleneck.

upgrading to anything with DDR3 will net a good performance boost.

you could basically get the cheapest AM3+ board, 4gb of DDR3 and a processor for about what you want to spend and get a performance boost to boot.

like everything else, you get what you pay for. I suggest spending as much as you can and get the highest performing parts you can afford. that way your computer will have some room to grow if you want to upgrade later.

the AM3+ socket is good because it works with TONS of processors from a paltry dual core all the way up to a 5ghz 8 core processor. you can cheap it out to start, but upgrade to a serious machine later for a minimum investment.

example:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU:  AMD Athlon II X2 250 3.0GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($54.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard:  ECS A960M-M3 Micro ATX AM3+ Motherboard  ($28.49 @ Newegg)
Memory:  Kingston Black Series 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3-1333 Memory  ($26.98 @ PCM)
Total: $110.46
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-12-03 13:32 EST-0500)

s_busby_uk:
Brilliant, thanks lilshawn, most helpful! And how great is pcpartpicker??

So as a follow-up question: I know dual-core is much better than single (well, so I've read), but are there much further benefits from spending say £20 more on a quad core or would it be better to spend £20 on more Ghz from a dual-core?

lilshawn:
pcpartpicker is a good site to use for examples because after you build a system you can copy BBcode (this forums software) and paste it directly to your messages. That's why iv'e been using it. you are free to purchase your parts from wherever you see fit.

gaming really isn't optimised for multi core processors (from what i've heard) beyond more than dual cores. in fact, lots of games don't support multiple cores at all unless you either patch the game to enable it or the developers specifically wrote it that way. but once more developers start writing games for multi core gaming, the 4/6/8 core cpus will really shine.

the 8800GT was a good card in it's day, but they have come a long way since then.

if you are looking for a good general gaming rig, you'll want to buy the "highest speed" core'd processor you can afford. Be it 2/4/6 whatever... and the most expensive videocard you can manage. the videocard is going to be doing the bulk of the work here. I picked up an HIS HD7750 a while back when they went on sale for 99 bucks. now they can be had for cheaper than that. but it's a real workhorse...have no problems playing SF4 @1080p at max settings.

s_busby_uk:
Well despite my mentioning SSFIV, this is still really going to be an arcade cabinet for arcade games, so I'm more interested in getting the most out of MAME and the like - emulation that relies mostly on the CPU. So is it still better to get a dual core but with as high a Ghz rating as I can afford?

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