upgrading to conroe.. have a few questions

[lazer_viking]

I'm thinking of upgrading to an e6600 soon and I have a few questions about the socket it uses. How old is this LGA 775 socket? Is it due for an upgrade soon? I'd hate to buy it to find out a year later that the new processors use LGA 776... (lol.. a reference to how AMD went from 939 to 940... gg).
Are all the new quad cores going to be using 775 as well?

Also, my new motherboard supports up to 8GB of RAM. I'm thinking of getting 2 DIMMs of 2GB RAM for a total of 4GB for now, and then later getting another 2 DIMMs for 8GB. You can utilize all four RAM slots right? This seems like a "well duh" question but I'm just making sure lol.

Also, with a water-cooling system, what is the least I can expect to squeeze out of my e6600?

[b1gapl]

Well the LGA775 started with the Pentium 4s, but it's not that old. It will still be used. The new quad cores will still be on LGA775.

Why would you need 8gb or even 4gb of RAM? Are you using CAD and editing software? 2GB is enough for gaming and everything else.

With water cooling, you can get the e6600 to 3.4+GHz.

[lazer_viking]

4GB for Vanguard: SOH. It's limited by 2GB at this point.

[mrfluffles]

Everything up to the Penryns (end of 07/beginning 08) will be LGA775. It's unknown whether Penryns will use 775.

You definetly don't need 8GB RAM. 2GB is more then enough for 99% of people. You only might need more for stuff like CAD but unless you do it a lot, you'll be good with 2.

Hard to tell what to expect but probably at least 3.4 or so. 3.6 seems to be a good spot although you could probably squeeze out more especially if it's a good WC set-up.

[ferarri]

I am going to be purchasing my 3ds Max software real soon and will be using it alot because I am going to school for it so I was wondering if I would benefit from another 2GB of ram. I love the ram I have right now: G.SKILL HZs, so I would just get another set of these at only $134 right now.

I overclocked my current set to 1100 MHz @ 4-4-4-12 2T timings. I could probably go higher but haven't tried yet. =)

[b1gapl]

If you're using that kind of software. Having 4gb of G. SKill HZs, will benefit you. Wow nice overclock on those HZs.

[mrfluffles]

Holy mother of batman. $134?????? This is crazy..

[S0ULphIRE]

You can overclock the E6600 way more than to 3.4ghz, especially with water cooling! with just air cooling, it can reach 3.6 and be stable, with water cooling, 3.8-3.85ghz is what you cn aim for (of course that depends on how good your WC'ing is).

[mrfluffles]

Of course you can.. He was asking what's the least you can expect though and some steppings don't overclock quite as well as others.

[nitestick]

(lol.. a reference to how AMD went from 939 to 940... gg).

seeing as these days everyone beats me to making the useful remarks (wow nitestick is getting slow, old and schizophrenic) i'll give you a little history lesson . socket 940 was actually released before 939, when the Opteron platform was released. K8 started with the Opteron series on socket 940 and then later the Athlon 64 on s754. then came s939 and now socket AM2 which is a 940 pin socket (though with a different pinout to "s940") and of course Socket F (LGA1207).