Advice Needed - CPU / MOBO holding me back!

[fool_of_a_took]

Hi, I need some advice...

I have a 2 year old PC that I'm in the middle of upgrading. However, I've hit upon some nasty snags - my motherboard not only doesn't support overclocking (it's an ECS P965T-A), but according to the ECS tech support, it won't support E7XXX or E8XXX processors, which would be my other upgrade route!

Ideally I'd like a core 2 duo running at 3ghz (not too much to ask for!), as I think my stock speed E6600 is bottlenecking my gaming performance. My original plan was to overclock, and I bought and installed a Scythe Kama Angle cooler before even looking at my bios (d'oh!)

So, as the only 3ghz core 2 duo processor my mobo supports is the still stupidly expensive X6800, my only option is to buy a new mobo and overclock.

I don't really want to spend more than about £100 or so, and I need something that offers good overclocking ability, and preferably full SLI support, 1066 FSB or greater, 7.1 sound, all the usual bits.

I'm also open to suggestions that my cpu is not the performance bottleneck! Really I just need advice!

My current system spec:

ECS P965T-A
Hiper 580w PSU
E6600 (stock)
Scythe Kama angle
EVGA GTX260 core 216
4gb RAM (2x1gb OCZ value, 1x2gb Dabs value)
Vista HP 32bit (shortly to be replaced with 64bit)

[fool_of_a_took]

I doubt anybody cares, but after much umming and ahhing, I'm going to buy an XFX 680i for £50. Sounds like a bit of a bargain. FSB and RAM speeds are old (in terms of speed) but then so is the rest of my setup, and anything radically better is also radically pricier.

[jlreich]

Spend some extra cash and get something worthwhile or you will just be in the same situation six months down the road. ;) The 680 chipset is what, two, three years old. Not much of a step up from what you have now. With a£100 or so you should be able to get something modern. No, you are not going to be going i7, but you can certainly find a good board that will support Q9xxx and be a decent over clocker.