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Confused about all the new hardware

H

Hactar

Weaksauce
Joined
Jun 18, 2004
Messages
101
Hey, I did a few searches, and nothing really helpful came up, so I just made a thread. I'm really confused about all the new hardware coming out. I've only started getting into hardware recently, so I don't know that much about it. I'm actually trying to find out what kind of things to get for a computer that I plan on building.
First, btx. In order to use btx, will I have to buy a new mobo, case, ect? Will this stuff be unable to run AGP video cards, and can I get an older processor to use with it (like an athlon 2800+ ) or will I have to buy one of the brand new chips that are coming out? When are the btx mobos coming out, and will it be worth it to wait for them, or should I just buy the atx stuff now? Will It have an agp slot so I don't have to get a new video card?

Next, what are the new processors coming out that work with the new btx mobos? I'm definately confused about that. I keep reading about things like socket 939 chips. If I bought a btx mobo, what kind of chip would I have to get? I want to make sure that I don't buy the wrong stuff.

Lastly, what other sites explain this in more detail? Bascially, I want to be able to build this computer by the end of the summer. Right now I'm planning on ordering my parts from Newegg.com. I made a system that was pretty good, but it used all atx stuff. I mean, if I'm going to get this by the end of the summer, would it be worth just waiting for all the new stuff to come out, so that my brand new computer doesn't become outdated overnight?

The computer I had configured was...
Athlon 2800+
Radeon 9600 Pro
Asus A7N8X Deluxe Retail
Fortron 400w PSU
Buffalo 512mb 6 layer pc3200 DDR ram

Thats the main points of the system I'm planning on building. I don't have a big budget, obviously, but at least I'll be able to play HL2 :p If anyone can point me towards some sites that explain this more, that'd be great. Thanks...

Oh, and on a completely unrelated note, what is sata raid, and does it matter if i have only one hard drive?
 
google.gif
... im serious. just google what you want to learn about. will bring up tons o crap to read.

BTX is a ways off in my opinion (for whatever thats worth). ATX will last you a long time. Some crazy people are still using AT systems even though that standard died years and years ago. The saturation of ATX in the market will make sure an ATX system will liast a good while after the BXT form factor is widely accepted.

SATA raid (or any RAID for that matter) requires 2 or more Serial ATA hard drives hooked up in a RAID 0 set.
 
if you are going amd, you will be waiting a lot longer than the end of summer for btx. as of now, amd has no plans to adopt btx. i also dont think that you will have problems with atx in the future. it will be around for quite a while longer.

googled these for you:
BTX: http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1876
RAID: http://www.acnc.com/raid.html
SATA: http://www.serialata.org/

Google is your friend

About your system: i dont know how tight you budget is but you might want to get a little batter video card. the 9600 is good but there are better cards i think. with all the new video cards comin out 9800's etc are getting pretty cheap. also, this might be a bit beyond your hardware knowledge (but i guess thats how you learn!) i just got myself a AXP 2500+M which is the mobile version of the desktop AthlonXP. these things overclock like crazy, and are priced well. Hope i have helped and have fun!
 
AMD has plans to adopt BTX, please stop saying they wont. They will when its worth it. Its not right now.


Dont wait for a formfactor. Get a nice A64 system with a gig of ram, Radeon 9800Pro, 36 gig raptor system drive and 250 gig IDE drive for storage, DVD burner, whatever case you want, 450 watt Antec PSU, Zalman 7000AlCu heatsink.
 
(laughs)

Thanks alot guys. I'll check all that stuff out.
Yellow - I don't know much about overclocking, so I probably won't do that right away. Thanks for the links.

Kronchev- What kind of motherboard should I get for an athlon 64 system? I was staying away from them because of the expense, but I don't know how much they've gone down in price. Also, when you said get a "36 gig raptor system drive and 250 gig IDE drive for storage": Whats the difference between a system drive and a storage drive? Do I have to configure them differently or something?

Thanks for all the help guys.
 
Hactar said:
Kronchev- What kind of motherboard should I get for an athlon 64 system? I was staying away from them because of the expense, but I don't know how much they've gone down in price. Also, when you said get a "36 gig raptor system drive and 250 gig IDE drive for storage": Whats the difference between a system drive and a storage drive? Do I have to configure them differently or something?

Thanks for all the help guys.
Click to expand...

not sure on motherboard at all. Something newer is much better than the original boards, because the old nforce3 chipset sucked, as in it didnt lock PCI and AGP buses, so OCing was really, well, not possible. The newer ones and any VIA chipset takes care of that. Also consider spending a little more and going socket 939. All A64 (except opteron) is moving to socket 939, so if you want to be able to upgrade, get it :)

i say separate because a 36 gig raptor isnt really big enough to be a main storage drive, IMO. you should get a separate drive for the system no matter what, and I am partial to raptors because they are really fast, faster than nearly any other drive (except for other 10k RPM drives, and discounting SCSI of course).
 
The A64 is very widely rumored to be incompatable with the BTX spec. And AMD isnt exactly jumping on the BTX bandwagon. Its going to require probably a new processor line. (its rumored that with the integrated memory controller being so far away from the DIMM slots will just make everything go to shit.)

Case manufacturers and mobo makers also (though rumored) arent crazy about keeping BTX around either. Infact, intel cant be to crazy either, because from what i read they're not ramping production.

Some PCIe motherboards are suppossed to have an AGP slot. My .02
 
I looked at the socket 939 processors, and theyre really expensive for me. :(
Whats different about them, is it because they have 64bit capability? Will I have to get a different mobo then?
 
939 socket CPUs from amd are expensive because they run dual memory channels. Prices might come down once intel release their newer socket cpu LGA 775..junt 20th
otherwise pretty much the same as socket 754 cpus (all AMD 64 cpus uses 64 bits extensions)
 
Oh, I see.

Also, to Yellow - If I were to buy a 9800pro, (newegg: $270) would I need to get a better processor than the 2800+ in order to let it run to its full capability, or is that processor enough? Because I can't really afford the 939 processors right now.
 
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