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New AMD X2 Rig....

W

wild0104

n00b
Joined
Mar 28, 2005
Messages
19
I'm looking for some advice on a new main rig i'm building, i'm a pretty avid gamer though not much into fps. I'm going to X2 for sure, and gonna put 2gb of ram into to make sure it lasts me awhile. I was also planning on a raid 0 array for the system to try and maximize performance. I'm not sure if I want to drop the cash to go with an SLI setup, so if anyone has any recommendations on that (i.e. whether its worth the price of 2 graphics cards). Having dual LAN would be nice, but not required, but its def gotta be Gbit. I want atleast 4 SATA II ports as I never plan to buy another IDE hdd in my lifetime. So i'm looking for a recommendation on a motherboard, I don't think i'll ever overclock it more than a little, and as I said I'm debating about SLI. I've also started doing a little reading up on the M2 socket and would enjoy some advice or comments on the specs of it and whether it'd be at all worthwhile to consider a mobo that'll support M2.....any other comments or suggestions on my setup are welcome...
 
I recently purchased a gigabyte K8N Pro SLI motherboard, an X2 3800, 2 gigs of Patriot PC3200 RAM, and a EVGA 7800GT. Couldn't be happer. I like FPS games the most. I have all settings for all games maxed out, running at my native LCD res 1280x1024. While SLI would be great, I really don't think that there are any games that would require it for smooth gameplay. So I would save the money on the SLI until the card gets way cheap in price, then buy it to boost your gaming performance in the future when needed.
 
About 2 months ago I purchased the ASUS A8N-SLi Premium motherboard, and it has performed like a champ for me.

Here is my setup

Asus A8N-SLI Premium
AMD X2 4400 Toledo running at 2.42 GHZ(Overclocked 10% in the BIOS)
Thermaltake XP90 Heatsink with 90 mm Fan
2 GB of Corsair XMS memory
1 Western Digital SATA 74GB Boot drive
1 Maxtor SATA 300GB Data/Games drive
Leadtek P7800 GTX overclocked to 490 GPU core clock
My case is the Aspire Black BMW theme case with 4 fans

My rig runs at 39-42 degrees celcius running games like DOOM3, BF2, Vanguard:Saga of Heroes(Beta), Call of Duty2.

My 3DMARK05 score were 9125.

Go for the ASUS Board you won't regret it.
 
I have the A8N SLi Premium as well and the mobo is rock solid for me

only complaint I have is the nVidia onboard nic corrupting data over time ..never had a problem with the Marvell nic tho.

If you want a system today , then the Asus mobo is a good choice.

might I suggest going with 1 74gb raptor drive and then a 250gb or so sata drive as a secondary ..get good performance and save a few bucks and not have any "raid" worries.

..and if you decide you want SLi down the road ..that option will be available with this mobo.

I wouldnt mind having the A8N32 SLi mobo ..but price per performance diff isnt worth it to me.
save some money on your ram and go with 2 1gb sticks of pc3200 stuff
make sure you figure in a good psu

my setup:
A8N SLi Premium
x2 +4400@2.5ghz w/XP-120 with 2 120mm fans mounted on it
2 1GB Mushkin Enhanced PC3200
PC P&C 510 SLi
2x 7800GTX 256meg @ 490/1300
74GB Raptor primary
250GB WD IDE secondary
Audigy2
NEC DL DVD+/-RW
WinXP 64-bit


[H]
 
I like the ASUS A8N-SLI Premium that two people have reccommended, however what's the difference (if any) between the Premium and Deluxe versions of the A8N-SLI board?
 
premium is a few dollars more and has a fanless chipset cooler. i would go for the premium.
 
I love my A8N32-SLI, with the exception of not having much space around the free PCI slot when using dual slot video cards.

The A8N32-SLI has six SATA connectors, four using the nVidia controller, and 2 using the Silicon Image controler. One of the SI controllers is external, so you can connect an external SATA drive.

Of course, if you can wait, M2 should be hear by 2Q, but I don't think 939 is going anywhere any time soon. AMD is supposed to make 939 through 2006, and I don't see M2 really adding anything in terms of performace, at least not initally.

I have to say that these two GTX 512 in SLI have been cool! To me, SLI is all about performance. F.E.A.R. @ 1600x1200 4aa/16af is beyond any single card solution still, ATI or nVidia, and will probably be out of reach for even an X1900, but SLI can do it now.

Good luck with your new system and Happy New Year!

_____________________________________________________________
Windows Media Center 2005
Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe Motherboard
Athlon 64 X2 4800+
2GB Corsair 3500LL Pro Memmory
2x BFG 7800 GTX 512 OC in SLI
3x Maxtor DiamondMax10 300GB HDD in RAID-0
2x hp dvd740 DVD Writer optical drive | 1x Mitsumi FA404M 7-in-1 USB 2.0 card reader and floppy drive
Antec P180 case
Enermax EG851AX-VH 660W Power Supply
Samsung SyncMaster 213T 21" 1600x1200 LCD Monitor
 
RAID 0 is a waste IMHO...I'd get a 2nd video card for SLI before I got a 2nd HDD for RAID 0. 1 74GB Raptor and 1 large storage drive seems a popular way to go if you want increased HDD performance.
 
If you're only worried about game performace, then RAID 0 is not as good of an investment as SLI. However, if you go other things with you computer than game, you'll love RAID 0.

I'm using 3 Maxtor DiamondMax10 300GB, which runs about $375, gives you 900GB of storage, and is faster than a pair of RAID 0 Raptors. Of course, you do have the increased risk of failure in RAID 0, but I do a lot software development which is disk intensive and things just flow better, espcially with an X2.

_____________________________________________________________
Windows Media Center 2005
Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe Motherboard
Athlon 64 X2 4800+
2GB Corsair 3500LL Pro Memmory
2x BFG 7800 GTX 512 OC in SLI
3x Maxtor DiamondMax10 300GB HDD in RAID-0
2x hp dvd740 DVD Writer optical drive | 1x Mitsumi FA404M 7-in-1 USB 2.0 card reader and floppy drive
Antec P180 case
Enermax EG851AX-VH 660W Power Supply
Samsung SyncMaster 213T 21" 1600x1200 LCD Monitor
 
heatlesssun said:
If you're only worried about game performace, then RAID 0 is not as good of an investment as SLI. However, if you go other things with you computer than game, you'll love RAID 0.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I should have noted that if you're using large files such as video editing and stuff like that than RAID 0 is ok, but if you're just looking to get faster load times or something like that, just get a Raptor.
 
I think that there's a little more to it than that. Sure, RAID0 or even a Raptor will help with load times, but with a dual core system, RAID0 can be a tremendous boost when dealing with multiple apps and disk intensive operations.

I can now load multiple instances of my development tools as quickly as I was loading single instances with my old system.

Of course the downside to RAID0 is increased risk of disk failure. Of course there's RAID0+1 and RAID5, but there's tradeoffs there. Me, I just backup. I like the 900GB of space and lightning speed.

Happy New Year!

_____________________________________________________________
Windows Media Center 2005
Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe Motherboard
Athlon 64 X2 4800+
2GB Corsair 3500LL Pro Memmory
2x BFG 7800 GTX 512 OC in SLI
3x Maxtor DiamondMax10 300GB HDD in RAID-0
2x hp dvd740 DVD Writer optical drive | 1x Mitsumi FA404M 7-in-1 USB 2.0 card reader and floppy drive
Antec P180 case
Enermax EG851AX-VH 660W Power Supply
Samsung SyncMaster 213T 21" 1600x1200 LCD Monitor
 
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