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Opinions on Shuttle SA76G2?

D

dderidex

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Oct 31, 2001
Messages
6,328
I have an ST20G5 at the moment, which I've got many (MANY!) years out of - and I'm a big fan of the form factor, now. Ridiculously tiny little boxes that can sit on my desk next to a keyboard and monitor and look right at home - very quite, but still hella powerful for gaming. (Indeed, while the components have been upgraded once or twice, at a few months shy of 4 months old, this is - by far - the longest I've ever had a system. And even then, those parts that are upgraded are just for new features and work fine...I'm selling a few parts off it right now, in fact.)

So I'm looking for something with similar upgradability, and the SA76G2 seems like it may fit the bill with it's Socket AM2+/AM3 support (it also has a PCI slot and PS/2 keyboard port - which are both fairly important, as I don't want to get rid of my X-Fi or Logitech 'Elite' keyboard anytime soon). Specifically, that AMD Phenom II X3 720 looks absolutely brilliant from a price: performance perspective, and should work great for a couple years until AMD's 6-core (or whatever) procs are out for the socket.

My only concerns are:
  • The ST20G5 I have had really is a tweaker's system. I'm hardly a hardcore overclocker (indeed, this mobo wouldn't support THAT), but it does allow some serious maximizing of performance. A slight bump here and there, tightening timings, etc...really stretched the system out. For reference, I currently have an AMD X2 '4400+' running at 2.4ghz with it's 1mb-cache-per-core, so basically a '4800+'...however, with the DDR ram running at 533mhz (effective) and CL3-3-2-8 with 1T timings. Very speedy! The SA76G2 seems to have...well, SOME ram timings. But that's it. No overclocking at ALL - even a modest 10%.
  • Lack of DDR3 support. By the time we are getting up to 6-core processors...surely, they will be getting fairly 'starved' at dual-channel DDR2, no? On the other hand, DDR3 has a WAYS to go in latency and speed before it can really deliver twice the performance of the fast DDR2 currently out on the market, so there isn't really an option to buy THAT stuff at the moment, ANYWAY. And I'd really rather buy a system that needs as little upgrading as possible for it's intended 4-year lifespan. I see a new video card every year, and a new CPU at the 2-year mark, and that's it.
  • Some of the Newegg reviews mention the stock BIOS doesn't work with an AMD Phenom II X3 720. Granted, a BIOS update does resolve that...but I don't have another AM2 or AM3 CPU laying around to drop in it that I could boot it up to flash the BIOS with the update. Has anyone picked up one of these recently and could comment on if they do/don't ship with the latest BIOS from Newegg at the moment?
  • Well, I guess it goes without saying I'd RATHER have the AMD 790 chipset in a Shuttle XPC instead of the 760. And I'd RATHER have a black G5 chassis instead of the G2 chassis. But they don't make one like that. Or...does anyone know otherwise? Anything new rumored?

SO...sorry about that 'war and peace' essay, but I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts/comments on the above?
 
What about the shuttle SN78SH7

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856101073

Granted you will need to get a ps2 to usb adapter, and it is similarity speced to the amd 760 chipset, but i think that you get a little bit more for the case as it has a 300watt versus 250watts. On the opposite spectrum you could always go for the i7 version, which would be expensive but I would bet that it will be a top teir system for years to come. Of course you need to shell out 700 for the shuttle, 200 for the processor, 150 for 6gb of ram......

just my 2 cents
 
rhansen5_99 said:
What about the shuttle SN78SH7

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856101073

Granted you will need to get a ps2 to usb adapter, and it is similarity speced to the amd 760 chipset, but i think that you get a little bit more for the case as it has a 300watt versus 250watts. On the opposite spectrum you could always go for the i7 version, which would be expensive but I would bet that it will be a top teir system for years to come. Of course you need to shell out 700 for the shuttle, 200 for the processor, 150 for 6gb of ram......

just my 2 cents
Click to expand...

Looked at i7, but it was just so RIDICULOUSLY out of the budget that it was hard to keep serious adding components to the shopping cart.

As to the power supply - never had a problem with the 230w I have in the system I have, and the CPU I'm looking at will be lower power consumption than the one I'm using (95w vs 110w) along with a PSU pulling 20w more. Same video card, of course. Again, not concerned so much on that front.

I don't think the adapter would work, either. My keyboard is PS/2. The PS/2 to USB adapters are generally designed for a USB keyboard to plug into a PS/2 slot - I'm not sure I've seen any that work the other way.

As to the chipset - I figure if I'm getting and AMD CPU, and pairing it with an AMD video card, I might as well get an AMD chipset and benefit from whatever driver tweaks AMD introduces for the pairing (plus, I don't feel like being beholden to nVidia again for drivers on an otherwise AMD/ATI platform - one of the reasons I can't go Vista 64 for my current system is that nVidia bought the manufacturer of the Southbridge on it and then never bothered to make a Vista 64 driver for it).
 
SA76G2 only has 2 slots for RAM. Wow. This would've been perfect if it had 4 slots. Even my aging SN27P2 has 4 slots. BTW: This looks like it supports the new Athlon II X4 for $99.

2x4GB DDR2 = $250+
8GB = $250+

If it had 4 slots, you could do
2x2GB DDR2 = $50
2x2GB DDR2 = $50
8GB = $100
 
Keep in mind that if you use it mainly for gaming and lighter general use rather than very heavy Photoshop or major video editing, 4GB is plenty enough. With 4GB I can run games while having Photoshop, browser with a gazillion tabs and a slew of other applications open in the background, and the gaming performance doesn't suffer one bit.
 
tvih said:
Keep in mind that if you use it mainly for gaming and lighter general use rather than very heavy Photoshop or major video editing, 4GB is plenty enough. With 4GB I can run games while having Photoshop, browser with a gazillion tabs and a slew of other applications open in the background, and the gaming performance doesn't suffer one bit.
Click to expand...

I dunno, I use my current rig for "very heavy Photoshop" (at least, 8"x10" images at 600dpi with many, MANY layers - current composition saves to a 500mb file) and I've only got 2gb. It's not awesome, but it works fine.

4gb would be all the more I could imagine needing for a while. So the 2-slots thing doesn't bug me. (Plus, I run really tight latencies on the ram - not a fan of the sacrifice in that you have to deal with when using 4 sticks. Granted, Intel's triple-channel solution which would result in 6gb without having that happen is pretty awesome.)
 
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