some input please

Z

Z3r03rr0r

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 26, 2003
Messages
152
so I am planning on doing a major overhaul/upgrade and was hoping some of you guys could provide some input/answers to some questions.
I will be moving into an athlon 64 most likely the x2 3800 or x2 4400
I haven't decided on a MoBo yet recomendations welcome
for RAM I was thinking 2GB though not sure between ddr and ddr2
vid card should I go with a high end card like a 7900GTX single card or 2 lower cards in SLI
for sound I will move my audigy 2 zs over from my current rig

thats all I can think of right now, any help and opinions are welcome. if you want to take cost into consideration as well it will be a bit of a factor I am looking to keep it between 1000 and 2000 CAD.

thanks in advance
 
The mother board really depends on what you want: SATA, Firewire, integrated sound, etc.

Current socket 939 motherboards don't support DDR2.

You're better off going with the 7900GTX.
 
You might want to check out a dual core Opteron instead. Be sure your RAID is setup in RAID-1 not 0 and other than that go with what everyone else said. You could also get speakers that have a decoder on board and buy a motherboard with SPDIF out and run a digital cable to the speakers. Then you could sell your creative card.
 
sorry good point there
as far as on board options go

SATA required / onboard RAID feature would be nice as well
NIC would be nice not required
sound not required
video not required
 
general said:
You might want to check out a dual core Opteron instead. Be sure your RAID is setup in RAID-1 not 0 and other than that go with what everyone else said. You could also get speakers that have a decoder on board and buy a motherboard with SPDIF out and run a digital cable to the speakers. Then you could sell your creative card.
Click to expand...


I don't plan on changing my speakers out anytime soon the current ones work great for me
and I will be running raid 0 not 1 since the raid would be for speed not redundancy on my gaming comp. I have a good working back up system so that covers my data and I ghost my original install which saves me time if I do need to reinstall for some reason

as well I was looking at the dual core opterons but was unsure what benefits they offer over the socket 939 chips and upgradabilty down the road would it be an issue?
 
opteron 165 is socket 939.

overclocks between the opteron165 and the x2 3800+ are comparative: some will say the opterons OC better, while others will claim X2s are better overclockers.

DDR 2 is going to be coming down in price, while DDR should go up in price.
You will need to buy an AMD AM2 processor or a Pentium4 to use DDR2.

also, get the single video card over dual lower end cards.
 
well I think I made some decisions and am open to more input of course

Athlon 64 x2 4400+
2GB DDR400 RAM (2x 1GB sticks)
2x nvidia 7800GTX 256MB in SLI (not sure on manufacturer yet and will be one for now and the second sometime down the road)
SB Audigy2 ZS (using it from my current system)
2x200GB HDD in raid 0 for games and video rendering
2x300GB HDD in raid 1 for system partition and data
Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe
AEGIA based Physx card (will be waiting for a new version with less bugs then the current ones)

also overclocking it is not a huge thing for me I would rather keep it stock and quieter
 
Z3r03rr0r said:
well I think I made some decisions and am open to more input of course

Athlon 64 x2 4400+
2GB DDR400 RAM (2x 1GB sticks)
2x nvidia 7800GTX 256MB in SLI (not sure on manufacturer yet and will be one for now and the second sometime down the road)
SB Audigy2 ZS (using it from my current system)
2x200GB HDD in raid 0 for games and video rendering
2x300GB HDD in raid 1 for system partition and data
Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe
AEGIA based Physx card (will be waiting for a new version with less bugs then the current ones)

also overclocking it is not a huge thing for me I would rather keep it stock and quieter
Click to expand...
SLI is almost never worth it, since it's twice the $$$ for a ~30-60% increase in frames.

Instead of striping two drives for "games", it's easier and more reliable to simply use a single fast drive, like the 150GB Raptor. Also, if you mean you'll be using the 2x200GB array for video _encoding_, it's not necessary. I doubt there are any processors that are bottlenecked by the storage system, especially if it's a 150GB Raptor. See here.

As far as overclocking goes, silence depends only on stuff that moves, like fans and hard drives. It's true that for any given cooling system, you need more airflow to maintain the temperature when power output increases, but you can also go for more effective coolers that perform very well with lower amounts of flow, like the Scythe Ninja. Some operate their Ninjas passively on lower-power A64 processors - albeit with a rear fan.
 
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