Curse

Admael · May 17, 2008, 05:12 AM // 05:12

They could be.

Crucial is a sub division of Micron, but not all Crucial chips are Micron.
Put the model number I'll research for you.

EDIT: I know we love visual aids, so enjoy! I'll leave it up to you to make heads or tails of it.

Blackhearted · May 17, 2008, 05:35 AM // 05:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Snograt

Hmm, 5-5-5-15 and 5-5-5-18 for your 2 choices.

With those two, the only place you may notice any difference, if any at all, would be in specific benchmarks. Real world usage wouldn't change much.

Snograt · May 17, 2008, 06:06 AM // 06:06

Bah. Ah well. Does my memory look like it's set up correctly, by the way?

Nasty habit of mine, thread hijack - sorry. Still, we're waiting for feedback from the OP, so I guess it's not too bad

Windblade Ionic Z · May 17, 2008, 06:58 AM // 06:58

Here is what I built my dad for video/photo editing and running several virtual machines at once.

Processor: Q6600 - $214.99

Motherboard: ASUS P5k-VM - $109.99

Memory: A-DATA 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit - $77.99

Video Card: EVGA 8600GT 256MB 128bit GDDR3 - $79.99 minus $30 MIR = $49.99

We already had the power supply, case, and drives.

You just need to add the following to the above and get rid of the 8600GT.

PSU: FSP Group FX600 - $109.99

Video Card: XFX Geforce 8800GT 512MB 256bit GDDR3 - $169.99 minus $30 MIR = $139.99

All prices were from Newegg.

Hope this helps.

Lord Sojar · May 17, 2008, 07:32 AM // 07:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Admael

If you shop around, I'm sure you can get the FX-60 from somewhere. It's still a godly processor.

I'd kill for an FX-60. (I'm only running on the FX-60's younger brother, the Opty 185>_>)

While the FX-60 is a great processor, the correct word would more likely be, WAS a great processor. To even dare to compare an FX-60 or any 939 processor with the current Phenom build CPUs is... well downright silly.

First and foremost, the silicon fabs on the K10 architecture is very advanced, and rivals (minus hafnium technology) the Intel fabs. It would be insane to go with a 90nm fabbed chip these days. Not only are their thermal thresholds up a creek without a paddle, but they are energy hogging and poor performing.

A K10 chip versus a K8/K9 chip is no comparison! They will slaughter the K8 chips in every single test, despite being slower. This is due to deceased fab pipelining, recontructed cache delivery systems, a redistrubuted crosslink in the core (particularly the 3/4 core CPUs), improved stability, thermal thresholds that make the FX-60 look like a nuclear bomb, oh and dare not we forget a complete revised stepping technology that also features out of order processing and deep cycle sleep states. I mean really now...

You may just be a bit uninformed in this particular area, it is no big deal. I am not trying to insult you, as a lot of people seem to think current AMD offerings are complete rubbish. Truth be told, Intel only beats them in 80% of tests, and they only beat them on average, by a 4-6% margin! I mean...honestly now... for a budget PC, who cares.

@Snog and everyone else regarding this Micron nonsense. Micro and Samsung are the big silicon fabbers. Their fabs are quite similar, but do have some key differences. Crucial uses micron fabs in 100% of the RAM, and yes, Ballistix included. In particular, the Micron 46V32M8, revision 5B/G, I think, could be a slightly different silicon revision on higher level stuff.

Corsair... on the other hand... is a piece of garbage company. First off, they are not purists. They use the cheapest fabs they can find. Second, they use... I can't believe I can bring myself to even type their name... Hynix fabs.... OMG /vomit. They also use Samsung TCCC, TC3B and TCCD/P revisions (which are decent), and they use Infineon which is disgusting. Oh yes, and good ol' Winbond and... dare I say... in some rare cases Mosel. /wrists. Winbond is terribad, the only respectable one out of the bunch is Samsung.

Geil...about as terrible as Corsair, just a bit less tainted and they use fewer Hynix stuff and more Samsung.

Gskill? You are kidding right? They are nearly purist, using almost exclusively Samsung TCCD chips, but have been known to throw some Micron chips in

OCZ is a mutchild, but you can find some decent Samsung and Micron revisions from them.

Point is... Crucial is one of the best if not THE BEST RAM manufacturer out there. Ballistix is highly regarded in the overclocking community as one of the best choices around. If anyone has told you differently, told you their RAM doesn't overclock well, is bad with voltages, has stability issues, it is because that person doesn't know how to buy a decent motherboard or tweak with dividers correctly (or adjust mVoltage lvls slowly and methodically enough)

Metroid, go with whatever you want and is in your budget. A few of us have pointed you in the right direction, I wish you the best on your PC building journey. (one thing though, if you do go with an AMD FX motherboard, get an AMD graphics card... they play nicer together.) Or go with an nVidia chipset board and nVidia card. I hate Intel chipsets, so meh, but if you do, either route if fine.

Admael · May 17, 2008, 11:05 AM // 11:05

I agree, that you can't really compare the FX-60 to any of the newer processors, because the difference in architecture is just overwhelming.

I wouldn't even dream of saying a 4 year old processor beats or even can compare with one of today's.

I also agree with the Corsair bit, I didn't want to say it, but they did slap on some Micron D9's when they submitted them for review/bench, and swapped the chips out later for the cheapest stuff they could find.

My mistake about the Micron chips being in only *some* of Crucial's memory, I often forget there are different grades of the chip, even within this company :<

nebuchanezzar · May 17, 2008, 02:51 PM // 14:51

About Crucial, I wasn't trying to say they suck, far from it. The difference is that most of their DDR2 memory was running Micron d9gmh chips. Amazingly easy to overclock. To my knowledge they no longer are building RAM sticks with those chips or with d9gxk chips which are almost as good. All of those are double-sided(chips on both sides of the PCB). Their newest are currently single sided and since I don't have a set of my own to check I can't even tell you what chips those are. From an overclocking point of view, their double sided sticks are godly, the single sided...not so godly to use a gamers term.
As of right now the only manufacturers still putting out "new" RAM with d9gmh chips are the higher speed Patriot Vipers and Buffalo Firestix.
To be honest though, those things are more important with an Intel system as overclocking those is much more memory dependant. With AMD having moved their memory controller on-die you can leave your ram at its stock setting and change it's dividers with less effect on the total systems speed and stability.
I would send you to http://ramlist.ath.cx/ddr2/ but that site hasn't been up for a couple weeks...Used to be, well, the holy grail of RAM info and was always up to date.
Like most things though, the PCB manufacturer does have an effect. With the same chips being used you consistently find names like G.Skill and Mushkin being slightly better than others.
Like most things too, many people have personal opinions that tend to bias their views. While spec reading may seem dull, it makes you more aware of what you are getting. Things change, chip runs end and get replaced by newer models etc. Like Rahja said, Winbond sucks now. Back in DDR1 days though, their BH-5 chips were the absolute bomb(I still have 2*256 and 2*512 set somewhere) but went down like a brick out a window with their next batches.
Rahja has been spot on and I echo his advice. For a decent budget system you really can't go wrong unless you don't pay attention to anything.
Oh, and if you are getting Vista than his warning of not running and ATi graphics card on an nForce chipset is good advice. For some its fine, for some the chipset drivers and GC drivers refuse to play nicely. I have had to help a few people with that annoying issue but it tends to be in the older nF3 and nF4 chipsets in my personal experience when using Vista.

One last thing, don't buy an operating system. When you get to school get a student version from them for dirt cheap and save that money. If you are getting Vista then I feel 2Gb of Ram is minimum and 4 is better. Vista will recognize up to 8Gb for a reason, it is a memory/resource hog by current standards.

Snograt · May 17, 2008, 08:27 PM // 20:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by nebuchanezzar

Vista will recognize up to 8Gb for a reason, it is a memory/resource hog by current standards.

Vista will recognise as much as your system will hold. Vista Ultimate x64 supposedly can access "128GB+".

WTB mobo with 32 memory slots?

Of course, 32bit Vista is tied down to the standard 3-and-a-bit GB.

FlamingMetroid · May 18, 2008, 12:28 AM // 00:28

ok, so I'm going to go with the Gskill RAM. So will the Nvidia GPU not work with the AMD motherboard, or would I just need to get new drivers or do minor tweaking to get it to work?

Snograt · May 18, 2008, 02:12 AM // 02:12

nVidia will be fine. I think the only downside with nVidia on AMD and ATI on nVidia is multi-GPU support - not a problem for you.

You would expect an ATI GPU to work better on an AMD board, seein as how they're the same company nowadays, but who knows?

...now there's a silly question

Pasha the Mighty · May 18, 2008, 02:06 PM // 14:06

I know you wanna get that triple core AMD, but maybe i can change your mind. If you get a socket 775 processor, you can go for the ASUS p5k-e /wifi-ap. It's got two pci-E slots (one with 16, and one with 8 lanes). It's what i have in my rig. It's relatively cheap, i dont think it can be more that 130 dollars.
I'd recommend a e8400 as processor, really cheap, incredible overclock potential. Btw, rahja said you don't need to dvd drives, that's true unless you want to copy or things like that.
As a case, I'll recommend my own: a coolermaster cm 690, it's quite big, and has enough places for like 8 fans or something like that, two of which can be 140mm. And to top it off, it's not as expensive as the other cases, it's 70 dollars at newegg right now (it's called the rc 690, don't know if there's a difference, looks the same to me.)
As a PSU, you can get the little brother of the corsair tx750, just get the tx650.
By now i've recommended a lot of the stuff I use, btw, cause i have a cheap but effective (imo) rig.
Now, as i have a monitor which has a native resolution of 1280*1024, I didn't need anything bigger than a 8600gts512. But i recommend the 8800gts512, or wait for ati's 4x00 series, which is due for june, but it's not really justifiable (not how you spell it i think) if you won't get a big monitor.
As ram, you can generally get anything you like. Personally, I went for corsair 8500c5d memory, it runs at 1066mhz (make sure your motherboard supports this speed, if you get pc2-8500 memory), but you can get any of the recommended memory modules.
As a hdd, just get one of the seagate or wd 320 single platters, and eventually, if you want one, a bigger hdd for files.
I personally am going for the x-fi xtrememusic, just because I like perfect sound, without a too high pricetag, but it's not necessary if you don't have the right headseat/speakerset (sennheiser or logitech or akg are good brands for this, i use a HD456 sennheiser headset) or just don't care about audio.
Well, that's all i can think of.
EDIT: I'm not sure if this falls under a 1000 dollars. I thought it would, but I had euro's in mind, and it does fall under a 1000 euros here in holland, so I'm sorry if i've wasted your time and it isn't below your pricetag.

xVeinx · May 18, 2008, 03:20 PM // 15:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pasha the Mighty

I know you wanna get that triple core AMD, but maybe i can change your mind. If you get a socket 775 processor, you can go for the ASUS p5k-e /wifi-ap. It's got two pci-E slots (one with 16, and one with 8 lanes). It's what i have in my rig. It's relatively cheap, i dont think it can be more that 130 dollars.
I'd recommend a e8400 as processor, really cheap, incredible overclock potential. Btw, rahja said you don't need to dvd drives, that's true unless you want to copy or things like that.
As a case, I'll recommend my own: a coolermaster cm 690, it's quite big, and has enough places for like 8 fans or something like that, two of which can be 140mm. And to top it off, it's not as expensive as the other cases, it's 70 dollars at newegg right now (it's called the rc 690, don't know if there's a difference, looks the same to me.)
As a PSU, you can get the little brother of the corsair tx750, just get the tx650.
By now i've recommended a lot of the stuff I use, btw, cause i have a cheap but effective (imo) rig.
Now, as i have a monitor which has a native resolution of 1280*1024, I didn't need anything bigger than a 8600gts512. But i recommend the 8800gts512, or wait for ati's 4x00 series, which is due for june, but it's not really justifiable (not how you spell it i think) if you won't get a big monitor.
As ram, you can generally get anything you like. Personally, I went for corsair 8500c5d memory, it runs at 1066mhz (make sure your motherboard supports this speed, if you get pc2-8500 memory), but you can get any of the recommended memory modules.
As a hdd, just get one of the seagate or wd 320 single platters, and eventually, if you want one, a bigger hdd for files.
I personally am going for the x-fi xtrememusic, just because I like perfect sound, without a too high pricetag, but it's not necessary if you don't have the right headseat/speakerset (sennheiser or logitech or akg are good brands for this, i use a HD456 sennheiser headset) or just don't care about audio.
Well, that's all i can think of.
EDIT: I'm not sure if this falls under a 1000 dollars. I thought it would, but I had euro's in mind, and it does fall under a 1000 euros here in holland, so I'm sorry if i've wasted your time and it isn't below your pricetag.

Um, it's 16x and 4x, and he would be only able to use crossfire. The performance hit would be large with the 4x slot. For a $1k build, he is probably better off with the AMD which can keep his GPU "full" just fine for the most part. The other suggestions are good though. I'd second the single platter seagates. I got a 250 gig .10 drive and the thing is whisper silent and very quick. Won't beat a raptor, but then I'm not sure you need that

....

Pasha the Mighty · May 18, 2008, 03:26 PM // 15:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by xVeinx

Um, it's 16x and 4x, and he would be only able to use crossfire. The performance hit would be large with the 4x slot. For a $1k build, he is probably better off with the AMD which can keep his GPU "full" just fine for the most part. The other suggestions are good though. I'd second the single platter seagates. I got a 250 gig .10 drive and the thing is whisper silent and very quick. Won't beat a raptor, but then I'm not sure you need that

....

You're probably right, it's 16 and 4x. But the thing is, it being a >1000dollar budget, you wouldn't expect him to go sli or crossfire, so that's why it doesn't really matter that you don't have 2 full lanes, and with "just" one graphics card, there won't be a performance hit at all.
But i must admit, I'm an intel supporter, not AMD, and I also like nvidia's graphic's cards better, but let's see what the ati's 4000 series has to offer, and i'm considering the 260gtx when it comes out.
Also, what the OP might consider, is get like all the basic stuff first and upgrade to better stuff later, like a better graph. card later on or something like that.

awesome sauce · May 19, 2008, 08:49 PM // 20:49

oh man... i'm in pretty much the exact same situation here.. same amount of money to work with and everything. Except I'm having trouble deciding between laptop and desktop. Is a laptop really that useful for college?

Lord Sojar · May 19, 2008, 09:16 PM // 21:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by awesome sauce

oh man... i'm in pretty much the exact same situation here.. same amount of money to work with and everything. Except I'm having trouble deciding between laptop and desktop. Is a laptop really that useful for college?

I went through university without one, my desktop was fine. I used a Palm Pilot Tungsten for uni. You could pick up a blackberry, iphone/ipod touch, or a Palm to do stuff that you would use a lappie for. Not only that, but a 1,000 bucks won't get you a very good laptop, at least not something you can use for mid-high to high end enthusiast gaming.

If you end up thinking you really need a laptop, then go to either of these websites:

iBuy Power

or

CyberPower PC

or head over to Newegg and look at the ASUS and ACER notebooks. Make sure it has an nVidia 8600 or better in it.

awesome sauce · May 19, 2008, 09:22 PM // 21:22

Yeah, well obviously if I bought a laptop it wouldn't be for gaming. Just wondering if it's actually useful for taking notes in class/ etc. Honestly though, the only game i've played in the last 2 years is a little bit of CSS.