Curse

TreeDude · Sep 09, 2005, 10:21 PM // 22:21

The board with bot AP and PCI-Express is out. They are in low quantity though. NewEgg seems to sell them with in hours of getting them back in. How they did it woithout a performance loss I do not know. But I have read 2 reviews from Toms Hardware and anotherone I can't think of right now. I have them bookmarked at home (I'm at work right now).

I'm actually going to buy the mobo soon and wait till X-mas and get an Athlon X2 4400+. I have a 6800gt AGP, so they should go nicely. Here's the link to the mobo:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157081

As of this post it's back in stock. It wasn't this morning.

sidepocket13 · Sep 09, 2005, 10:24 PM // 22:24

make sure the mobo fits in the case you have! all i wanted to do was a simple mobo upgrade and a new vid card and stupid me bought the wrong size! lol

Detis Zan · Sep 10, 2005, 01:25 AM // 01:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toral Xi

Looks like a great board, I really like the invidia nforce4 chipset and SLI feature. The only thing it doesn't say is if it supports the new AMD64 dual core chips. You may not be planning on purchasing one now but I would look for that for future upgradibility. You can just call or e-mail ASUS to check.

If you want to read some professional reviews on the board just google "ASUS A8N SLI" and you will pull up a ton. tomshardware.com is a great site also.

Dual Core Chips? You mean the processor chip?

I was going to get the Athlon AMD 64 3200+. But what do you mean by the dual core?

Oh I just looked at it and the one I'm looking at has a Venice core. So a dual would be better?

id0l · Sep 10, 2005, 05:16 AM // 05:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Old Warrior Dood

Just overclocking a little too much will fry your system. I am old school. I do not see the need to overclock systems anymore. To me they are fast enough now.

Eh, I have to disagree here. I have been building my own [and other peoples] computers and continuiously upgrading them since I was 15 years old (7 years ago). Now, I will admit every time I get ahold of a new chip I test it's overclock-ability. Not once have I ever "fried my system", or anyone else's system that I have built. Truth be told, a processor will overheat and your computer will shut down/freeze well before anything "fries" (or it simply will refuse to boot correctly). Believe me, I've been there - a couple times I didn't notice my CPU fan was wasn't hooked up and another time it was broken completely...of course it froze the system pretty fast (before windows finished booting), but no "frying."

More than likely if something is to fry, it is going to be your RAM. Depending on the overclocking method (in my case in the past it was usually altering the front side bus frequency multiplier - now with nForce chipsets they allow you to manually change the FSB speed indepently, so no tweaking multipliers here - no math involved), you are effectively altering the bus speed your RAM sits on as well. Cheap RAM may fry if you go wild. Still doubtful, but possible. I have only burned up one stick of RAM in my lifetime and it was just after I bought it - so I think it was defective in the first place.

The reason overclockers go insane on the cooling isn't to prevent things from frying. It's to allow the chip to run stable at a higher peak frequency (mhz) without reaching their "crash point" - a certain temp that the cpu just can't run at.

I will not argue in the fact that overclocking will decrease the lifespan on your processor. This is probably true, however, I have been running an OC'd Athlon XP 2000+ for about...3 years or so. No problems. Gotta keep the fan and stuff clean, though, or it will start to overheat (BSOD's, reboots, freezing, games crashing to desktop..etc.).

By the way, I run that Athlon XP 2000+ at 284mhz front side bus speed (as opposed to the standard 266mhz), which is ~1765mhz, Geforce 4 Ti 4200 (sometimes overclocked, sometimes not - it's more picky when it comes to certain things), and 512MB PC2100 DDR (effectively 266mhz). If I can keep the system (mainly the cpu fan) clean as a whistle, I can run 290mhz FSB. Guild Wars runs great in 1024x768 with full graphics...pretty good considering the age of my machine. I would run it at a higher rez but my monitor tops out at 1280x1024, and everything looks sort of "tiny" at that rez on my 17" monitor.

However, newer games with badass graphics don't run as well. Mainly games that have a high use of shaders...this can of course be attributed to my vid card, mostly. I will probably be forced to upgrade in about a year or so.

GenRabbit · Sep 10, 2005, 12:28 PM // 12:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Detis Zan

Dual Core Chips? You mean the processor chip?

I was going to get the Athlon AMD 64 3200+. But what do you mean by the dual core?

Oh I just looked at it and the one I'm looking at has a Venice core. So a dual would be better?

I don't see any need of Dual core cpu unless you are going to run 2 cpu hungry applications at once. For GW two CPU cores only means one is running idle & comsuming power without any benefit.

All newer 939 boards support dualcore CPU. But some might need a Bios update. I do not know if no support in bios means the computer wont start or if only one core will be available.

Detis Zan · Sep 10, 2005, 11:36 PM // 23:36

Once again I must thank everyone on this thread to be so helpful to give good advice abot computers for someone who wants to learn.

I got a mother board and Processor.

But now the graphics card. Well I'm going to go ahead and get the Nvidia Geforce 6600GT (PCI x16)
But there are a lot of companies who sell this graphic card and they all look different =P

I thought Nvidia made the cards themself? What is a reliable company for this card?

Also would I need a card with the hishest Core/memory clock possible?

lightblade · Sep 11, 2005, 07:51 AM // 07:51

it all comes down to your budget...

TreeDude · Sep 11, 2005, 09:59 PM // 21:59

Nvidia doesn't make any cards. They just make the GPU and set certian standards that have to be met. There are made by ATI cards, but even those are not actually made by ATI. They are made by Sapphire and are relabled.

Go to NewEgg and look for the one with the most good reviews.

Detis Zan · Sep 12, 2005, 01:42 AM // 01:42

Ah Well I got mostly everything but the HDD and the Ram plus a case.

Well The Mother board has a ATA 133. But the Harddrive just says it has a Sata It has to be the same right? here's the links..
HDD I'm currently looking at.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822152022

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131524 Mother board

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121531 Video Card

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817148008 Powersupply.

iliketoeat · Sep 12, 2005, 03:19 AM // 03:19

get a venice core Athlon
or a dual core

the single cores are very well priced (cheap compared to intels)
and they overclock well

Esca Dello Squalo · Sep 12, 2005, 04:10 AM // 04:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Detis Zan

Ah Well I got mostly everything but the HDD and the Ram plus a case.

Well The Mother board has a ATA 133. But the Harddrive just says it has a Sata It has to be the same right? here's the links..
HDD I'm currently looking at.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822152022

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131524 Mother board

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121531 Video Card

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817148008 Powersupply.

I skimmed through the thread, and so far, so good. Did you decide on a processor?

SATA and ATA are different interfaces, but on that ASUS board, you'll be fine.

In my experience, I'd have to suggest an Enermax power supply, but that's just an opinion.

Basically, I have a list of stuff that i'd like to suggest:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813130492 Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103535 Processor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820145450 RAM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822144415 Hard Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130214 Video
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827131357 Optical Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817103458 Power Supply

Detis Zan · Sep 12, 2005, 05:25 AM // 05:25

On the processor I forgot to add is the same you put up.

What you have suggested has brought up 760.49 without the shipping, and case (Keyboard mouse and speakers I already have)

Also the Operating system is the one I'm scared to buy. Some are more expensive than the computer it self. =P
Is there anyway I can transfer Windows from this computer to the one I will build?

Also what about Internet explorer and other programs that pretty much come with the prebuilt ones?

dansamy · Sep 12, 2005, 05:52 AM // 05:52

Mine is a bit older of a mobo, but similar to the 1st one Detis posted. My Athlon proc has a Barton core in it. Overall, our system is VERY stable and we rarely have any issues with it.

Toral Xi · Sep 12, 2005, 09:31 PM // 21:31

I agree that I single venice core chip is fine for right now. You will only see a real performance difference with a dual core if you are running multiple applications. As software programming catches up, new games will be written to optimize dual cores but this may not happen for some time.