What's new
TerraForums Venus Flytrap, Nepenthes, Drosera and more talk

Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

New Hardware

Est

War. War never changes.
Staff member
Moderator
As I've saved up a bit of money and have taken up a side job, I decided that now would be a good time to get some new computer parts I've been wanting as some of what I have is a bit lacking. I'm all about juicing my old hardware to the max, but old tech can only be pushed so far.

Here's what I've come up with:

Motherboard
Socket AM2

Graphics Card
Sapphire Radeon X1800GTO 2 (PCIE x16)

CPU
AMD: Dual Core, 64 bit, X2 4200+ (windsor,) Socket AM2

RAM
Corsair: (2x) 512mb, 240-pin, DDR2 800, Dual Channel


I'm pulled on one side by my desire to keep away from excess (Note: only 1gb of ram, motherboard is moderately priced, deals all around) and the desire to have a machine that I'll be able to rely on for a looooong while.

At some point I'll probably get a nice LCD (while I love CRTs, mine feels like it's getting harder on my eyes, and you can find some pretty good LCD deals nowadays!)

I'll be keeping my case (el cheapo 10 buck case that I'm fond of) and my PSU (power supply) if at all possible. Friend says I need ~550 watt PSU, brother says I'll need something good, Dad says I'm cool with my 250 watt.
smile_l_32.gif
If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say I'm going to be making a Frys run soon enough to be getting a new PSU, but we'll see!

So, whadda ya'll think of my purchase? Expensive, but not highly excessive, I think.

:Awaits imminent flaming from Intel, and Nvidia fans:
biggrin.gif


PS- I haven't ordered yet, so if there's some terrible, horrible thing you have to tell me about one or more of those products, the sooner the better!
laugh.gif
 
Kick but Est. I would go with 2 gigs of ram though if you can handle getting it. I don't think you can ever have more than enough ram. Since your board can handle 8 GB why not. I like the fact your going to the dual core chip. Thats what I want to upgrade to. Not many things can use it at the moment. I think you need a special upgrade for windows to use it. Oh wait are you a Lenix guy? I duno anything about lenix. Are you a gamer? Some games are utilizing the dual core now too. I think its pretty cool. But unles the program is setup top use dual core its only going to use one side of the chip anyways. What kind of cooler are you going to use on the chip? Are you going to go water cooled? Or are you just going to get a good HSF(heat sink fan) I would upgrade your PSU too. I have a 400 watt in my machine. I just think 250 is kinda small. Its better to have more i that area that means it doesn;t have to work as hard. Its kinda like when you power speakers in a system. Your more likely to blow your speakers with too little power than too much. Because too little power causes distortion and distortion blows speakers. Other than that way to go!! I wish my board supported dual channel ram. So I just have one one gig chip in my machine. Way to go.
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] ] I would go with 2 gigs of ram though if you can handle getting it. I don't think you can ever have more than enough ram. Since your board can handle 8 GB why not.

Eh. If I feel I need the extra RAM I can always buy some later as I have 4 slots. Funny thing- MOBOs are already prepared for 8GB RAM sticks! I was looking at some boards with 4 slots and can take up to 32GB- INTENSE!

The dual core stuff seems pretty cool. It's my intent to see how far I can push it (with the stock bits first.) Having dual cores will be useful for multitasking and for multithreaded tasks. Most things can't use both cores at once yet. And 64-bit is still not too utilized, but at least I'll try it out and try all of the 64-bit stuff.

[b said:
Quote[/b] ] What kind of cooler are you going to use on the chip? Are you going to go water cooled? Or are you just going to get a good HSF(heat sink fan) I would upgrade your PSU too.

Stock, stock, stock. I'm gonna stick with stock cooling for now. When I settle in and look in to raising the bar in terms of performance, I'll look more in to cooling. If I notice anything looking particularly hot, I'll throw something together.

Thanks for your comments, and I'll keep your advice about the PSU in mind! If it starts running too hot or if it's running at top speed all the time I'll replace it in a jiff. Gotta try everything out first, make sure it fits, then I'll make adjustments.

--edit-- Forgot to answer: Yes, I'll be gaming as well. Planning on being able to crank up everything in all the games. Probably gonna play HL2 again, I'll play Episode 1, probably try FEAR at some point.

Bringing me to another question:

WHAT GAMES SHOULD I PLAY WITH MY NEW SYSTEM?
 
I've been reading up on hardware lately because I want to upgrade (hopefully soon) as well.

First off I love AMD and have always used AMD. However as a gamer and looking at the benchmarks there is no question that I will be building an Intel Core 2 Duo system (my first intel system). It just blasts AMD out of the water. Price really isn't an issue here either, the Intel Core 2 Duo E6660 is priced around ~$300 so it's not that bad. The peformance is ridiculous though, it's faster than an AMD FX.

If you still are going to go AMD, there is no point in getting an AM2 system. There's a 5% performance increase if that. Get a socket 939 system. It's just the best bang for the buck. The AM2 systems require DDR2 800 memory, which is more expensive than DDR 3200. Also invest in a 1 gig stick instead of 2x512.

I recommend buying ATI cards that are made by ATI.

www.anandtech.com has some good benchmark information that shows what kind of performance you can expect from your new rig. Read up
smile.gif
.
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]The peformance is ridiculous though, it's faster than an AMD FX.

Yeah, the Duos are pretty impressive. Fine by me, makes my AMD cheaper.
smile_n_32.gif
The market changes every 5 minutes. Look back in the news and you'll be seeing the articles about how the new athalon 64s have given AMD the crown hands down. Let's wait a few months and see how things look. lol Not like I'll be able to tell the difference anyway. My CRT refresh rate will limit framerate sooner than CPU power. lol

[b said:
Quote[/b] ]I recommend buying ATI cards that are made by ATI.

In general, it's good to avoid 3rd party sets, but Sapphire is a very well known 3rd party. I'm pretty confident in that decision. Futhermore, the card I've selected is majorly soft-restricted and with just a little bit of tweaking, you can get some pretty nice increases in output.

[b said:
Quote[/b] ]Also invest in a 1 gig stick instead of 2x512.

Should technically get more out of 2x512. The only reason why I wouldn't go with the dual sticks would be if I was going with an unreliable brand, if I could get a 1 gig much cheaper, or if I was planning on maxing out the amount of RAM I can get in there. Any good reason for suggesting 1 stick rather than the 2?
 
Hmm thats news about the Intel chip blowing AMD out the water.  Last time I read when the AMD 64 and dual cores cam out AMD had the crown.  Of course thats before intels core duo came out.  All I know is I want dual core, and I will reseach what I want for the price when I decide to take that leap.  What I know I want when the time comes is 2 gigs ram on a MB that supports DDR2 running at dual channel.  Dual core ( iduno what brand yet I haven;t reseached it) and a decent video and sound card.  I am not a serious gamer, but I like to play.  I do like to OC though and want to be able to do that just for the heck of it.  I don;t like to wait when I do do things on the computer.  I did just start playing diablo 2 though.  I knwo its an old game.  LOL  but I got it from my dad.  He plays but is not a serious gamer.  Yes my dad plays games.  LOL  I'm not a kid either. LOL  I plan on going water cooled just because I like how it looks.  My case now has a clear side and I like being able to see inside the case.  I have 3 fans.  Two on the back light up blue and one on the side lights up red.  I want to change all the cables over to round cables later, but I might jsut wait till I get the new case and put all round cables in there.  I want to go for OCing and astetics with good performance.  Not really for gaming, but I want to have that capability.  Oh and I will deifnatley look at the 1000 watt PSU for this system.  LOL  Yes I want excess.  When I do this I will be able to afford this.  LOL

I would suspect the 2x512 chips would get better performance running dual channel than a single chip. When I was talking on another forum that deals with computers. www.techimo.com I was told there to get 2x 512 chips if my computers MB supported dual channel. It didn't so I just got the single chip. Since that was the recomendation. I also had to up the voltage by .1 when I installed this ram on the MB because I was having stability issues.
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] (Est @ Sep. 06 2006,2:21)]
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]The peformance is ridiculous though, it's faster than an AMD FX.

Yeah, the Duos are pretty impressive. Fine by me, makes my AMD cheaper.
smile_n_32.gif
The market changes every 5 minutes. Look back in the news and you'll be seeing the articles about how the new athalon 64s have given AMD the crown hands down. Let's wait a few months and see how things look. lol Not like I'll be able to tell the difference anyway. My CRT refresh rate will limit framerate sooner than CPU power. lol

[b said:
Quote[/b] ]I recommend buying ATI cards that are made by ATI.

In general, it's good to avoid 3rd party sets, but Sapphire is a very well known 3rd party. I'm pretty confident in that decision. Futhermore, the card I've selected is majorly soft-restricted and with just a little bit of tweaking, you can get some pretty nice increases in output.

[b said:
Quote[/b] ]Also invest in a 1 gig stick instead of 2x512.

Should technically get more out of 2x512. The only reason why I wouldn't go with the dual sticks would be if I was going with an unreliable brand, if I could get a 1 gig much cheaper, or if I was planning on maxing out the amount of RAM I can get in there. Any good reason for suggesting 1 stick rather than the 2?
Wait a few months, what good would that do? The performance of the CPU you're buying will not change at all. If you're talking about wait a few months for AMD... they have nothing sketched out for release until 2007/2008. Until then they have lost the performance crown to Intel. The benchmarks speak for themselves:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2795

and

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2802

You will notice a difference if you're planning on playing HL2 games. The intel chip can handle physics better.
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]Wait a few months, what good would that do?

An analagous few months. The point being that things change pretty frequently and while one ocmpany may be on the top one moment, there's always the possability that they'll be "behind" the next moment.

It is not my intent to be on the bleeding edge or anything. I know the core Duos run faster, but I don't wanna spend much more money than I've already putting in to this project (money is a consideration afterall.) If I had a ton of money to spend and I wanted to, I'm sure I'd go with a high performace board and the lastest this 'n that. However, my niche resides in the aftermath; Intel pulls ahead, fine, that means my AMD processor's gonna be cheaper to pull up sales (which is literally the case here.)

Whether the new Duos are faster is not a question, but it's not a consideration either. Price rules the day on this one; if I could get a faster chip for cheaper, then I'd look in to it.

As for the RAM- more is always "better." Once again though: price. I'm pretty good with keeping things running nice and smoothly, so I'll try it out with the 2x 512. Many people live in excess when it comes to RAM; they've got more crud running than needed, so they gotta get more RAM. While I'm sure I could use more RAM, my general requirements are lower than your average joe's. At the very least I've got that going for me. And if I feel I need more- there's always another two slots left!
 
I guess it depends what you consider too much money. Price wise an AM2 system vs an Intel Core 2 Duo system isn't really that much IMO. ~$200 isn't really that much more money for the amount of performance gain you would recieve.

Anyways I still think either way that buying an AM2 system isn't worth the $. Get the 939 instead.
 
  • #10
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]Anyways I still think either way that buying an AM2 system isn't worth the $. Get the 939 instead.

Actually, I've found this route to be just about as expensive as the socket 939 one. Most of the motherboards I find are the same price, if not more. The CPU I'm getting has the identicle price to the sock 939 one. The RAM, however is less expensive (DDR 400.) On that same token, DDR2 is more modern meaning I'm more likely to be able to reuse it, it disspipates heat better, generates less heat (meaning I don't need to worry about using all 4 slots,) OCability, bandwidth, etc.
What's supposed to be unreasonable? I'm not being argumentative, just trying to figure out what's up.
smile.gif


Edit--

This's the second freakin' time this has happened to me. The video card I wanted has been wiped off of the face of the Earth. Sold out at all vendors I can find. Of course, it looks like I may be able to get one on ebay for alomst 300 bucks (=useless.)
smile_h_32.gif
 
Back
Top