Possible new Build

WantoN · 6 Mar 2006 at 15:51

Hey fellas

I'm considering a new build, but am entirely out of the loop in regards to current technology

I'm not sure whether to go dual core or just a high-end 64 bit, I'm also trying to decide between ATI and Nvidia (I've always leant towards ATI in the past, and as such was considering getting a crossfire enabled motherboard, there's an Asus one which looks sexy. I've also always been an AMD fanboy, but again, am way out of the loop. I'll be looking for at least a Gb of ram, preferably something cost effective but overclockable.

So, could you fellas mock up a few possible solutions for me to look into. I'll sort the case myself, I'm after a ceiling of about £900 for the components. I've a 480w TT Butterfly I could use, but with the possibility of SLI/Crossfire I assume I'll need a new one.

Spec away

Ant

EDIT: Oh and just so you can tell me what sort of step up I'll be looking at, my current rig :

Abit Nf7-s v2.0 w/ Mantary d26 Modded Bios
Barton 2800+ @ 2,300
Gb Twinmos PC3200 @ 200fsb (11-3-2-2)
Radeon 9700 pro @ 333/333
80gb WDC 8gb + Samsung Spinpoint 160gb on IDE
TT Butterfly 480w

Eliminos · 6 Mar 2006 at 15:54

Is this just the box without an OS, or do you need screen/keyboard/mouse/OS/speakers?

WantoN · 6 Mar 2006 at 15:56

Eliminos said:
Is this just the box without an OS, or do you need screen/keyboard/mouse/OS/speakers?

Got an mx1000, decent logi keyboard, and a Samsung SyncMaster 913n. As stated, I'm just after the components for my new rig. I'm doing some research as we speak, but enlightened suggestions from people who've used or know of the suggested products would be very helpful.

Ant :cool:

Eliminos · 6 Mar 2006 at 16:07

CP-152-AM AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939) - OEM (CP-152-AM)
£159.95 £159.95
CD-028-NE NEC ND4551 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer LabelFlash ReWriter (Silver) - OEM (CD-028-NE)
£27.95 £27.95
HS-007-TT Thermaltake Big Typhoon 4 in 1 Heatpipe (Socket 939/754/775/478) CPU Cooler (CL-P0114) (HS-007-TT)
£21.95 £21.95
MB-129-AS Asus A8R-MVP Crossfire (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-129-AS)
£69.95 £69.95
HD-002-HI Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 NCQ 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (0A31636) (HD-002-HI)
£63.95 £63.95
GX-112-SP Sapphire ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-112-SP)
£289.95 £289.95
MY-046-GL GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS3 (GE2GB3200BDC) (MY-046-GL)
£99.95 £99.95
Subtotal £733.65
Shipping (City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)) £8.95
VAT £129.96
Total £872.56

There is £30 for a case there, but you might be looking at spending around £50 on a good one so its a little over budget. I could have specced it with some G.Skill HZ RAM and an X1800XT, but it would probably better to OC the 3800 and put the RAM on a divider. And then the X1900 would give you ample graphics performance. I reckon the PSU could cope, its fairly new right?

WantoN · 6 Mar 2006 at 16:17

Eliminos said:
There is £30 for a case there, but you might be looking at spending around £50 on a good one so its a little over budget. I could have specced it with some G.Skill HZ RAM and an X1800XT, but it would probably better to OC the 3800 and put the RAM on a divider. And then the X1900 would give you ample graphics performance. I reckon the PSU could cope, its fairly new right?

Cheers for that mate

The £900 is excluding the case, I'll be picking something out and giving it a gutting and a rework

From when I used to tinker a lot, I remember putting AMD systems on deviders severely impacted the performance, i take it this is no longer the case?

Ant

Eliminos · 6 Mar 2006 at 16:21

If its £900 without the case then:

CP-152-AM AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939) - OEM (CP-152-AM)
£159.95 £159.95
CD-028-NE NEC ND4551 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer LabelFlash ReWriter (Silver) - OEM (CD-028-NE)
£27.95 £27.95
HS-007-TT Thermaltake Big Typhoon 4 in 1 Heatpipe (Socket 939/754/775/478) CPU Cooler (CL-P0114) (HS-007-TT)
£21.95 £21.95
MB-129-AS Asus A8R-MVP Crossfire (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-129-AS)
£69.95 £69.95
HD-002-HI Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 NCQ 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (0A31636) (HD-002-HI)
£63.95 £63.95
GX-112-SP Sapphire ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-112-SP)
£289.95 £289.95
MY-008-GS G.Skill 2GB DDR HZ PC4000 (2x1GB) CAS3 Dual Channel Kit (F1-4000USU2-2GBHZ) (MY-008-GS)
£129.95 £129.95
Subtotal £763.65
Shipping (City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)) £8.95
VAT £135.21
Total £907.81

I have the same processor and RAM as specced there and at 260x10 for 2.6GHz with the RAM at 1:1 (260MHz) 3-4-3-8 which is its rated 250MHz speeds. It gives a 33s Super Pi 1M time which is a very respectable time for a dual core processor.

WantoN · 6 Mar 2006 at 17:55

What about pentium / SLI options fellas?

Cheers,
Ant :cool:

semi-pro waster · 6 Mar 2006 at 18:01

WantoN said:
What about pentium / SLI options fellas?

Cheers,
Ant

If you are mainly gaming then AMD is the way to go still, PIVs don't offer the same level of performance for the price so I can't recommend them plus I don't know as much about them.

SLi isn't normally worth it either as an X1900XT will outperform a 7800GTX by quite a significant margin and in some cases isn't all that far behind an SLi pair. If you do decide to go for a Crossfire system in the future you will have to buy a master card at this point and currently they are clocked slower than the X1900XTX however this may change in the future so get the fastest normal X1900XT that you can afford.

Eliminos · 6 Mar 2006 at 18:02

ATI have the edge over nVidia when it comes for graphics, and AMD are miles ahead of intel when it comes to gaming. I don't think you're going to get many sensible specs for that combination.

WantoN · 6 Mar 2006 at 18:07

Eliminos said:
ATI have the edge over nVidia when it comes for graphics, and AMD are miles ahead of intel when it comes to gaming. I don't think you're going to get many sensible specs for that combination.

Fantastic stuff cheers guys

Is it worth investing any more in the motherboard? I've seen Asus options priced almost double this.

Also, a PSU wasn't listed, and I'd feel comfortable with a bit more juice. Also, the hiper modular solutions look snazzy, and I'm VERY fussy when it comes to cable mess.

Ant :cool:

semi-pro waster · 6 Mar 2006 at 18:16

WantoN said:
Also, a PSU wasn't listed, and I'd feel comfortable with a bit more juice. Also, the hiper modular solutions look snazzy, and I'm VERY fussy when it comes to cable mess.

Ant

I'd also look at Tagan PSUs because they give the option of dual or single rails, some SLi/Crossfire systems have problems with dual rails but they may be fairly isolated incidents.

Eliminos · 6 Mar 2006 at 18:21

For a crossfire motherboard you cant beat an A8R-MVP.

Well you can: an A8R32-MVP - but that isn't released yet.

WantoN · 6 Mar 2006 at 18:24

Eliminos said:
For a crossfire motherboard you cant beat an A8R-MVP.

Well you can: an A8R32-MVP - but that isn't released yet.

What's the difference between this, and the previously specced mobo?

Ant :cool:

WantoN · 6 Mar 2006 at 19:41

Also, is it worth getting an arctic GPU cooler? Will I see much overclocking potential with stock cooling?

Ant :cool:

Eliminos · 6 Mar 2006 at 19:50

You will get a lot of overclocking out of the X1900 stock cooler, although its not as if you will need it. I get 40MHz with no voltage changes out of the core on my XTX. Personally, I wouldn't want to be screwing around with removing the large stock cooler from the XT and replacing it, considering its not even worth overclocking an X1900 to hell yet anyway.

The A8R32 is dubbed to be the best crossfire motherboard yet. Although for half the price, the standard A8R is probably better value for money.

ACESHIGH · 7 Mar 2006 at 01:19

Eliminos said:
If its £900 without the case then:

CP-152-AM AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939) - OEM (CP-152-AM)
£159.95 £159.95
CD-028-NE NEC ND4551 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer LabelFlash ReWriter (Silver) - OEM (CD-028-NE)
£27.95 £27.95
HS-007-TT Thermaltake Big Typhoon 4 in 1 Heatpipe (Socket 939/754/775/478) CPU Cooler (CL-P0114) (HS-007-TT)
£21.95 £21.95
MB-129-AS Asus A8R-MVP Crossfire (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-129-AS)
£69.95 £69.95
HD-002-HI Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 NCQ 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (0A31636) (HD-002-HI)
£63.95 £63.95
GX-112-SP Sapphire ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-112-SP)
£289.95 £289.95
MY-008-GS G.Skill 2GB DDR HZ PC4000 (2x1GB) CAS3 Dual Channel Kit (F1-4000USU2-2GBHZ) (MY-008-GS)
£129.95 £129.95
Subtotal £763.65
Shipping (City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)) £8.95
VAT £135.21
Total £907.81

Good spec with quality components !