Time for 64!

[spoonz]

Hello,

Trying to move through the maze of boards/cpus/mem/gpu and my heads a shed.

Currently running a athlon 2500 and a 9800xt. got a budget of about £500-600 and need the following

MB, CPU, MEM (1gb if enough?), GPU.

Looked at the deals on OCUK but no wiser.

Will I need a New GPU is AGP now completely defunct on 64?

Do I need a 64 bit OS? is their one avail yet that works?

Christ, im so out of date? sorry for the numptie questions.

Please someone recomend me something

One more numptie question! Are the 64 boards a diff form factor? will I need a new case just that backplain seems diff shape from pics.

Cheers

 

[sjohal]

Well, you can have the Asrock 939 Dual mobo, this supports BOTH AGP AND PCI-E I personally am running this smoothly with an Amd 3000 and Crcuail 2x512mb Ram.

1gb is enough really, are you gaming? What you doing, with it ?
YOU DONT NEED A 64BIT OS, I DON'T Personally, not enough programs support it therfore I have not got it. But be open minded about my comments with others..

 

[spoonz]

gaming mainly! dying to see games running high res with all bells on!

cant imagine 64 is going to im prove excel and poker rooms too much

 

[kbc]

As suggested, if you really want to keep existing hardware such as the graphics card, go with that Asrock board which has the best of both worlds. If you have a standard ATX case, it'll be fine - the motherboard will fit.

...are you looking to replace all your hardware?

 

[Dureth]

MB-101-AS Asus A8N-SLi SE nForce4 SLi (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-101-AS)
£69.95 £69.95
CP-121-AM AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3700BNBOX) (CP-121-AM)
£137.95 £137.95
MY-046-GL GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS3 (GE2GB3200BDC) (MY-046-GL)
£99.95 £99.95
GX-034-OK OcUK GeForce 6800 GS 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-034-OK)
£114.95 £114.95
Subtotal £422.80
VAT £73.99
Total £496.79

Just under £500 and gets you a nice big increase over your current system. If you wanted to spend that extra cash you have swap the graphics to a 7800gt.

 

[Werewolf]

new boards are still atx format, however you may need a new PSU.

AGP is pretty much dead, and it would be silly to stick with it if you don't have to (AGP cards are now much more expensive than their PCI express equivilent much of the time).


Re the 64bit OS, as I understand it Windows XP normal version will be fine, just not use some of the new instructions (so you could stick with it, and just get Vista when it's released).


A quick (5 minute check) suggests something like

MB-087-AS Asus A8N-SLi Deluxe nForce4 SLi (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-087-AS)
£91.95 £91.95
CP-121-AM AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3700BNBOX) (CP-121-AM)
£137.95 £137.95
MY-030-CR Crucial 1GB DDR PC3200 CAS3 (CT12864Z40B) (MY-030-CR)
£51.95 £103.90
GX-056-XF XFX GeForce 6800 GS Extreme XXX Edition 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-056-XF)
£124.95 £124.95
CA-003-TG Tagan TG420-UO2 420W I-XEYE ATX2.0 Silent PSU (CA-003-TG)
£41.95 £41.95
Subtotal £500.70
Shipping (City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)) £8.95
VAT £89.19
Total £598.84

As a possible specification for ~£600
You could save about £60 by just getting a gb of ram, and if your current PSU is good you could probably save even more.

As I say it's only a very quick spec so people can probably come up with much better.

 

[spoonz]

ive got a pretty decent power supply as upgraded when got the 9800xt when they were newish.

Im tempted to keep the 9800 for a while so might for the ASROCK aslong as their are no performance losses with it having both slots (cant see their being).

Probably got for 3700, asrock dual and maybe 2gb. Is the Geil value any good or would I be better off stumping up for xl or corsair?

Might be a silly question but I lost toouch with GPU recently.

Whats the current best about and how does a 6800 compare to a ATI 9800. Worlds apart?

 

[UOcUK Poopscoop]

Hi!

I have the Asrock.

The Jury is out so as to speak on whether there is a slight performance hit when running an agp card.

It is still a great mobo for those not quite ready to make the PCIe leap and it will even be able to run the new AM2 AMD CPU's with the use of the add on daughter board when it is released.

With a bit of tinkering the Asrock is a pretty capable clocker too.

Only thing I would say....

As you would at least initially be sticking with quite an old card there won't be a huge "wow factor" with this upgrade.

The potential is there, but you will still be stuck with an old gen card (great as it was in its day)

So....

Asrock+ old AGP card= cheap route to PCIe eventually but you will be slightly limited by the card at first.

Or you go straight to PCIe and take the financial "hit" all in one go.



I can certainly say the Asrock is a great little mobo and as long as SLI (or lack of) isn't an issue it will last you a while.

 

[spoonz]

thanks!

think im going to go for PCIx at same time.

Been looking at the 6800's and the ATIs. Whats my best bet for about £150-£170?


Leadtek GeForce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-069-LT) Seems reasonable!

Any good?

 

[UOcUK Poopscoop]

For best bang for your buck look for a card on members market.

If you can stretch to about £190 you could pick up a 7800GT as I did a few days ago.

I have always believed buying a gfx card secondhand makes sense.

They generally depreciate fast when a new one comes out and you can pick up a bargain with warranty still if you keep an eye on the for sale forum.

Also, I treat "second hand" as "pre tested". I have never bought a dud of members market and I buy virtually all my hardware from there.

With the new X1900 out there will be many people upgrading too, so there will probably be more gfx cards than usual for sale at the mo.

EDIT: Looking at your past post you are considering a 7800GT, you threw me as your opening statement said a 6800.

The Leadtek you mentioned Has a retail of over £211 though PLUS the P and P?

Isn't that way over your budget?

 

[spoonz]

this seems a bargain?

XFX GeForce 7800GT Extreme Edition 256MB GDDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (PVT70G-UDF7) (GX-070-XF)
- Core clock 450MHz+
- 20 Pixel Pipelines
- 1050MHz+ GDDR3 Ultra Fast Memory
- 256-Bit Memory interface
- 7 Vertex Shaders
- Memory Bandwidth - 33.6GB/sec
- Fill Rate - 8.00 billion pixels/sec

Available This Week Only for just £199.95 +VAT.

either that or a X1800xl for £30 more....hmmmm

Looking on toms the 1800 comes out on top on benchies but 7800 beats it on FPS! much of a muchness really.

Their any other arguments for either? one more stable or more reliable drivers?

Need to decide before I order the board!

 

[Dureth]

If you got the 6800gs then it would be twice as fast as the 9800 at least. The 7800gt is more like 3-4 times faster than the 9800. It's a world apart. I would go straight for a PCI-E only motherboard and the 7800gt. Also the Geil value RAM is great stuff, can't recomend it highly enough.

 

[spoonz]

coolio,

the 7800gt ex is winging its way to me £170 i got it for i think thats a bargain

settled on a 3700+ San Diego and a couple of 80gb spinpoints for RAID0.

Now just need the board mem to go with.

that geil value cas 2.5? might plump for that as nearly double price for a .5 cas drop. no idea what speed i need anyways

 

[spoonz]

MY-005-GL GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS2.5 (GE1GB3200BHDC) (MY-005-GL) 1
£54.95 £54.95
CP-150-AM AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - OEM (CP-121-AM) 1
£126.95 £126.95
HD-023-SA Samsung SpinPoint P HD080HJ 80GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-023-SA) 2
£35.95 £71.90
MB-101-AS Asus A8N-SLi SE nForce4 SLi (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-101-AS) 1
£69.95 £69.95
FG-000-AR Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR) 1
£14.95 £14.95
Subtotal £338.70
VAT £59.28

 

[UOcUK Poopscoop]

coolio,

the 7800gt ex is winging its way to me £170 i got it for i think thats a bargain

VERY good price, I assume you got it somewhere other than ocuk as it's not on here for that price. (that I can see)

One item of slightly bad news (*IF* you got an XFX), there are "issues" with some of the XFX 7800 GT's.

I have the XFX 7800 GT OC and so I looked into it. Luckily my older revision is ok but many of the newer ones have issues such as the fan controller not working.

Bad news as they are loud @ 100% all the time.

People with this problem either put up with it or fit a Zalman.

There is a thread on the gfx forum about it.

Please don't panic and cancel your order as for that price it is worth the small risk as you can always send it back if there are issues.

It may not even have the fan problem!

Good choice on CPU. Very nearly as good as a 146 opty the way they are clocking at the mo!

EDIT: Your going to have a nice setup there looking at it, I also run the Arctic 64 on my 146 Opty @ 2.95gig. Fantastic cooler for the money and pretty quite too.

DOUBLE EDIT: I would *definately* have gone for 2 gig of ram though as upgrading with a further 2 sticks later may be an issue on many A64 mobo's and even if not could limit an overclock.

 

[spoonz]

would I arctic cooler solve the prob if the fans running 100% all the time?

 

[UOcUK Poopscoop]

would I arctic cooler solve the prob if the fans running 100% all the time?

Edited cos I had a blond moment.

Yes, you could fit an Arctic to the GT (is one available??) but the Zalman is the better cooler in most peeps opinion.

 

[spoonz]

you talking about the zalman pipe cooler?

Zalman ZM-80D-HP Silent VGA Dual-Heatpipe Cooler (HS-009-ZA)

or just a zalman fan?

 

[n3x]

yo spoonz i just wondered will u be overclocking? you could make that cpu work harder for its money if u got an epox or even better a dfi mobo especially with the arctic freezer stuck on it!

Also does your psu have both the 24pin and the 4 pin power connectors?

 

[spoonz]

Yeah, probably at some point but not massively.

My PSU is a tagan, cant remeber which model but it was expensive. Ill look tonight.

Need some MB recomendations to match up with the 3700+ and mem is causing me a headache. looking at mushkin/ocz/geil but not sure on timings. Was going for cas2 but I gather thats no so much of an issue on A64? maybe just get some thing tight as in around 3336?

PS dumbass question but what speed mem do I need 3200? 4000? Whats the HT(FSB) on the 3700 as standard?