Whats the best amd 64 and mobo combo

lewism · 29 Mar 2006 at 12:42

Ive decided im going to be upgrading in the summer for vista. My current cpu is a 2500 barnton and an nforce2 mobo.

im looking to spend around £200 for the mobo and cpu, must have sata and be pci-e. now im not loking for new tech, as i cant afford that. So what would be my best bang for buck right now. so in summer i can look at them with lower prices.

dale1uk · 29 Mar 2006 at 12:53

I've just recieved the following and hopefully should be a good combo.
3700sd oem @ £140 and a Msi neo4 Platinum @£75

King_Boru · 29 Mar 2006 at 13:15

I know you want an AMD but consider an Intel P4 Dual Core 805 at £79 they are a steal and can be easily overclocked. I am sure somone will be able to point youi towards a good LGA775 motherboard. Total should be no more than £175 leaving you plenty of money left for a good CPU cooler (Arctic Freezer 7 or Zalman CNPS9500).

EDIT: Just remembered you'll need some cheapo DDR2 memory. Might be a tad overbudget, but worth it.

Explicit · 29 Mar 2006 at 17:00

AMD Opteron UP 144 San Diego 1.8GHz 1MB Cache (Socket 939) - Retail (CP-141-AM)
£123.32

DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-014-DF)
£93.94

Them two paired together will be a winning combination when overclocked. Slightly over your budget though.

lewism · 29 Mar 2006 at 17:07

id be willing to try out the P4 setup but im mostly a gamer, hence amd. not sure if p4 will reign in any significant differences over the amd setup.

Does amd64 need registered ddr2? Im hoping to reach around a 300-400 max budget as i only need new mobo/proc/memory/graphics card. Just want a good budget setup.

What i would really like is

amd 64 chip/mobo
2gig of ram
sata hard drive
pci express ati/nvidia graphics card

all for around 300-400 that will produce decent frame rates at 1024x768

brightside_ · 29 Mar 2006 at 17:36

You'll find it hard to include a GFX card in there. I got to about £311 without the GFX card, here's what I have without it.

MY-046-GL GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS3 £89.95
HD-055-WD Western Digital Caviar Special Edition 120GB 1200JS SATA-II 8MB £40.95
MB-041-GI Gigabyte K8NMF-9 nForce4 Micro ATX (Socket 939) PCI-Express £41.95
CP-118-AM AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail £91.95
Subtotal £264.80
VAT £46.34
Total £311.14

This is where I got to without a GFX card, If I added one, it went over budget to about £435 w/o delivery. If you can save up a little, the GFX card I was going to put down is a Sapphire X800GTO2, as you can unlock 4 more pixel pipelines on em

If anyone can come up with a better budget, I'd be interested to see (for a friend whom may be buying one with a similar budget soon)

lewism · 29 Mar 2006 at 19:30

Thats ok, Im willing to pay a bit more if it will last me another two years. Thats my lifetime expectancy for my computers (the current one i own is from 2004) Hopefully i can source the parts from a place i can get it VAT free so that shouldnt really be a problem. just really looking in that area and what i can get for my cash.

Rob43 · 29 Mar 2006 at 19:43

Explicit said:
AMD Opteron UP 144 San Diego 1.8GHz 1MB Cache (Socket 939) - Retail (CP-141-AM)
£123.32

DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-014-DF)
£93.94

Them two paired together will be a winning combination when overclocked. Slightly over your budget though.

Have to agree with you mate

nikebee · 29 Mar 2006 at 20:13

lewism said:
Ive decided im going to be upgrading in the summer for vista. My current cpu is a 2500 barnton and an nforce2 mobo.

im looking to spend around £200 for the mobo and cpu, must have sata and be pci-e. now im not loking for new tech, as i cant afford that. So what would be my best bang for buck right now. so in summer i can look at them with lower prices.

if your upgrading with Vista in mind, wait until its closer to its release.
you'll have a better idea of the spec that Vista (on its own) needs, and current hardware prices will hopefully fall with the arrival of the new DirectX 10 graphics cards.

lewism · 29 Mar 2006 at 22:16

Yeah i'm just reading up on the tech and whats most likely going to be available for my money. will the significat differencen between dx9 and 10 will these change the way cards operate, eg a 6800gt will become useless.

xirokx · 30 Mar 2006 at 13:22

Opty 170
DFI Ultra Mobo

King_Boru · 30 Mar 2006 at 13:56

Bit over budget there....

xirokx · 30 Mar 2006 at 14:33

sorry didnt read it properly lol

nikebee · 30 Mar 2006 at 15:16

lewism said:
Yeah i'm just reading up on the tech and whats most likely going to be available for my money. will the significat differencen between dx9 and 10 will these change the way cards operate, eg a 6800gt will become useless.

they wont become useless overnight... much like when DirectX 9 came out, there was backwards compatability with DirectX 8 cards in certain games, it just of course means you wont be able to use certain features in the games graphics. it probably wont play as well either.