Maybe time for an upgrade

[indyjones]

Hi all

Just about had it this evening with my antique system, trying to do anything seems to take forever........

So been having a thought about a potential new system (although early days as I have not had permission yet )
Anyway thinking of the following

Asus Rampage Formula X48 board
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450
4 gig of DDR2 ram (any recommendations?)
and a 8800GT

rest of my system 'should' be OK until i can afford to change it......

Any comments ?

Cheers

IJ

 

[LordOfLA]

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=787773

Swap the mainboard for that and you're rockin

 

[Petros]

Trust me...You'll get a lot more bang for your buck (punch for your pound? lol) out of spending that extra money you WOULD have spent on an X48 and investing it in a top-range video card. Maybe just picking up a good, solid P35.

 

[indyjones]

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=787773

Swap the mainboard for that and you're rockin

Nice from scan my usual pc retailer of choice Also looking at their buy now pay in 6 months deals.......

was looks at the bundle deal on there for the cpu and mainboard.
Though I am not a huge fan of DFI, the Asus board seems a better value? Need to look at some reviews me thinks

Petros I thought about the P35 but a X48 is not that much more at the end of the day, as for the gfx card I don't need the most powerful card as I have an Xbox 360 which I will most like carry on getting the new cross platform titles on. The 8800GT will allow me though to play games I shelved like NWN2, stalker, that I had to shelve as they ran sooo slow. For every thing non gaming it seemed an OK setup? Also I can always upgrade the gfx card (or slap in a second with the 'patched' drivers) at a later date.

Mind you the P45 is only round the corner and is supposed to be a fair amount better than the P35, though I though getting a P45 when it first comes out will most likely mean it wil cost simular to and X38/48 board anyway.........

 

[LordOfLA]

The DFI board doesn't come with all the useless crap Asus are bundling and building on the boards to justify the extra cost. That DFI board is straight up X48, nice spacious CPU area, Digital 8-Phase power and no crap.

DFI made the best AMD boards when AMD was in its athlon 64 heyday

 

[indyjones]

hmmm cheers worth thinking on, Anandtech dues recommend to Asus board slightly ahead though and I am a sucker for the bundled junk Still the DFI is a mean price.....
Also thinking of going for a 8800 GTS (G92) instead of the GT as there is no real differnce in price

 

[Johnny]

if you are going to go with 4 gig ddr; make sure you get a 64 bit os, as 32 bit won't see anything above 3 gig .. other than that; the only thing I would do is make it an AMD64. But that is just me

 

[Sazar]

hmmm cheers worth thinking on, Anandtech dues recommend to Asus board slightly ahead though and I am a sucker for the bundled junk Still the DFI is a mean price.....
Also thinking of going for a 8800 GTS (G92) instead of the GT as there is no real differnce in price

Looks a nice bundle

The ASUS higher-end boards are quite nice, but that DFI board does have a good price

Figure out your needs and go from there.

I would also suggest the GTS over the GT if possible, especially if you have a larger display

 

[LordOfLA]

the GTis a G92 as well Rumour is that you can clock the GT past the ultra stable... worth thinking on.

 

[Sazar]

the GTis a G92 as well Rumour is that you can clock the GT past the ultra stable... worth thinking on.

Question of shader units, memory bus and other little things like that.

The GTS is great value for the money at the moment since it is about the same price as the GT and faster.

 

[indyjones]

Looks a nice bundle

The ASUS higher-end boards are quite nice, but that DFI board does have a good price

Figure out your needs and go from there.

I would also suggest the GTS over the GT if possible, especially if you have a larger display

Yeah I have a 20" dell widescreen so I need to be running 1680 x 1050 native res really so the extra grunt will be fine
Found some nice looking EVGA cards they are not factory overclocked, but I will most likely stick a different cooler on it (for noise) and try myself when I need a bit more power.
Which mainboard did you go with as your specs are very simular to what I am looking at getting.

Also so advice on ram would be good shall I just get DDR2 8500 or should i get faster ? also is two, two gigs better than four one gigs?

Finally last, but by no means least what CPU cooler whould you recommend for the quad? I have a zalman cpns7000 but its quite old now and i dont think upto the job?

 

[roirraW "edor" ehT]

Which mainboard did you go with as your specs are very simular to what I am looking at getting.

Also so advice on ram would be good shall I just get DDR2 8500 or should i get faster ? also is two, two gigs better than four one gigs?

Which speed RAM you get depends on which motherboard and processor you get. What speed the motherboard handles maximum, and you can also consider whether you're going to overclock the RAM, as having a higher speed RAM than what your motherboard handles makes it easier to overclock.

The answer about which is better, 2 x 2 Gigs or 4 x 1 Gig RAM depends again on a couple of factors. How much RAM will the motherboard handle maximum, and how likely are you to want more than 4 gigs of RAM in the not too distant future, since if you got 4 x 1 Gig you would have to replace at least two of them if you decided to upgrade from 4 Gigs to say 8 Gigs. Of course if you're going to use more than 4 Gigs you'd have to go with a 64-bit OS to use it.

IMHO, the short answer to which is better (all other things like speed and timings being equal) is that 4 x 1 Gig is better since at least when a lot of your RAM is being used at once, and RAM from both dual-channel sets can be accessed more efficiently than if you had just one dual-channel set.

I would think that the speed difference would be negligible in most cases, however, plus it would suck when upgrading to more than 4 Gigs.

 

[indyjones]

more than 4 gigs i have only got 1 here Mind you the media center pc has 2 gigs and hell even my work laptop does too.......

 

[indyjones]

Right think I am settled on the Q9450 and the Asus Rampage Formula, (thought strongly about the dfi board but the Asus board swung it on the strong bundle).
Also think I am going to go for a XFX Alpha Dog 8800GTS (512meg G92) as its pretty much the same price as the GT.

Now for ram thinking of this maybe ? OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-9200C5 1150MHz Flex II not much dearer than standard 8500 ram.

Finally heatsink, what do people recommended? I like the look of the Zalman 9700 or the big thermalright tower

Opinions will be welcome

 

[LordOfLA]

Arctic cooling freezer 7 pro I think it is, aye:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-017-AR&groupid=701&catid=57&subcat=821

 

[indyjones]

Hmmm not thought of that one, it supposedly does not compete with the performance of the thermalright towers but, it is meant to be more than adequate at stock speeds and is very quiet (which I like) and cheap.

Good call, will stick it on the list

Now just need to make my mind up on the ram…… (help please )

 

[roirraW "edor" ehT]

Now for ram thinking of this maybe ? OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-9200C5 1150MHz Flex II not much dearer than standard 8500 ram.

Well, I was looking to see if I could find RAM for you that would be the same but PC2-9600 (1200MHz) but I couldn't find any at all except for 2x1GB which I wouldn't bother with. That RAM that you linked to was the closest to 1200MHz I could find as well, so I would go for that.

Of course, where I'm looking http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131284&Tpk=Asus+Rampage+Formula+X48 it says (OC) besides 1200MHz so maybe they expect you to overclock your RAM in order to achieve the maximum speed the motherboard can handle.

 

[roirraW "edor" ehT]

Also think I am going to go for a XFX Alpha Dog 8800GTS (512meg G92) as its pretty much the same price as the GT.

Are you buying one, or two for SLI?

Reason I ask is that you could buy two PNY XLR8 VCG98GTXXPB GeForce 9800 GTX(G92) 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI at $275-$295 a piece U.S., which is more than what the one you listed costs here, but you could also buy just one BFG Tech BFGE981024GX2E GeForce 9800 GX2 1GB (512MB per GPU) 512-bit (256-bit per GPU) GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI which is $525 here although there's a $45 rebate as well which brings it a lot closer to what two of your 8800's would cost here.

 

[indyjones]

I will only be buying the one for now. I am not sure about SLI as for a start, I need to mess around patching the drivers to run on an intel board secondly I would probably be better off buying something from the next major gfx gen. I do accept that I would not be able to play crysis on ultra high though

 

[LordOfLA]

the 9800GTX is just a 8800GTS 512 clocked higher, it doesn't achieve much over the 8800GTS 512