New computer? kinda no budget....

fantasi

My Yngy is My HoneY!
Joined
24 Jan 2004
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307
hi there...been 3 years since my last upgrade. so ive decided to get a new system from scratch. out of all the components, i have already bought the Leadtek a400 6800Gt. Now i need some advice on whawt board/cpu/hdd/ram to get. well i wont be getting like a P4 EE or an FX 55, not that kinda cash, but something arounds the P4 3200-3600 and the same with the AMD side.

So far im leaning towards amd, being from an amd comp before. but Im also leaning to the p4s...yes yes im on the fence. P4 has the HT, one reason to get it, and i know amd is power, not mhz wise i mean. SO which should i get? if amd i was thinkin MSI K8N neo2 platinum. and p4 still blur.

ddr wise i want the high end corair one, one of the twin 1gb ones...please advice. need less then a week to decide. please help.
 
This is a difficult one - on one hand you have the 64-bit AMD, which has potential to work fast when xp x64 comes out, and on the other you have the pentium 4 with ht, which is generally better at multimedia (encoding, editing etc).

Im assuming that your card is AGP - so you want be looking at the newer Nforce 4(AMD) or 915/925(INtel) chipsets.

For amd:

AMD Athlon 3500+
Gigabyte GA-K8NSNXP-939 or the MSI one you mentioned. (nForce 3)
Corsair Ultra-Low Latency Ram

For Pentium 4:

Pentium 4 3.2/3.4 w/HT
Gigabyte GA-8I875 ULTRA
PC3500/PC3700 ram (so you have some room for overclocking)
 
well since you have a 6800 gt, i suppose ur really into gaming, so therefore i say get an AMD. AMDs are generally accepted to offer a better gaming experience.

i would suggest going for 3200+ (754) this one costs about $180
a decent mobo either from DFI,abit,albatron or gigabyte for like $90
and a gig of pc3200 corsair enhanced ram for $205
or you could get some faster generic ram for less
if the the price adds up to alot maybe you should consider 512mb ram.
also make sure you get a good psu like a thermaltake butterfly 480watt for about $77. good luck mate :p.....
 
It might be a good idea to wait for the newer Nforce4 boards, mainly due to the PCI-E slot(s). They'll be quite expensive once they're released, but they'll last a lot longer (upgrade-wise) than current nforce3 boards I think :)

For ram, corsair is a very nice brand; I'd recommend Crucial's Ballistix series too, they overclock really well.
 
AMD had HT too.. or is that only on the Opertron processors? :p
If you're not into video encoding or stuff like that then you should be looking at the AMD 64's. Good for gamers. :)
 
yea sorry to not state it clearer, yea i do have the 6800gt agp 8x version, so anything along those lines would be good. So is hte msi k8n neo2 a good buy or should i get a gigabyte one? i dont really know. well my friend told me to get the asus one cuz it has like wifi at home thingie but emm i do want the wifi but i would rather get a good board, then get a pci wifi adaptor later, then to just get the asus board just because of the wifi. regarding ram, which corsair pair is good. i want to know which type cuz only part i know which is good is i see, "most expensive = good" well not a good way to look at it. so anyone with a good knowledge of corsair rams, please share the knowledge.
 
HT sucks. Games can only use one logical processor. They are only written to take advantage of one logical processor.

So with HT enabled on a 3.0 800FSB you actually get 1.5 with 400FSB. Congrats on stepping back into 01' .

I have a 9600XT slightly OC'd and a 2.8 Prescott 533FSB OC'd to 2.92 and a gig of cheap RAM. I play HL2 @ 1024X768 with almost max resolution settings while FAH is still running in the background in ONBOARD 5.1 surround. No lag. My personal machine is kicking the crap out of a server running FAH as the client can only use one logical processor. HT is great for benchmarks, but in real life it is a flop except in servers. Then again I have been drinking and this is JMHO.
 
truth be told AMD or Intel would be good at this point. You mentioned a Asus board from what I've read they are supposed to be one of the best if not the best boards out there. I've used one and its great so go for the Asus board and to a point that will make the cpu choice a little easier as if the Asus board you are looking has the features you want then you get it and then look at the cpu.

As for the ram 1GB is good but see what brands Asus recommends for the board your looking at. Though you will need to make sure the board supports AGP.

Again in regards to the Hard drive you might look at Serial ATA though at the present there is not much of difference speed wise but they improve airflow though you will need to look at the rest of your drives and see if you can find ATA to SATA or true SATA versions to get the best use of the improved airflow
 
Steevo said:
So with HT enabled on a 3.0 800FSB you actually get 1.5 with 400FSB. Congrats on stepping back into 01' .
Not true. HT makes the system see 2x3ghz processors, not 2x1.5. It would be pointless otherwise wouldnt it. Since most games only support one processor as you said, they would only use one 3ghz 'processor'.

Also about the RAM, if your going for an AMD64 system, i would use PC-3200 Corsair TwinX-XL 2-2-2-5 Xtra-Low Latency RAM - AMDs like low latency. Also you should stick to nForce3 as your graphics card is AGP not PCI-E. I would favour the Gigabyte board - never had a problem with them and their packed with features, but thats just my opinion.
 
champ2005 said:
Also you should stick to nForce3 as your graphics card is AGP not PCI-E.
Argh, this is what I didn't manage to see; you have an AGP graphics card. Seeing as though you wouldn't need the PCI-E slot then, nforce3 would indeed be the correct route to go (unless i'm looking at this the wrong way!).

I'm not sure about gigabyte, never really used them; MSI's Neo 2 is my prefered choice, but some like Asus and Abit's boards too.
 
gigabyte is a pretty decent company, yeah i wouldnt have said that a few years ago but nowadays they are compareable to the like of asus and abit ;)
 
champ2005 said:
Not true. HT makes the system see 2x3ghz processors, not 2x1.5. It would be pointless otherwise wouldnt it. Since most games only support one processor as you said, they would only use one 3ghz 'processor'.

The processor is 3.0Ghz, no faster. When I get to work I can post a screen shot where WINDOWS lists two 3.4Ghz processors, but as I stated before a simple look at total system CPU use, running FAH with both logical processors enabled for the application shows 50%, of the 3.4Ghz actual processor. 1.7Ghz of work being done. Windows XP pro itself can take advantage of the dual processors, and if you wish to spend the time you can set affinity for each process as to what CPU it will use. But each will only have access to 50% of the total speed.
 
okay if you go the AMD way as I'd suggest based on your vga card alone, you want an MSi K8N Neo2 and 939 90nm 3200+ with crucial ballistix ram for best results.

I have said MSI board at home waiting for me to move house to order the 90nm 3500+, ram, 6800 ultra, pair of dell 2001FP's you know :D
 
lol...listen to lord :). He is good with this stuff and wants me to get what he just mentioned too.
 
ok, ive decided. MSI k8n neo 2 plat, 3500+ amd 64 939 and 1024ll corsair ram. hehe hope its a good buy.....thanks guys =)
 
Very nice system, looks like a good buy. Hope you enjoy your new system :)
 

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