About time for a new computer, need advise plz :)

Status
Not open for further replies.

sabenfox

Posts: 20   +0
Hey everyone !

it's been a while, but i'm now looking to build a new computer. I want something fast, something that will last me like 2 or three years. because of this i'm looking towards a athlon 64. my current system is..


P4 2.6c
Radeon 9800 pro (128)
512 megs of ram (OCZ)
Gigabyte motherboard (generic)
Soundblaster Live

The new system i was considering was something to this extent
My Budget is about $2,000



Athlon 64X2 3800
2 Gigs of ram DDR400
Motherboard with Nforce4
DiamondMax hard drive (300 gig with 16 meg cache)
Geforce 7800GTX (256 meg GDDR3)
Soundblaster audigy 2
thermaltake case

i'm trying to get some advice on the ram and the motherboard. I want a motherboard and ram that i can overclock as well. Perferably a motherboard with auto overclocking features so i don't risk any damage. The motherboard i was looking at was a

ABIT Fatal1ty AN8-SLI Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD
PCI Express x1: 2
PCI Express x16: 2

or

ABIT AN8-ULTRA Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra ATX AMD Motherboard -
PCI Express x1: 2
PCI Express x16: 1


as far as ram i havn't found anything in particular, so suggestions are highly
welcome.

also i don't understand some of the things on the motherboard, for example
PCI Express x1: 2
PCI Express x16: 2

does the above mean that the motherboard has 2 pci express that both run at X16 if you have SLI, i just don't quite understand the ratio compared to
PCI Express x1: 2
PCI Express x16: 1

Any help is greatly appreciated :)

Also i'm not sure what the standard is for hard drives, is it ATA133 or now ATA 150, and is ATA the same as SATA (Serial ATA) ?

if you can recommend a hard drive that would be great as well, i was reading the specs on a motherboard and it says

PATA 2 x ATA 100 up to 4 Devices
PATA RAID NV RAID 0/1/0+1 JBOD
SATA 4 x SATA II
SATA RAID NV RAID 0/1/0+1 JBOD
Additional SATA 4 x SATA 150

i know Pata means parallelATA, and Sata means SerialATA, so looking at this motherboard it has 2 connectors for up to 4 PATA hard drives, and it has
4 connectors for 4 SATA II hard drives, and is SATA II equal to ATA150. as you can see i'm totally lost, lol :giddy:
 
i'm trying to get some advice on the ram and the motherboard. I want a motherboard and ram that i can overclock as well. Perferably a motherboard with auto overclocking features so i don't risk any damage.
you only need an sli motherboard (two pcie16x) if you have two identical sli-capable graphics cards. i reccomend the asus a8n series. they are good all-around solid boards and deliver top-notch performance, not unlike the msi k8n neo4 as well. you should be aware that overclocking a dual-core cpu is far trickier than overclocking thier single-cored counterparts, and it comes down to a balancing act between numerous buses and the htt multiplier. i'd even say that you don't have any real need for overclocking such a system, as it would prove difficult and yield poor gains. as far as the ram, i reccomend two 1GB DDR400 sticks in a dual-channel configuration. you can pick up low latency modules (performance increasing), if it suits you.
also i don't understand some of the things on the motherboard, for example
these specs simply refer to the number of slots of that particular spec present on the board. non-sli boards will have one pcie16x slot for one graphics card.
if you can recommend a hard drive that would be great as well, i was reading the specs on a motherboard and it says
you want an SATA drive that supports NCQ, thus greatly enhancing performance. i strongly reccomend the maxtor diamondmax 10 drives, available in sizes up to 300GB, and affordably at that.

and for god's sake make sure you have really good surge protection active on that rig!
 
I'm questioning your decision on the CPU. Do you have a need for a dual processor? If you are using programs that will utilize the dual processors, then it is worth considering (good price for a dual processor chip). But if the software you are using only uses single threads, then you may as well go for the Athlon64 line of processors. They will outperform that dual core CPU with their higher clock speeds. I myself went for the Athlon64 3700 CPU, and in single threaded applications (games for example) my processor will outperform the X2 3800.

Something to think about.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back