PC advice

[[WTF]hakenspit]

Well I am looking at buying a new pc in the coming month or two and was after some thoughts/advice on what you guys would recommend.

Budget is about 2500-3000.

Dont need monitor (love my current 19" lcd)

Have my eye on thermaltake cases clicky (http://www.pccasegear.com/prod2449.htm)

AMD is probably my preference wanting atleast a 3800 weighing up options for 4500, dual cores etc.

Weighing up options on new gfx card (current is 9800xt 256mb) whilst I am an ATI boy at heart willing to hear any justifications as to why I should look at nvidia.

Need suggestions on Mobo's (as looking at AMD figure I want a 939 socket board) but also would like to use DDR2 RAM (looking at about 1-2 gig of ram).

So basically start giving me some ideas ppl I have look around but seem to be struggling to find a 939 socket board that will take ddr2 and something over a 3800 AMD (unless I am not reading the right info....which is possible)

So post some specs of some systems

[AussieWilly]

ptp built this box, I cant remeber the specs. I think its built with a fast thing and loaded with faster shit,

[Viss]

Well Hak if your looking at that sort of budget Id start here with this
http://www.a1-electronics.net/AMD_Section/Mobos/2005/939-1st/Giga_K8NXP-SLI_Mar.shtml

And would be looking at 2 gig of ram considering BF2 uses around 700 mb of ram whist in full fight and that dont leave alot for the system.

Go the dual 6800 gt's and I Recon spend the remainder on a cpu what ever is left.
Then over the next few months get a big sata hdd or 2 aim for a FX55 get your sexy case (I got one :) )

This way is going to work out more expensive but atleast you have the 4 main pieces and can build on it from there.

[Viss]

Ohh and my pc store is selling it with a 6600 GT 256mb for $856.40 considering this comes with built in wifi card this is great value all you need to do is buy 1 more card.

Here is the link you will need to serch for K8NXP-SLI

www.arc.com.au

[[WTF]hakenspit]

Prob is viss I am not convinced by the dual GPU option from what I have seen the performance improvement does not warrant the cost atm...that mobo doesn't support ddr2 ram

[[WTF]hakenspit]

ok looking at this so far


Kandalf VA9000SWA 430W PSU (http://www.pccasegear.com/prod2449.htm) - 359

Windows XP home - 129
Norton Internet sec 04 - 75
Asus A8N-SLI Delux - 235
AMD 64 939 4000 Venice - 699
2GB PC320 Corsair Twin - 429
Maxtor 250 GB 7200 8mg - 199
Sony DWD62A10 DVD dual layer - 89
XpertVision 256Mb GeForce
7800GTX - PCI-E (http://www.itzcomputers.com.au/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=606) - 775
-----------------------------------------------------------
TOTAL $2989
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Still tossing up between 7800 GTX and X850 XT

Thoughts?

[Privateer]

ya tossing up between the the fastest thing u can get atm, or a well established part :) Personaly I'd prob get the 7800gtx, since it will prob last ya quite a while, Nvidia ain't that bad :) I do agree on you with the sli's...too much power draw imo, plus not worth the money.

Why DDR2? It doesn't offer any advantages yet.....
The only reason i can think of would be to use in future upgrades...eg. amd's future CPU's? which would only support ddr2..since the mem controlers built in the cpu.

I have never liked sony dvd burners, we had a few though work, and always seemed to be buggy or error prone and not real compatable with media. Try either a Pioneer 110 which have just come out, or the LG model, we sell crap loads of them and not many come back faulty.

[Viss]

I also agree with priv that video card rox fastest on the market atm. Im with him on the dvd burner aswell I run pioneer burners 3 infact and thay have a lifspan of around 400 - 500 burns then you bin them im on my 4th :) but a good reliable dual layer burner. Also I would chuckout the maxator bad choice in disk and look at a 250 or 300 Western Digital 8mb Sata you didnt mention if the drive was sata but I imagine it would be. And id save a few bucks on that psu and grab the thermatake TWV 480w http://www.techtastic.ca/reviews3/twv480.html I have one of these in my rig Its a very nice unit particularly the watts veiwer that fits in the front of the pc case so you can see how many watts your rig is pulling.


Forget the windows xp home and download the free trial of longhorn from microsoft and buy that when its released. Im running it in my system now there is alot of support now for 64 bit drivers and most of the drivers that come with the new boards will have 64 bit drivers on the disk.

And for christs sake chuck that friggin nortons thing in the bin, I use a free virus program for 64 bit systems called avast and I dont bother with a firewall cause im behind a router and have xp firewall running. Avast also has 7 different features that protect you aswell not only anti virus. Nortons is particuarly system hungry and you dont want it eating up your yummy new system and pay 70 bucks a year for the privlage :) If you need a firewall run zone alarm or tiny personal firewall thay are both free and very effective.

Am I waffleing yep..... I think so...... Bye :P

Edit: And with the few bucks you save on windows, norton and the psu you can get a FX55 YUMMY then youd be da man hak :confused:

[[WTF]hakenspit]

Bang for buck priv, DDR2 will not run on amd 939 boards so sticking with DDR ram.

hmm well the burner I pretty much picked at random and will look at lg or pionerr as suggested.

Meh will stick with norton viss...dont mind it and dont find tis too much hassle...would rather use that than have to piss fart around with zonealarm which causes all sorts of issues from what I have read in forums.

Not sure I will go longhorn....you seemd to have some issues at the start their viss...but it will be atleast a month till I get system so I may change mind between now and then.

Might go the fx55 and fork out the little extra it will cost....hmmm lets see just how much I get back from my bonus before I commit to a chip ;)

[Ambush]

OS: WinXP Home Edition 5.1 Service Pack 2 (Build #2600) CPU: Intel Pentium 4 , 3.46 GHz Video: Default Monitor on nVidia GeForce 6600 GT (1280x1024x32bpp 60Hz) Sound: Realtek HD Audio rear output Memory: Used: 283/1024MB Uptime: 4h 52m 57s HD: [C:System] 148.96/186.30 GB Connection: Realtek RTL8169/8110 Family Gigabit Ethernet NIC - Packet Scheduler Miniport @ 100.0 Mbps (Rec: 128.73MB Sent: 24.00MB)

Sidewinder case Total $2,540

[Viss]

I installed longhorn when it first came out but found no driver support. I left it for 3 months then i searched again and found all the drivers I need. Longhorn also installs winxp 32 bit in a seperate folder so If you have problems running a program install it to the 32 bit directory and away it goes. Any ways I found a definate increase in system performance from 32 bit. The onlything is I cant get Aquamark to run =( and a coupla other programs I was using dont support 64 such as Daemon tools but there is always a work around. BF2 runs sweet as a button, my CTD has stopped now my whole system just goes POOF and restarts lol I dunno which was better the nvida card has seemed to stopped that issue.

Ohh dear im rambling again ....... :)