DONNNNNT tell me they are not compatible...

[style69]

Hello.

So the follwoing are the specs of my new rig [just a plan] .

Are the follwing compatible with eachother?

MSI K8N NEO4-Platinum nForce4
OCZ DDR 1GB (2x512Mb) PC-3200 Dual Channel Gold C2 2-3-3-6
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ / 2.0 GHz
PNY Verto GeForce 7800GT 256MB
420W Enermax NOISETAKER
ANTEC p180 case
Maxtor DiamondMax 10 200 GB
Zalman cu heatsink

First of all ....is this a good nuff plan for games like Dom 3, CS: source, far Cry, Quake 4?

Alsoi been told that the 7800GT's performance will bottleneck due to the CPU...is that true? should i get a eVGA-Geforce 6800GS instead?

This whole machine is going to cost me around $1400-$1500 CAD.

 

[endyen]

The chip may be a slight bottlekneck in some games, but not enough to worry about. It is easy enough to fix that, by OCing that chip (they make it to 2.5 and beyond on stock cooling) or by picking up a faster chip, if you can afford it.
If you live in the west, you might want to check out anitec Thier prices are often good.

 

[the_guru]

Do you really need those memory sticks? You should pick Corsair ValueSelect since there is no difference in performance in most cases. Especially gaming.

The Maxtor Harddrive isn't a reliable disk. Pick a Seagate Barracuda or something.

 

[theholylancer]

they will at normal speeds however i have not seen a 3200 venice not hitting 2.5 GHz........... not hitting 2.5GHz is a myth for vennies..............

BTW

OCZ DDR 1GB (2x512Mb) PC-3200 Dual Channel Gold C2 2-3-3-6

is not really required and that like the guru said, cheaper vaule select ram from named brand (Corsair, OCZ, Gneil, etc.) is just as good as them expensive stuff if you don't OC, even if you do, they will not be that bad.....

if you wish to have some amazing OCes then get a DFI Lanparty UT NF4 Ultra-D and get some nice OCZ DDR 2x 512 kit EL gold VX that runs pc3200 on 3.2V with a amazing timing of 2-2-2-8
and they usually can be oced to pc4000 speeds easy

and get a s939 operton, single core hits 3.2 Ghz on air and some say on stock cooling... while dc hits 3Ghz on air and they are in the price range of a 3200 too

btw dfi board are not newbie friendly or ingorant friendly (the manual is 60 pages long and have like 6 languages, while there is lots and lots of options for overcloking and twreaking..... goto www.dfi-street.com for more info on this too if you want to get DFI) and the VX sticks requrire high voltage (VX= voltage extreme) so some mobo may not be compatable sicne that the mobo may not give enough juice to the sticks but sicne again DFI is made for OCing, that should not be a problem and the MSI one should be able to supply that much juice... (check to make sure though)

 

[style69]

Ye umm i could get some other memory sticks but im getting them for cheap. $169.CAD.

Also ye i realized the seagate Baracuda hard drive will be a much better choice.

Jus a quick questiion....im getting the following two cards for the following prices.....which is better[ keep in mind value and performance]

PNY Verto GeForce 7800GT 256MB $395 CAD
ATI Radeon X850 XT $329.99 CAD

Thanks

 

[baracuda73]

They should be close in performance. Just depends what games you play nvidia better for open gl games(doom3 etc) ati better at direct X games (hl2 etc).

 

[apache_lives]

uch MSI, unreliable.

 

[jamesgoddard]

When are the AMD M2 socket systems available - I will wait until the M2 is out before my next upgrade and skip socket 939 completly... I think they are but a month or two away.

 

[ltcommander_data]

The M2 now AM2 will be out around late April, early May.

 

[the_guru]

Ye umm i could get some other memory sticks but im getting them for cheap. $169.CAD.

Also ye i realized the seagate Baracuda hard drive will be a much better choice.

Jus a quick questiion....im getting the following two cards for the following prices.....which is better[ keep in mind value and performance]

PNY Verto GeForce 7800GT 256MB $395 CAD
ATI Radeon X850 XT $329.99 CAD

Thanks

I would pick the 7800GT.

 

[style69]

Ye ......its worth waiting for...since there is going to be a price drop for socket 939 processors...

 

[the_guru]

Alsoi been told that the 7800GT's performance will bottleneck due to the CPU...is that true? should i get a eVGA-Geforce 6800GS instead?

The 3200+ is a very good CPU.

Your CPU will be a little bottleneck in some games like Half-Life 2 BUT since those games are so easy to run anyway it doesn't matter.

When it comes to more demanding games like Quake 4 the video card will be the bottleneck.

If we take a look at Half-Life 2 (The most CPU limited game):

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/half-life_2_athlon_xp/page3.asp

Both your CPU and Video card is better than the ones used i the benchmark. Which means you can run 1600x1200 at over 70FPS. Which is a good framrate. If you have a LCD monitor you will probably run the game at 1280x1024 increasing the FPS even more.




If we take a look at Battlefield 2 (another CPU limited game):

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/cpu-games2_3.html

You will see that the difference between your 3200+ and a Athlon FX-57 is 0.25%. As you can see you CPU is really good for gaming.


FEAR speaks for itself:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/cpu-games2_4.html


Serious Sam 2:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/cpu-games2_5.html
Difference between your 3200+ and the very expensive FX-57:
Only 6%.


Quake 4:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/cpu-games2_6.html
Difference between your 3200+ and the very expensive FX-57:
Only 3%.


So it's a performance difference of 0-6% between a 3200+ and a FX-57.

Answer: Go with the 7800GT.

 

[tvfreak]

The chip may be a slight bottlekneck in some games, but not enough to worry about. It is easy enough to fix that, by OCing that chip (they make it to 2.5 and beyond on stock cooling) or by picking up a faster chip, if you can afford it.
If you live in the west, you might want to check out anitec Thier prices are often good.

What is bottleneck? This is dumb question but I havent been up to par lately with coms, even though I been reading a lot of forums because I want to get a new PC. Is it like Lagging while playing games or little hiccups?

 

[jamesgoddard]

The chip may be a slight bottlekneck in some games, but not enough to worry about. It is easy enough to fix that, by OCing that chip (they make it to 2.5 and beyond on stock cooling) or by picking up a faster chip, if you can afford it.
If you live in the west, you might want to check out anitec Thier prices are often good.

What is bottleneck? This is dumb question but I havent been up to par lately with coms, even though I been reading a lot of forums because I want to get a new PC. Is it like Lagging while playing games or little hiccups?

A bottleneck is the slowest part of the system, the thing that is causing the restriction in performance at that point in time. A PC in general will only go as fast as it's slowest component, for example if you had the latest CPU and a 3 year old graphics card whatever you did to improve CPU performance you would see no benefit to games as the graphics card is the bottleneck, get it!

 

[Crashman]

We understand the concept, but that concept is wrong, so let me be a bit more abusive about it:

YOU'RE WRONG!

OK, an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro is something like, if I remember right, 5%-15% faster than an 8500 on a K6-III 450. Now, who would run such a new card on such an old system? Tom's Hardware did, just for testing purposes. And of course, to PROVE YOU WRONG!

So the deal is, a card that should be TWICE as fast ended up being only a little faster, because the CPU was, so damned weak. But it was still faster.

And being that it was still faster, you have to consider that the results were much better on an Athlon 1000! And that the results were still better on an XP 2400+!

Now if we look at true bottle necks, you can increase the rate of flow through an orifice if you increase pressure...and the point I'm making is, any modern CPU will benefit noticebly from a noticeably faster graphics card. While your returns might not be as great when upgrading cards on an A64 3000+ as they would be on an A64 4000+, they'll still be great enough to make it worthwhile.

It's not until you get to TRUELY OUTDATED CPU's that you reach the point of substantially diminished returns.

Thanks, and BTW, endyen is a hardware genius. Were I a woman, I'd kiss the guy. As it is, he already has several male forum members who would be willing to do it as well...just not me.

 

[tvfreak]

We understand the concept, but that concept is wrong, so let me be a bit more abusive about it:

YOU'RE WRONG!

OK, an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro is something like, if I remember right, 5%-15% faster than an 8500 on a K6-III 450. Now, who would run such a new card on such an old system? Tom's Hardware did, just for testing purposes. And of course, to PROVE YOU WRONG!

So the deal is, a card that should be TWICE as fast ended up being only a little faster, because the CPU was, so damned weak. But it was still faster.

And being that it was still faster, you have to consider that the results were much better on an Athlon 1000! And that the results were still better on an XP 2400+!

Now if we look at true bottle necks, you can increase the rate of flow through an orifice if you increase pressure...and the point I'm making is, any modern CPU will benefit noticebly from a noticeably faster graphics card. While your returns might not be as great when upgrading cards on an A64 3000+ as they would be on an A64 4000+, they'll still be great enough to make it worthwhile.

It's not until you get to TRUELY OUTDATED CPU's that you reach the point of substantially diminished returns.

Thanks, and BTW, endyen is a hardware genius. Were I a woman, I'd kiss the guy. As it is, he already has several male forum members who would be willing to do it as well...just not me.

I think I get it. So if you look at my wonderful super duper spec's on my pc (look at my signature). If I were to get a better graphics card, I won't experience too much of bottle neck??? :twisted: :?:

 

[Crashman]

LOL, you already have a powerful graphics card. In DirectX 9 games, it will operate in DX8 mode. And with the reduced overhead of DX8, it could probably keep up with a GeForce 6600, maybe even a GT! And that's not even getting into the processor!

OK, so say a 6800GT would give a guy with a P4 3.0GHz a 20% increase in performance. Well, you might not get 20%, but you could expect a noticeable increase anyway. At least 10% methinks.

 

[tvfreak]

We understand the concept, but that concept is wrong, so let me be a bit more abusive about it:

YOU'RE WRONG!

OK, an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro is something like, if I remember right, 5%-15% faster than an 8500 on a K6-III 450. Now, who would run such a new card on such an old system? Tom's Hardware did, just for testing purposes. And of course, to PROVE YOU WRONG!

So the deal is, a card that should be TWICE as fast ended up being only a little faster, because the CPU was, so damned weak. But it was still faster.

And being that it was still faster, you have to consider that the results were much better on an Athlon 1000! And that the results were still better on an XP 2400+!

Now if we look at true bottle necks, you can increase the rate of flow through an orifice if you increase pressure...and the point I'm making is, any modern CPU will benefit noticebly from a noticeably faster graphics card. While your returns might not be as great when upgrading cards on an A64 3000+ as they would be on an A64 4000+, they'll still be great enough to make it worthwhile.

It's not until you get to TRUELY OUTDATED CPU's that you reach the point of substantially diminished returns.

Thanks, and BTW, endyen is a hardware genius. Were I a woman, I'd kiss the guy. As it is, he already has several male forum members who would be willing to do it as well...just not me.

I think I get it. So if you look at my wonderful super duper spec's on my pc (look at my signature). If I were to get a better graphics card, I won't experience too much of bottle neck??? :twisted: :?:

Ok cashman. DANG that many post. I wonder if you know anything about computers or just talk a lot lol. jk. Anyways I want to get a new pc. I think i'm decideing on a Operton 170 or x2 4400. I do plan on OCing but not right away. I hear Operton is better because it's goes through a harsher test before being put out into the market. I do want to game, but also encode, edit movies, edit music, and other multi-tasking and multi-threading stuff. What do you think??? :twisted: :?:

 

[Crashman]

Generally speaking users have had better overclocking results using an opteron than an equivalent A64 or X2. Yes, I think Opterons meet a higher standard of validation.

 

[raven_87]

Hmm...

Epox or DFI

I have an Ultra-D. Great for overclocks.

I also have a 3200+ and an eVGA 7800GT.
The CPU isnt as much of a bottleneck as you think it maybe.
Then again, I love it...overclocks like a sob.

1.55v, HTx4 RAM 2-3-3-6(2.8v) HTT(FSB) 260 x9= 2340mhz
Doesnt break 40C load Prime95 blend for 5 hours straight.
I'm sure I could go much higher as well, but I hate using the stock cooler
So that kinda says something about the capabilities of these paticular chips.

Hmm, Opty 146 or 148. Shoot for CABYE 0542...have the best chance of hitting 3GHZ.

 

[style69]

Thanks for all the replies peeps. Much appreciated.

So...as a reply to my very first post i was told that MSI board are un reliable
....if i switch it with a DFI boards or ASUS which one will be a good pick....and what board will work the best with the specs i have posted in the first post ...

Thanks.

 

[Crashman]

Check out this deal: Free EVGA SLI motherboard with purchase of eVGA 7800GT.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?sku=E145-7810

Also available at ZipZoomFly
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=322728

It looks like ZipZoomFly is giving free 2nd day shipping and an instant rebate too, so I'd probably go with them.

It's a good board, really!

 

[Crashman]

What, you didn't get the free motherboard with your 7800GT? That doesn't make any sense!

 

[tvfreak]

What, you didn't get the free motherboard with your 7800GT? That doesn't make any sense!

Hey I have one more question. I noticed that Opertons are 1GB FSB and the x2's are 2GB FSB. Does this make any difference in performence? And why arent the opertons 2 GB FSB as well? :roll:

 

[Crashman]

Actually it's the same thing. The HT bus runs at a multiple of 200MHz, in this case 5x, and has full bandwidth in both directions. So 5x200=1000, but they sometimes call it 2000 because it's bi-directional. A lot of busses in the PC have to share bandwidth in both directions.

So calling it 2000 is kind of like saying I live near a 140MPH freeway rather than a 70MPH one-way road. But in reality the 140MPH is just 70MPH in each direction.