Guru opinions on my "about to buy" list needed.

[EffBeeEye]

Hi ... been a lurker here for a while and I'm a bit confused.
I'm getting rid of my D*ll 8400 and have already bought;

- Thermaltake Shark Full tower case
- BFG Tech 650w power supply

I already have an Nvidia 7800GTX card in the D*ll that I'd obviously like to 'port over into the new machine.

Currently I'd like to stick to about $600 to purchase;
- Motherboard
- 2Gb of Ram
- Processor (preferably AMD)

Right now I have the following saved in my Newegg cart. I'm good to go ... but something is making me not "checkout" yet.

ASUS A8N-SLI Premium Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Manchester 2000MHz HT 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket 939 Dual Core Processor

OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Unbuffered DDR 400 (PC 3200) Dual Channel Platinum System Memory

They total up to just under $600 after the rebate on the memory.

I'd really appreciate the gurus here giving me some input whether I should buy this now, or recommendations for equivalent or better kit to go with that which I already have (Opteron processor? SLI vs. non-SLI?)

When are the new AMD chips due out?
How soon would we expect prices for the older tech to start dropping?

For the record ... the current spec on my 8400 is;
- 3.2ghz Pentium w/ HT
- 1Gb of 533 ram


Thanks in advance

FBI

 

[EffBeeEye]

Thanks, prozac...
Any recommendations for a good non-sli mobo?

As for future-proofing a bit ... are the new mobos that support the new chips going to be able to support the older processors?
Or will I have to buy the minimum spec I can of the new processors just to get on the ladder?

Are there any thoughts on what impact DX10 will have on the DX9 cards? (lots of slowdown??)

Thanks again for your input, folks...

FBI

[edit for typos]

 

[mdd1963]

"Are there any thoughts on what impact DX10 will have on the DX9 cards? "

None....?

 

[sandmannight]

Well If you would get the opteron 165 you would probably want to Overclock although it is not really needed because 1.8 would perform ok. But if you want to OC get the DFI lanparty Ultra-D which is 122 dollars and get G.Skill PC4000 RAM(2GB) for 171 dollars and the opteron 165 is 327 dollars. The stock cooler on the opty is very good so that ismore money you would not have to spend. All in all it comes up to 620 and about 15 dollars for shipping. Very Close to your budget.

 

[teldar]

Only thing I would maybe change is go with the Mushkin pc4000. It sounds like it might be a little nicer.... Might be a couple dollars more though.

Teldar

 

[EffBeeEye]

Thanks for the advice, guys...
The DFI lan-party really does sound like it's the better for OCing, but I'm not sure I can really get into that head first.
I don't want to have to do a lot of tweaking just to get the thing up and running stable (the DFI sounds like it really takes a while - unless you're lucky).
I also like the ASUS Premium's extras (USB, Firewire, external SATA connectors).

I have decided to spend a little more on the 165 Opteron (the 170 if I can persuade the wife over dinner tonight )
Are there any good guides for OC'ing the chip a little, or does the software supplied with the boards/processor allow that low-level tweaking?

I'll also still stick with my rebated OCZ platinum memory.

This is my first build. I know that if I enjoy this process I will look to be upgrading again soon ... or at least experimenting with a DFI board on the side as they really aren't a bad price.

Thanks again!!

FBI

 

[waylander]

The A8N premium is a fine board and you may find that extra PCI-e slot worthwhile in the future (possibly a PPU).

One thing to note is that the Premiums PCI-e runs in x16 mode with one card but if you add a second will drop to x8 on both slots.

If you aren't going to SLI then either the DFI or Asus will work fine, comes down to personal preference.

Ram same thing personal preference, if you are going to OC in the future though get the DDR500 (PC4000).

Asus comes with a utility that will OC for you but it's not very good. It offers something like 3%, 5%, 10% and 15% (not sure on exact numbers, can tell you when I get home tonigth). Anything in between or higher you will have to set manually in bios.

 

[baracuda73]

If you are giong to oc then either DFIor Epox avoid lower end boards such as Biostar and Foxconn either way.

 

[EffBeeEye]

Waylander ... (or any other knowledgable types)
Are there any tricks to the Premium board in regards to slot placement of RAM? Any particular way I should install the two 1Gb sticks?
I read about other boards having problems if you use up all 4 slots (or use the wrong combination of slots) making it 2T instead 1T...