I dont really plan on doing any overclocking, mild at most, cause I really need stability above all else, so I figured that this MSI 975x Platinum Mobo has all the features I need. 8GBs RAM, 2xPCI Express (non crossfire/sli need), and Firewire. Thats all I really care about. I know nothing about overclocking and im sure that my friend will find it sufficient to bump get a .3-.4GHz increase or something.
The question is, is the Wifi on the ASUS P5B Deluxe/WiFi-AP any good?
Is that board worth shelling out an additional 60 bucks for?
I know nothing about routers and Wifi, all I know is that I currently have a D-Link Wireless 108G PCI card. The router is Linksys, and to be honest, Im not exactly pleased with the cards performance. I have to restart after a few hours cause the internet seems to crash, and the signal isnt that great.
I hope this is the right forum to ask this question.
The MSI board you picked will be fine for mild overclocking. It'll also support quad-cores once the time comes.
Unless youre going to use the WiFi right away or youre sure youll use it later on I would say it isnt worth it. Its the same board as the P5B Deluxe anyways.
If I recall correctly, the P5B Deluxe with WiFi is an access point - i.e. it's the switch. No idea if it can also act as a client. I think that the idea is it would replace your router. I think it runs even though the machine is powered off. I bought the straight deluxe option - didn't want to shell out the extra few bucks considering I already have a WiFi access point.
Version 2 of the 975X Platinum is also called the MSI 975X Platinum PowerUp Edition. This model, MS-7246, was recently introduced to support Core 2 Duo and is a different model than the older MSI 975X Platinum, which is also called MS-7246, but does not support either Core 2 Duo or Kentsfield.
I would be very careful about that, check the manufaturer.
I would go for 2gigs of good ram (DDR2 800 4-4-4) right now and then if you REALLY need them go for 6gigs. But unless youre planning on flying a space shuttle from your PC you must likely wont.
well, the mushkins I plan on buying are cheap cause they arent good overclockers, read a review, and I dont really care about that.
I have also read a review saying that I will probably only see a 3 to 4% performance boost from bumping up 533 to 800. Not exactly a thrills kinda thing, id rather get more memory. Either way itll be running 1:1 ration with the FSP which is good enough for me.
I plan on doing multitasking various adobe products while having a few other apps open so I think that 4GBs is a requirement for me, 8GBs will help as well, and I saw it on Microsoft how running a 3D apps like Lightwave 64bit with 8gigs of RAM made an incredible difference in performance.
Actually, im having a private chat with someone and hes recommending that I stay away from 64bit saying that if I run just one 32bit app, the whole 64bit system reverts to 32bit, thus getting back to where I started, and wasting 530 bucks in memory. Adobe supposedly will release 64bit versions of their apps, but until then (sometime around x-mas) i gotta make sure I do a sound decision with this purchase.
Im going to do a little bit of research on that cause I really hope its not that cut and dry.
If I do any overclocking at all, it cannot be at the expense of any stability since I will do rendering and capturing and cannot allow anything to go wrong. Plus I could always overclock without increasing the FSB.
By the way, the timings on that Mushkin are 4-4-4-12, so it should do alright.
I havent heard anyhting about apps behaving that way.
You will need a 64bit system to run all 4GBs because you can only run about 3.5GBs in a 32bit. Thats why I said to get 2 gigs now and the rest when Vista arrives wich will be infinite times better than Windows Pro 64bit.
You might be interested, I installed WinXP 64 on my C2D, then got fed up with it and reformatted/reinstalled WinXP 32.
Why? The first thing was that support for Antivirus is very limited. AVAST! was the only product I could find. Microsoft doesn't support it with its OneCare, and neither does McAfee or Symmantec. Having said that, WinXP 64 is supposed to be significantly more secure, because its got a different code base (Windows Server 2003 as opposed to WinXP 32), and that standard 32-bit drivers don't work. Still, I wasn't happy that there was only one AV product out there.
The next issue was that annoying things wouldn't work, due to changes in registry locations. For example, the normal explorer context menu options for 32-bit apps don't work. For example, I can usually right-mouse a file and get options like WinZip and TextPad - these don't exist on WinXP 64.
The last issue was that I have a Blackberry, and they only have a 32-bit desktop driver, which won't run on WinXP 64.
Lots of little issues, but in the end they annoyed me sufficiently that I went back to WinXP 32.
Everything else worked - all other hardware drivers, and all other software. If you do go to WinXP 64 - be prepared for unusual devices not working and annoying little quirks.
Thats the positive thing that I see in having 64bit, the fact that I usually run the bare minimum, force of habit since I have never had over 512MB of RAM until just now.
I also use avast, so thats another plus.
I already know that Photoshop runs better in 64bit, so thats a definate plus, might be true for all hte other adobe products I use. Either way I think that the scarce amount of programs and peripherals I use will help ease my transition with 64bit.
