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Questions about amd system

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  • Western Digital
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October 20, 2008 8:45:59 PM

How's everybody doing, new to this forum.
It's time to put my 754 system out to pasture. Before I do so I just wanted to get some input on what I have in mind for the new system. The most intensive thing I'll do is video encoding with some gaming here and there (Oblivion for right now). I want to go with as close to top of the line now so it will last me for a bit.

MSI DKA790GX Platinum
Phenom 9950 BE 125w
Corsair Dominator 4GB
ATI 4850 (not sure which one yet)
from old system:
2x 120gb western digital atx133 7200
1x 40gb western digital sata 7200

My plan was to go with the 790gx/sb750 chipset so that I can hold off for a bit on the gfx. Would there be any real advantage of going for 790fx/sb750 over the 790gx?

I'm also wondering if my current psu will have the juice for this system. I currently have a 550w Rosewill supply.
http://www.rosewill.com/products/s_378/productDetail.htm
It has 18amps on both rails so from what I've read I assume I'm good to go.

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October 20, 2008 9:09:58 PM

I think unless you are going for a hefty crossfire system the gx will work just fine vs the fx. As far as power supply, I personally wouldn't keep the rosewill. I've had my eye on http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168... for a bit. I'm not much of an expert with PSUs so I'd see what other people recommend too.

PS.. might also look into a new harddrive http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168... is a very popular one that's fairly inexpensive.
October 20, 2008 9:25:27 PM

I will not be running a crossfire setup as I'm not really into pc gaming that much (have a ps3). So i'll stick with the gx chipset then since its cheaper anyway.

I'd like to hold on to the rosewill psu as long as possible since its not that old and has served me well so far. Just not sure if it will supply enough power.

I'll upgrade the hard drives eventually but for now I'm sticking with what I have. The 40gb sata (my os drive) will get swapped with one or two small sata2 drives.
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October 21, 2008 5:06:29 PM

your 550 should be enough for your system, even after you add a 4850.
but when you bought that is when you should have been writing questions here. do you leave you computer on 24 hours a day? if so, just the energy savings would justify an 80plus PSU before too long, and they tend to be of higher quality.


I question why you would need to add a gamer card unless you want to play better games than Oblivion. if you plan on skipping the graphics card for a while, consider a mobo with side band memory. dedicated memory for the on board graphics.

I'd get new drives before a vid card for you. remember, a bigger drive will be faster than an idetical smaller drive because the bigger drive will keep the data in the faster data sectors while the smaller on will be forced to use the slower data sectors sooner.
October 21, 2008 7:51:50 PM

Well Rosewill PSU's have had quality issues in the past on their <600w PSU's, but I'm not going to say your not going to have issues when you start to load it up. With that out of the way, here is my concerns:

* 790gx should be fine for your proposed build. It has onboard GPU (3300 GPU), which can be used for probably even Oblivion, but obviously not on high settings. This onboard GPU can/will come in handy if your waiting for a new or repaired dedicated GPU to be delivered. You'll still be able to do your everyday things while waiting for the dedicated GPU.
* I'd use your 40gb SATA drive as your OS drive and use 1 other HD for your storage. You'll need to keep in mind that you will only be able to use up to 2 IDE drives total on just about any recent mobo. So that means if you use 1 of the 2 on a HD than your only left with 1 slot available for a DVD/CD drive, unless you get a SATA DVD/CD drive or currently already have them SATA.
* If you want better than the onboard GPU for newer games, but don't want to spend too much now, I'd consider the 4670 GPU. It's about $80 or so and will be able to play the latest games, albiet not with high settings.
* DDR2 800mHz CAS4 timings, if possible, is all that your going to need even for the Phenom CPU's. This might change later, IF the AM3 CPU's will work in AM2+ mobo's. I would recommend trying to get DDR2 800mHz RAM that runs at 1.8v stock voltage. This will make for a cooler and easier install. Now I mentioned the option of AM3 CPU's possibly working in AM2+ mobo's, but this hasn't been fully confirmed yet.
* The 9950 BE CPU "DOES NOT" come with a CPU HSF, so you'll need to buy a decent one to go with the CPU. Depending on your case, I'd recommend the Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 pro or the Xigmatek s1283 CPU HSF's!! The ACF64 pro goes for about $20-$25 and the Xigmatek goes for about $45 or so.
October 22, 2008 2:03:49 AM

your old 754 heatsink should work with the new computer, and I think AMD does include (****) heatsinks with the new phenom black editions.

If I'm not mistaken. Oblivion's recomended card is a 6600 or a 6800. I think you'll do fine with onboard, especialy if you overclock it. I played much more graphics intensive games just fine on my old laptop that had comperable or slightly worse graphics than a 790gx.
October 22, 2008 2:24:13 AM

groo said:
your old 754 heatsink should work with the new computer, and I think AMD does include (****) heatsinks with the new phenom black editions.

If I'm not mistaken. Oblivion's recomended card is a 6600 or a 6800. I think you'll do fine with onboard, especialy if you overclock it. I played much more graphics intensive games just fine on my old laptop that had comperable or slightly worse graphics than a 790gx.

Well the CPU HSF might work, but the Phenom 9950 is quite hot running with cheaper/stock HSF. I'd recommend getting a decent one like I listed before, ACF64 pro or the Xigmatek (depending on the case used).
October 22, 2008 3:59:28 AM

Thanks everybody for the tips, now to answer back on your questions.
-The power supply.
"but when you bought that is when you should have been writing questions here." My original psu died and I need one right away. The rosewill fit my budget with the features I wanted.
No the computer will not be left on 24 hours a day. The computer will be used mostly for gaming here and there, converting video for burning, and media server duties every now and then. As of right now it barely gets used because A. its an old piece of crap B. I bought a laptop of a friend a few months back that I use most of the time. I realize that since its a slightly older psu it doesn't have all the energy compliance ratings that newer ones do. This is something I'll hold off on upgrading since its been said it will but will look into (if its not broke don't fix it).
-onboard graphics
The MSI board has 128mb of side band memory. I can buy the gfx right away, but I can hold off on this and wait for prices to come down a bit more. For right now I'll be playing oblivion but I'll eventually get into other more graphics intense games. I'm buying stuff thats better then I need now so that I can get more use out of it down the road when its no longer top of the line.
-heatsink
I already have an ac freezer 64 pro with arctic silver 5 on my 754 system. May get something different eventually, or may go water cooling eventually. I already have a heater core from a nova and I can get pump for cheap off one of the aquarium forums I'm on. Something I'll mess with in the future.
-drives
I will be using the 40g for the os like I am currently. This will get swapped with a sata3gb drive, or possibly 2 run in raid 0 (just depends on how cheap I can get them) The two 120g drives might eventually get moved to my linux vcr in my room as this is my main media station and uses considerably less power. Yes I did say linux vcr, stripped out a dead vcr and put an old slot 1 p3 rig inside.
I currently run 2 optical drives. I'll switch this to one sata drive as my current dvd burner does not do dual layer disks even though it says it can.
-memory
The 1066 is on sale and is only slightly more then 800. Probably won't need the extra speed but the phenom supports it so might as well. Just keeping with my theme of buying more then I need now because it will be less then I need in a few months.

The only other thing I want to upgrade is my lcd. Currently a 19" non-widescreen but I've been eyeing that new 24" samsung 16:9. Just wanting for some competition on that one so the price will go down.
October 22, 2008 4:37:18 AM

So what is your proposed build now that you have had some questions answered??
October 22, 2008 5:23:37 AM

Same as it was in my first post. I was only going to change it if someone gave me a reason to go with a fx chipset board over the gx.
Just need to pick a gfx now. I was leaning towards the passively cooled gigabyte 4850 with 1gb. I enjoy not listening to a humming box under my desk and this would fit the bill.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125237
Or one of the HIS 4850 cards with the iceq4 cooling. Newegg has them in various stages of factory oc and with 512 or 1gb of memory.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161244
For the same price though I could go with a 4870, or get a cheaper 4850 and get an aftermarket cooler or go water cooling.
Got my membership reward from my credit card and ended up with an extra $25 gift certificate for amazon and today newegg has put more video cards up with sales and rebates, awesome.

Final Build will be:
-MSI DKA790GX Platinum
Platinum has better cooling then non and side band memory, only reason I'm going with it
-Phenom 9950
Way overkill for my needs but it'll only cost me ~$150.
-4gb Corsair Dominator ddr2 1066
On sale and comes with cooling fans, also has d9gmh chips which I'm told are good.
-ati 4850
-Asus WL-138G V2 wireless card
-sata dvd drive
-sata 40g main drive *
Will change to sata3.0
-ide 120g x2 for media storage *
-rosewill 550w psu *
-Coller Master Mystique case *
-Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro *

*Things that will be reused.
October 22, 2008 6:21:29 AM

Looks good :)  Enjoy and let us know how things turned out after you build it!!
October 22, 2008 6:33:32 AM

Forgot to mention I also have a turtle beach montego ddl soundcard. Wish I could still use this but due to absolutely horrible driver support by both turtle beach and cmedia there are no good drivers for this card and none for 64bit that I can find. Hopefully the onboard on the MSI will be decent.
October 22, 2008 10:44:12 AM

Alright, orders in.
MSI DKA790gx
Phenom 9950
4gb Corsair Dominator
HSI HD4850 turbo iceq4 (650mhz versison)
LG gh22ls30 sata dvd drive
Comes out to $581 after gift certificates and rebates, way under the $1k loan I was going to take out.

What I'm running currently:
Chaintech vnf3-250
Athlon 64 2800+ clawhammer (1.8ghz)
512 ddr400
ATI aiw 9600 (plain version, not xt)

This should be quite a nice change. I'll be giving my dad the old stuff to replace his asus board and 900mhz athlon, so nice change for him too.
October 22, 2008 4:15:12 PM

looks like a plan
October 25, 2008 5:43:00 AM

Everything came in today minus the phenom. Fedex decided to deliver it a 6pm while I was at work so if I'm lucky there was somebody still in the apartment complex office to receive it. Glad I paid extra to have it shipped sooner.
Everything is in and the freezer 64 pro even seems like it will fit with the dominator fans. Only thing I don't get about the motherboard is the firewire. The box shows that a usb/firewire bracket comes with the board, its only usb. There is also a firewire header quick connect included, theres no firewire header on the board. No biggie though as I don't have anything firewire.
Also, having the sata/ide ports off to the side is a pain, and the floppy connector is in the middle of nowhere.
October 25, 2008 7:25:17 PM

I found the Dominator fans to be a bit noisier than I wanted, I just left it off. I think many do.

who cares about floppy drives anymore? I think they should just leave em off all together, and the few oddballs can use a USB adapter. they put the importand stuff around the southbridge so it is accessed quicker, and toss the junk werever it will fit. that is were most FDD headers are located these days.

I think those little packets come prepackaged and get toss in the boxes reguardless of what is actualy needed. kind of like a car without a radio from the factory has wires running through the dash for the radio, they just don't get used.
October 25, 2008 7:32:09 PM

I will probably leave the dominator fans off as well, just going to try them for now. The freezer 64 will draw air right across the heat spreaders anyway.
The only thing I still use a floppy for is loading raid and sata drivers for windows.(why can't these just be included, I mean really?) My rounded cable was not long enough to reach the header but the included ribbon one was.
October 26, 2008 5:40:15 PM

Everything is in and windows is updating itself.
Problems so far:
-Asus wireless card (wl-138g-v2) is crap. Does not work with any 64bit drivers I've found. Anyone know of a decent/cheap card that will play nice with 64bit? Otherwise I'll be getting a really long cable...
-MSI driver cd is useless. Starts up a splash screen where you are supposed to be able to select drivers to install. That screen is blank.
-MSI extras disk is blank, hope theres nothing useful thats supposed to be on there.
-HIS video drivers cause screen to go black and thats it, had to reinstall xp. (good thing is only takes 10 minutes.)

Good things so far:
-Ati auto-tune sets the gfx to 690core/1150mem from 650core/1000mem. Thats a touch more then the turbox card. Will see tonight if this is stable.
-Nothing has burst into flames...yet.
October 26, 2008 7:15:55 PM

you will want to turn up you graphics card fan speed a touch. look online for directions how. its pretty easy
October 26, 2008 8:03:17 PM

Already done. For some reason the fan makes less noise (slight whine) when turned up to 60-64% from stock 50%. During anything gfx intensive I'll probably turn it up to 100 until I'm done.
October 27, 2008 3:10:05 AM

Oblivion runs great and looks just as good if not better then on the ps3 and sony xbr tv.
I used clerks as a benchcmark for the video encoding. With 2 pass vbr encoding it took almost 6 hours on my laptop (pentium m 1.73ghz 1gig) down to 40 minutes on the new system.
!