Overkill check before I spend $2000

Try to get the Winchester 90nm instead of the Newcastle.

And why not going with a nForce board instead of the VIA chipset? And a socket 754 will be faster at the same price.

You might want to add another cheap storage HD while using the Raptor for booting etc..

getting the winchester is going to be near impossible in this country for the near future

didn't realise there were nForce boards for the 939's checking out MSI's K8N Neo2 now. but I take it nForce is worth the extra $75 over the $200 VIA

I'm good for HD space already have an 80GB from old system




gees now u got me thinking about new MB's hehehe, but damn glad I posted coulda ended up with no nForce3 !<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Phasics on 01/20/05 05:16 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

down in Australia

most places here simply advertise 3500 AMD 939 as just that I've had to ask sales department what the die size is

its funny one place acutally sent me an e-mail back saying how do you tell the differnce between Newcastle and Winchester LOL,

anyway I've just scoped out the Gigabyte K8NS-939 which looks pritty good and is a reasonable price too.

Based on your advice here the revamped selection

AMD 939 3200 CPU (winchester 90nm) and I'll OC towards 2.6Ghz with Zalman bigass copper cooler

74GB 10K 8MB SATA Western Digital Hard drive

1024MB 3200XL Corsair Twnix memeory

Gigabyte K8NS-939 (with nForce3 ultra)

Gainward 256MB 6800GT Ultra VGA card


Does that sound more like a solid system ?

One place to cut costs in that system is the RAM. IMO, 2-2-2 is overrated and is mainly for bragging rights and less for performance. True, those chips will also get you to 500+ MHz, but not at 2-2-2, and there are cheaper ways to do that. If you're gonna overclock, think what'll be your final FSB and get RAM to go with that.

<b>Behold, Mine anger and My fury shall be poured out upon this place upon man and upon beast and upon the trees of the field and upon the fruit of the land and it shall burn and shall not be quenched

well like I said I can find winchester for 3000 and 3200 its just the 3500 which are hard to find.

I've check out both the MSI and Giga and based on several reviews I'm leaning towards Gigabyte at the moment

as for nForce4 and PCI express cards imho I'd rather get a solid proven nForce3, as nForce4 and PCI express really arnt going to become a neccesity for at least until my next upgrade which is usally every 2-3 harware generations.
and AGP 8x is still enough to fully ultilise the top end cards. imho its not worth waiting for PCI express versions of the top end card to be realsed here just so I can use an nForce4 board, I'm quite happy sitting 1 bar below the cutting edge.

And finally as for the RAM your probably right as I'm looking to over clock the 3200 to 2.6Ghz that be a FSB of about 260ish so I'll still need RAM that can handle 275 to be comfortable. might even get 2GB if I go with cheaper RAM

Trust me going from Athlon XP 1700 with Geforce 3 Ti200 to 3200 with Gainward 6800 Ultra

The simle is gonna be so wide it'll meet at the back of my head

well here in Aus there about a $30 diff between Corsair 3200XL and Corsair 4000Pro

Yep lights are the only diff

and the $30 diff is for the 3200XL without lights

the 3200XL PRO is more expensive than the 4000

http://www.legionhardware.com/html/doc.php?id=376

this is the review for the Giga that finally got me decided on it over the MSI

MSI review here
http://www.bleedinedge.com/reviews [...] eo_01.html

Perhaps if we are lucky we will get this test done by THG... or maybe we will get REALLY lucky and they will review mouse pads AGAIN!!!