eyeguy616

I'll have a budget of $500 to $1000 and I'd like to know what kind of stuff it could bring me. A new motherboard, video card, and case with powersupply are my main concerns. I have just about everything else, so what have ya'll seen that might fit in this equation? A DirectX 9 video card or a 6.1/7.1 surround sound audio card is nice, but not all that necessary. The rig will be used for gaming, but I'd like it a little on the conservative side so that the dollar stretches a little more. Look at my sig for my current hardware.

Thanks for your input!
~eyeguy616

EDIT: it's more like $500. Sorry for not saying so earlier.....

Asuka

Mainboard: get a Leadtek K7NCR18D Pro - it's priced the same as the non-Pro version of other manufacturers, and it's also the only nForce2-Board to have three full Firewire ports

Graphics card: You can get a GF4 TI4800SE for about $150: (preferrably the Gainward for $153)
http://www.pricewatch.com/1/37/5009-1.htm
Easily beats a Radeon 9500 non-pro which is about the same price, and a 9500 Pro with similar performance is already $200.

Soundcard: Well you can actually use the 5.1 SoundStorm feature of the nForce2 mobo which would be even somewhat better than your current sound card.

Case: Whatever suits you. There's absolutely no performance boost in getting an expensive Chieftec/Xaser/etc. case, except if you want to show it off.

Power supply: Wouldn't go below 400W. Again, there's no better performance in getting an expensive Zalman or whatever power supply over a no-name one (the expensive ones don't even have something to show off unless you get some with integrated LEDs which is then extra expensive, of course...)

eyeguy616

Hmmm, how about a new cpu and ram to go along with the board? I know I could probably stick the old cpu and ram in the new board, but how about more new-ness?
That board and vid card you suggested look real good. Like I said, it'll be a couple months. Oh, the SBLive is definately staying behind.

~eyeguy616

Asuka

Originally posted by eyeguy616
Hmmm, how about a new cpu and ram to go along with the board? I know I could probably stick the old cpu and ram in the new board, but how about more new-ness?
That board and vid card you suggested look real good. Like I said, it'll be a couple months. Oh, the SBLive is definately staying behind.

For the CPU: I'd say get a 2600+ w/ 166MHz FSB, it has currently the best money/perfomance value. It's not much slower than a 2800+ (which is much more expensive) and only puny 66MHz slower than a Barton 3000+ (which is significantly more expensive), the only difference being that the Barton has more L2 cache - which isn't as useful as they want to make you believe. Especially in games, it's pretty much useless in the very most cases. Only in professional 3D applications and somesuch it has advantages.

For the memory: Your best bet would be getting 333MHz memory so you can have it run synchronously with your CPU. I'd recommend Samsung ones, they run absolutely great for me. Take two of them so you can use the DualChannel feature of the nForce chipset.

Vampyromaniac

$500-$1000 is kind of a big range to make specific suggestions . . .
If you're closer to the $1000 than the $500, I would suggest a 9700pro at around $300,
or even a plain 9700 at around $250, both of them noticebly faster than a 4800 or 9500,
especially the 9700pro, and both will last you a longer time, as well.

For mobo, I'd suggest an nForce2 board, personally I'd choose the Epox 8RDA+ for good
balance of overclocking/stability/cost. That's about $90-$95. And of course the on-board
SoundStorm APU means you'll spend $0 on a sound card, and still have great quality sound.
"the SBLive is definately staying behind" sorry, I didn't know exactly what you meant by this,
but the SoundStorm would be a better choice over the SB-Live, if you meant to keep it.

Cases can be as cheap as $30 for lesser brands, or over $150 for the hi-quality, well-built ones.
I think you can find yourself a decent case for about $80-$100. Make sure your power supply
has at least 400W, preferably not generic. If you have to buy one seperately, a good one will be
$75-$100, I think. (sorry I'm not checking pricewatch for everything )

If you want to get a new CPU . . . depending on what RAM you have, I'd suggest an xp2400 if
you have pc2100 right now, so you don't have to buy new RAM. If it's pc1600, you'll have to
buy new RAM anyway, so I'd say any of xp2400, 2500, or 2600, depending on how much money
you want to spend, just compare the prices at purchase time. Maybe at that time even xp2700 or
2800 might be cheap enough . . . . If you buy RAM, pc2700 will do the job, no need for pc3200.
As for brand, any of Crucial, Corsair, Kingston, Geil, Mushkin, Samsung should be fine
. . . whatever price looks good . . . . I don't think you need to worry about buying 2 seperate
pieces of RAM, since the Dual-Channel featureof nForce2 boards doesn't make much difference.
I'd look more at price, but if there's not much difference in price, feel free to get 2 pieces.

of course you can go with others' suggestions, too
these are only my opinions, hope they help

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Roadee

2 months or so is a long time away when it comes to computer's. It is hard to say what new stuff will be out and how the market will go or if someone will get in a price war. Memory prices pretty much change day to day. I could easily give you a list of everything and the prices for them and give you a hell of a system, but in 2 months time, chances are you could get alot better stuff at the same price. Just my opinion, maybe you should ask this question when you have the money in hand and have had plenty of time to read all the different review's. Or maybe take a poll to find out what everyone's favorite online store is for buying there equipment, so that way you could check the prices with those particular sites, against the computer components that you are reading the reviews about. Another thing to look at would be what components are Alienware, Falcon Northwest and high end companies like that, putting into there system's? Alienware will give you a complete breakdown of what goes into there system's, and it is usually the most reliable and/or fastest stuff, same with most of the high end computer companies.

Hope this help's some. Because most of the suggestion's you are going to get are going to be real good suggestion.......but based on there personal experience, and most of the time it will be something different everytime, and then you will just be even more confused.

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We are born naked, wet, and hungry. Then things get worse.

WildChild

I personally like gigabyte boards ...they run here about 115/130 tops....the ati radeon card here at my price runs me about 260.00. Pending on your case aluminum case would be better but more expensive . The prices have dropped on the processors dramatically 3000+ is goin for 320.00. Samsung ddr 400 I get for anywhere between 66.00 and 75.00....you could put a pretty nice tower together for a 1,000.00.Audigy 2 card runnin about 100.00


My Specs:
Gigabyte GA-7VAXP Ultra
AMD 2700+
1.5 Gb Samsung DDR 400
2 120Gb Maxtor Harddrive
ATI Radeon 9700 128 Pro
Audigy 2
Logitech 5.1 Speakers
Pioneer 16xDVD
Tdk Indigo DVDR-RW
ImageQuest 17 Inch Digital/Analog

Veridian3

Over the past year i've tried a lot of hardware, firstly because i worked massive amounts of overtime at crazy money and secondly because i was trying to build myself a system i would be happy with for a while. I've actually ended up with 2.

(I've also been building 10 or so PC's for people in the last 18months so have had access to lots of hardware for them.)

I've tried: Athlon XP 1600+, 2000+, 2400+, 2500+(barton) . Soltek via 266 based board. Gigabyte via 333based board, Asus and msi sis 745 based boards, MSI 133a based board, Leadtek Nforce 2 based board.

Geforce 3 ti 200(x3) and 500, gf4 mx 440, ti4200 and 4600(x2), radeon 7500, 8500le(x2), 8500(x3), 9000, 9000pro, 9100, 9700, 9700pro(x5)

Samsung ddr 266 and 333. Twinmos 266 and 333, crucial 266 and 333
Rambus PC800

Intel p4 1.8, celeron 1.8, 2.0, p4 2.53. SIS 648 (asus and msi), Intel 845pesv, 850demv, abit bh7. And a soltek one that i cant remember- think it was a via chipset...

Various speeds and types of hard drive including IBM, Seagate, Western digital and maxtor.

Audigy, sb live, realtek onboard audio, c-media onboard audio and nforce onboard audio.

So i feel i can offer you some assistance


Basically i learned - keep away from Asus SIS motherboards - MSI in general, Samsung and twinmos ram, celerons...

I've ended up with these 2 systems (and if you go for these components you cant go wrong):

System 1: p4 2.53ghz, Abit BH7, Radeon 9700pro (crucial rev 3.0), 512mb DDR333 (Crucial), IBM Deskstar HD.

System 2: AXP2000+, Leadtek K7ncr18dm, Radeon 9700 (connect3d rev 3.0), 2x256mb DDR333(twinmos - to be changed to corsair asap), 1x IBM deskstar and 1x seagate.

The Athlon system scores almost the same as the p4 system when the 9700's are running at the same speed, and its not notacibly different in games. A 2500+ athlon does make a difference if you can afford it.
The p4 system is quite a bit faster at re-encoding DVD's before i burn them (i.e. backing up the source to HD, editing what i want to remove, recompiling and burning). The Radeons offer a far higher display quality in desktop/media (i.e DVD's and media player as well as general use). In games the colours are more vivid/vibrant on the Radeon. In terms of speed the only cards that didnt struggle on Unreal 2, Unrel Tournament 2003 (at res above 1024*768) were the ti4600 and 9700-9700pro, but as soon as you try aa/af on the radeons the quality of the games is so much better - i couldnt go back to a GF card. I said above stay away from Asus sis boards...i may have just been unlucky but they truely have been awful both on the amd and intel platforms. From asusboards.com it seems a lot of people feel the same. Memory is something that i only recently discovered is something you should be very choosy about. I have has so many bad downloads recently due to bad memory corrupting files. Its a good idea to spend a little extra on corsair. I havent noticed a lot of difference from the HD's performance wise (ata100 - 133) so thats not to important...an 8mb cache helps with DVD encoding and moving large files but not games. Noise wise the seagate drives have been the quietest - and for some strange reason the IBM's "feel" the most solid/reliable.

Any questions - let me know...

Stu

eyeguy616

Thanks a lot for your replies!
Change that "couple months" thing to very soon now. Oh, and I meant that the old SBLive! was staying put in the old system as it's not being updated anymore and it might be the thing that's been causing problems. Sorry I wasn't very clear.
I have plenty of harddrives and other things I can stuff the new comp with (look at my sig for my Dumpster). Overclocking is not something I see myself doing, but maybe. I've looked around some and came across these two seamingly good deals, but I haven't ordered anything yet. (hope these links work)
Here's the CPU. It's an "AMD Athlon XP 2400+ Thoroughbred 266FSB" for $110. Boxed.
Here's the motherboard. It's a "Leadtek WinFast K7NCR18D PRO nForce2" board, the one Asuka suggested, for $90. Boxed.

That's $200 so far. I'll probably wait for the video card as the prices will drop again when the new ones come out, and with this CPU and board, I'll be able to play games quite satisfactory with my current video card. Now I need to find the ram. What kind of ram would be best suited for this CPU? I'm only looking for 512 megs in two 256 meg sticks and I've seen many different kinds with different numbers (2100, 2700, 3200....) and different prices, usually getting higher as those numbers get higher.

Thanks for your help!
~eyeguy616
-hmph, it's a shame it's gotten more complicated now. I remember when I pieced together my current comp. It was so easy since there weren't so many different kinds of stuff to put in it! BAH!

Edit: Saw the news post on that ram, so I did a google search and found a couple places that have some good prices. Here and here. The first link simply goes to the website's ram selection page while the second is a link to a specific piece. What do y'all think?

Veridian3

Eyeguy616,

As i said above

"Memory is something that i only recently discovered is something you should be very choosy about. I have has so many bad downloads recently due to bad memory corrupting files. Its a good idea to spend a little extra on corsair."

Get corsair, you know what your getting then. There is nothing worse than downloading 3 iso's only to have them all being corrup because of bad memory. Corsair is a brand you can trust - Zardon will back me up on this issue...please dont skimp on ram.

As for the motherboard, the Leadtek board is great - i have the micro atx version in my athlon system and it runs 100% stable 100% of the time.

Stu

eyeguy616

Alright, I think I found a good deal on Corsair ram here. It's "Corsair Value Select 256MB PC2700 DDR 333MHz" for $35 in which I'll buy two of them. Seems like a good price.

~eyeguy616

Crash Override

if you are getting that nForce 2 board then I really suggest you look into getting the Corsair PC3200 Dual Channel kit

it will have 2 sticks of Low Latency PC3200 memory in it each 256MB for a total of 512 and since its made for dual channel will be faster than other memory

eyeguy616

Hmmm, did a search on the Corsair PC3200 Dual Channel kit, and I found some retailers. Ouch! $130 to $150 is a little too steep for me, since I probably won't ever overclock and I could get four of the other kind. I'm sure those are much faster than the $35 ones, but is there that much difference? I realize getting the fastest possible stuff is crucial to you guys, but I'm not looking to buy the fastest. (I wish I was though I really don't have up to $1000, it really is more like $500, sorry for not saying that earlier.... )
What about this one? There doesn't seem to be any brand on the page, but here's some of its description:
It's $35 as well, so what do y'all think?
~eyeguy616

Crazy Diamond

I would suggest going for PC2700 over PC3200, since the 2700s match the 333 FSB on the motherboard and thus basically equal the performance of the PC3200, where syncronisation to 400 has to take place.

Also, if you're looking to use the dual channel support, you might be best buying twin modules, where they sell you two identical sticks, which is required for dual channel thing to work properly.

scobywhru

You would be surprised at how easy it is to Overclock the nForce2 boards, and you don't have to run the CPU any faster just run the RAM at 200mhz DDR, and you could get more speed without running anything to far out of spec, except the board. Made my friend a computer, and running a 1700+ cpu at 1.9ghz with a max of 2.2ghz on a 200mhz FSB stable, which foughly equates to a 2400+ or better CPU, for only $50 all on a Abit NF7-S 2.0 board, and 2 sticks of OCZ 200mhz DDR RAM.

You can just hop in the BIOS and change the FSB and Multiplier and if it doesn't take it well just lower it, and if it won't start properly just clear the CMOS, took me only 30minutes to find the sweetspot for that CPU and it hasn't screwed up yet.

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Crash Override

that is why i suggested the PC3200 memory for him as that is the memory that comes in the corsair kits so why are you contradicting yourself?

and the reason for PC3200 is the fact that he will be future proof it will run at the 166FSB just fine without issues at all but if he ever does go for a 200MHz FSB then he will be ready for it without any problems

especially since if you have the right nForce 2 board you can overclock rather easily to a 200Mhz FSB if you lower the multiplier a bit so even if you are running the same frequency after you lower the multiplier and raise the FSB up to the 200 you will know your memory can handle it and will see an all around improvement

scobywhru

exactly thats what I was trying to say and got side tracked talking about overclocking

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Crazy Diamond

I agree with you both - I've just never been into overclocking. Always considered it too risky, as my PC cost a LOT of money to me

Roadee

Everyone is making really good points and suggestion's. But I have to disagree with your choice of CPU. Since you dont really want to get into over clocking....but you might in the future.....and you are picking the Nforce 2 board.......I think you would be better off getting a processor with the 166/333 fsb instead of the 2400/133. The 2500 Barton is just a little more in cost, and the Nforce 2 is basically optimized for the 333 fsb, as well as the memory you are looking at. Another suggestion would be to get a single stick of 512 XMS memory if you aren't wanting to spend the price for a matched set.....you would get basically the same performance.

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We are born naked, wet, and hungry. Then things get worse.

eyeguy616

While we're on memory, I found a bunch of deals on fast memory:
Here's a big listing! There are some seemingly great deals here, especially on real fast 512 meg sticks. $64 for a 400mhz 512 meg stick!
Here at NewEgg.com they have some good deals also.

Also, I found a link (on NewEgg) that has a cheap Athlon XP 2500+ Barton core (Retail Box) for $128, here. I'll probably get this one if it doesn't run out before I start buying.

Y'all have been a great help! I hope I can get all the stuff though.
~eyeguy616

Prefix

well for $1000 you could easily get the new 800fsb Asus mobo and either a geforce fx 5800 ultrea or an ATI 9800 Pro and then a new cpu, say a 3.06ghz if u shop around for the lowest price.

Asuka

Originally posted by Veridian3
Basically i learned - keep away from Asus SIS motherboards - MSI in general, Samsung and twinmos ram, celerons...

Geez, you really can't compare Samsung and TwinMos ram! While TwinMos really is utter crap, and I've already heard lots of complaints about it, Samsung ram is perfectly fine - my Samsung ram definitely works absolutely great, and I've never had the slightest problems with it. Also from others, I only heard good stuff about it. Probably you just got a bad ram module - that can happen with any manufacturer, with Crucial, Geil, Corsair, whatever. (Btw: "Geil" is the German word for "horny" )

Asuka

Originally posted by eyeguy616
Also, I found a link (on NewEgg) that has a cheap Athlon XP 2500+ Barton core (Retail Box) for $128, here. I'll probably get this one if it doesn't run out before I start buying.

I'd strongly recommend you to rather get a XP 2600+ (w/ 333 FSB, so it can run in sync w/ the DDR333 memory). The additional cache of the Barton is only of use if you do lots of video and audio editing and the like, for games 'n' stuff it's absolutely useless, and the Barton 2500+ is clocked whopping 233MHz less than the 2600+ (FSB333).

eyeguy616

Well, what if I stick with the Barton cpu and just overclock it a little? Would the Leadtek K7NCR18D Pro be able to overclock it normally, ie. with multiplier and FSB? Also, this ram stick will probably be the one I buy since it's very fast and not as expensive as others.

~eyeguy616
-here's a tally:
$90 motherboard + $130 cpu + $85 512meg ram stick = $305!
All I need to do now is find the new case with powersupply.....

Crash Override

just wanted to mention the difference in performance between 1 512 stick and the 2 256 sticks running in dual channel is not the same as someone mentioned above

there is a definite difference in performance

Vampyromaniac

I suppose it depends on what you mean . . .
In benchmarks, sure there is a difference, albeit very small.
In real world use, I'd say that noticeable difference is almost none.
Keep in mind, that memory bandwidth is foremost limited by the FSB in AthlonXP systems.

The theoretical 6400 MB/s that nForce2 provides at DualDDR400 does not mean you'll see anything remotely close to that.
Even if an FSB is overclocked to 200MHz, it only provides 3200MB/s bandwidth, and that will be the bottleneck.
The most that running memory in Dual-Channel will do (on AthlonXP,) is add a small amount of efficiency.

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Crash Override

i estimate it would add about 10% since the dual channel would allow "100%" bandwidth usage for the FSB you have it set at.

right now with my PC2700 stick of ram the best I get it about 88% efficiency

Asuka

Originally posted by eyeguy616
Well, what if I stick with the Barton cpu and just overclock it a little? Would the Leadtek K7NCR18D Pro be able to overclock it normally, ie. with multiplier and FSB? Also, this ram stick will probably be the one I buy since it's very fast and not as expensive as others.

Bad idea... DDR400 isn't of any use with a 2600+ Cpu w/ 333MHz FSB. Actually, you'll get even less performance than with DDR333 memory, because memory and Cpu is running asynchronous
Really bad idea no. 2 is getting one 512MB stick - you definitely should rather get 2*256MB as this will enable you using the DualChannel feature, which will give you a nice performance boost

scobywhru

Yeah but the Nice thing aobut the nForce 2 boards is you can just lower the multiplier on the Athlon XP if its one of the Thuroughbred b.. or whatever they are called, and run the memory and FSB at whatever the fastest they will run. This will give a nice performance increase, and you won't be running the cpu out of speck, you just want to make sure you have the latest BIOS for the board so its less likely to cause any problems, and then the 266mhz FSB athlons run better then the 333mhz FSB ones, it has to do with one of the L12 bridges I think, atleast for the Abit boards, and thats why you can take an athlon XP 1700 and run it on a 220mhz FSB, your mileage may vary please play responsibly

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Vampyromaniac

No Crash, but I understand how people are led to believe that from all the Dual-Channel hype out there. Heh, 100% usage is probably impossible

You can check out some extensive tests performed by our own Shuki, and see his results here:
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/showthre...0&pagenumber=2

Basically, at his 205 FSB tests, max theoretical bandwidth is 3280 MB/s . . .
He got 3091 with 2 DIMMs in single channel mode,
. . . and 3157 in Dual Channel mode . . . 2.1% higher

The percentage of max bandwidth used, went from 94.2% to 96.3% . . . still not 100%
And this is just Sandra . . . .

In 3DMark2001, he went from 16382 to 16558 . . . 1.1% higher
In 3DMark03, he went from 5024 to 5047 . . . 0.5% higher

And, of course, I'm guessing in real-world usage, the noticeable difference would be none.

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