Upgrading time

[col]

Mrs col wants a new computer for her birthday so I'm gonna build her a composite system. She's currently got a 800 Duron W98 based system.

She gets

a shiny new box - just ordered her a Coolermaster Centurion 5 - black and silver. Very cool in several senses.

17" TFT monitor - havent decided what yet. Black and silver obviously. Colour is most important for her.

New black keyboard and mouse. Cant decide whether to go wireless or not.

My old Asus A7N8 + Athlon 2500 XP + 1Gb memoery + MSI 5600 video card


I get to put an new core into my old box.

I've decided to go Athlon 64 - especially with 64bit XP coming out now.

Probably the 3200 - thats about the sweet spot pricewise.
939 board + nforce4 - as futureproof as possible right now
- DFI Lanparty
- Asus A8N - SLI
- Abit AV8 3rd eye

1Gb PC3200 memory

PCIe 6800 card - dont know which?

Any suggestions?

 

[CruddyLeper]

Yes - check the bezels on the optical drives fit the Coolermaster case. Had a situation on a different forum where a Coolermaster bezel wouldn't fit a Coolermaster case - poor guy had to rip the thing off, which isn't going to chuff Mrs. Col. Ditto floppy drives.

Wireless keyboard/Mouse? New Audio amp (matching black and silver, obviously).

Would advise steering clear of Samsung TFTs. Cheap but flickery, I've been told.

I've stuck mostly to the little things, because they matter much more to women.

New PSU for your machine to power 2 SLI cards?

SATA drive for your machine? Apparently a little tricky to setup on A8V.

Apparently dual core Opterons will be available for 939, although don't expect better gaming from them till next year. So by the time you get one (and long, long, long before I get one) they'll actually be worth it for gamers.

 

[Zakharov]

Probably the 3200 - thats about the sweet spot pricewise.

The 3500+ and 3800+ have dropped in price recently. Basically you should buy the fastest cpu you can afford.

PCIe 6800 card - dont know which?

The 6800GT is the best price/performance card in the 6800 range, though the standard 6800 is a good card if you aren't keen on spending close to $400 on a graphics card. You could also look at the 6600GT, which is an excellent card for the price.

I wouldn't recommend SLI unless you plan to put two 6800 Ultras together now. The marketing line is that you can add the second card at a later date when they are cheaper. The reason they will be cheaper is because a new range (7x00?) will have been released, and one of those cards will be far more powerful than two 6x00s in SLI.

 

[Zelig]

DFI Lanparty Ultra-D
I have this board, and I can say it's the best motherboard I've ever owned. If you want to save money, and aren't overclocking at all, you could do fine with another board though.

Make sure you're getting a power supply capable of powering your system properly. For the DFI board, you must have a power supply with a 24 pin connector, and something over 400 watts is strongly recommended.

The 3200+ is good, so's the 3000+ and 3500+, depending on how much you want to spend/save. I'm happily running my 3000+ at 2.4 Ghz on stock cooling.

Memory - 1 Gb is good. Keep in mind that you won't be able to run 4x512Mb without significantly slowing speeds down, so if you ever want to go for 2Gb, you'd be much better of with 2x1Gb sticks.

6800 GT is the best price point for the 6800 cards. I'm partial to eVGA cards myself, but they should all do you fine.

CruddyLeper: Opteron's won't ever be released for socket 939. The 4000+ is the last single core Athlon 64, everything after that will be dual-core, though the Athlon FX line will continue as a single core solution. Socket M2 is the next upgrade after S939... should be released in late 2006 IIRC, with DDR2 support.

 

[Zakharov]

CruddyLeper: Opteron's won't ever be released for socket 939.

I would like to note that Opterons are not designed for desktop pcs, they are for servers and workstations.

 

[CruddyLeper]

CruddyLeper: Opteron's won't ever be released for socket 939. The 4000+ is the last single core Athlon 64, everything after that will be dual-core, though the Athlon FX line will continue as a single core solution. Socket M2 is the next upgrade after S939... should be released in late 2006 IIRC, with DDR2 support.

Never say never.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/05/amd_opteron_socket_939/