Ok, In a week or so (When I'm back from Reading festival ) I am going to order... CPU: AMD AthlonXP 3200 Motherboard: ASUS A7N8X Deluxe Memory: Geil 2x512Mb PC3200 Golden Dragon Graphics: 256Mb ATI Radeon 9800 Pro HDD: 120Gb Maxtor D/Max ATA133/7200 8Mb Heatsink: Zalman 7000cu (Not sure on this yet) All this housed in my lovley Lian Li PC91 So, what changes would you make? And whaddya think?
personally i would get a P4C as they are pretty much the undisputed kings of overclocking at the moment, either a 2.4 or a 2.6 would do nicely with some DDR500 but if youre an AMD man then go AMD although i have had problems with Geil, it didnt like to run at its rated speed unless i bumped the voltages WAY up to 3v which is a bit silly. i would go for corsair but theres OCZ and mushkin as well making great ram.
Wolf - I've been thinking about getting some new kit for a while now, and I've always considered myself a loyal AMD fan. However, I've read hundreds and hundreds of threads in forums like this recently, and the general consensus is that (at the moment) Intel is faster. Apparently, a lower model numbers (1700+, 1800+ etc) the perfomance of AMD chips corresponds pretty well to their similarly named Intel counterpart (1.7 GHz, 1.8 GHz etc). When you get to the higher model numbers however the perfomance gap opens up, and it seems to be AMD that loses out. When you look at the advantages that the current Intel chips have, it's not hard to see why they perform better : 800 MHz FSB Hyperthreading Better use of dual channel RAM As Mister_tad says, a 2.4C or 2.6C will give you the best overclocking performance available at the moment (3 GHz + on stock cooling!). Having said all of that, if I was going to go for AMD, the A7N8X would be the board I'd go for .... Also, have you considered a WD Raptor HDD? I know they're not big enough to act as your only HDD, but they're ideal for putting your OS & Apps. on. I'll shut up now, but I hope you enjoy the festival (I was at the Womad festival in Reading a few weeks ago, and it absolutely pi**ed down Friday and Saturday!) Olly
well i def wouldnt get an amd! I mean i am aloya;l amd fan but lately tbh there processers suck compared to canterwood!! if u want top of the range get a DFI lan party mobo or abit 1c7-g! but dont forget the abit max 3 is on its way and so far from wat i can tell it looks to be a hell of a board!! graphics card is a gd pick but tbh u dont need 256mb u wont really notice the diff as of yet wo get 128mb version save urself some money and get the wd 120 gb and a wd rapter for ur os and apps that will be a hard system to beat when up and goin not to mention expensive but well if u want the best u gotta shell out these days! o yea nearly forgot go for corsair xms 3500 its gr8 stuff as i have it myself and i can tell u its a gd overclocker and brill even on stock speeds! gd LUck keep me updated
I don't know...For value, AMD is still king. They recently just cut prices on almost all of their chips, while Intel is holding steady. I just recently got a Barton 2500+ for my mediaPC in my sig, and it cost me $96 Retail on Newegg. As for your other choices... The Asus A7N8X Deluxe mobo is sweet! Great choice there, so many options for overclocking. If you can, get a Rev. 2.0 board. The other options look good to me, I have some Geil 256 DDR3200 ram that works fine stock, I don't know about the Golden Dragons though. I would expect that they would be good performers. The only other thing is maybe changing the HD from the maxtor to a Seagate 120gig. The seagates are almost silent compared to WDs and Maxtors. Hope this helps! David
true, for lower end processors amd has better performance for the price but the 3200+ actually costs more than a 3GHz Northwood C. regardless of what amd want you to think about their "performance rating" of 3200, its bollocks. a 3GHz northwood C will outperform a 3200+ in most if not all situations. and canterwood for P4s is nice but offers no performance gains over a PAT enabled Springdale board, such as an asus P4P800 series, and the springdale one costs a LOT less. if you do go down the road of intel then make sure to get some ram with plenty of headroom for overclocking, the best you can afford, as it will come in handy. yo would be better off going for a slower processor than the 3ghz and spend a bit more on the ram as a decently clocked 2.4 with some fast ram will blitz a stock 3.0ghz.
I had problems running the GeIL Golden Dragon with my A7N8X Dlx. It would fail Prime95 after just a few seconds into the torture test. I'm running corsair now and everything is fine.
One of the main reasons I'm going for AMD is the value to be honest... Well I'll think about this while im at the festival, same old bloody AMD vs Intel!!!
Save yourself some money and get a barton 2500+ for £69 and a single channel ddr mobo like ASUS A7N8X-X for £60, also a 128MB Radeon 9800 and you will have about 75% (100% if you overclock) of the power for about 1/2 the price. Then when things settle down add the money you saved for the intel or AMD chips.
I agree with the guy above, but I would change one thing, the mobo even tho the A7N8X-X is a good cheap board it doesn't have Dual Channel DDR capabilty, now although amd's DC architecture is no where near as effcient as intels or the new opterons it does however help give a nice performance increase the Abit NF7-S V2.0 is only £20 more and mines currently hitting 240~250FSB in dual channel . If the Abit is not to your taste then an Epox (8RDA3G/+) or Asus (A7N8X deluxe V2.0) equivalent would suffice . Make sure you get a 2500+ as the are pretty easy to get to 2.2GHz (3200+ speed) without adjusting the CPU voltage and they cost under a £ton . If your going to overclock don't go cheap on the RAM every one does it they get a great OC'ing board a good OC'ing chip and buy cheap generic ram . If you do this you will end up disapointed as generic PC3200 will barely cope with 200FSB (DDR400) get some twinmos or corsair(if you can afford em) andmake sure you get two sticks for dual channel either 2x256 or 2x512 Good luck matey
Single channel will have very little effect on the performance on most things on some its even faster just visit here or here, so unless you want the extra features of the ultra then I would save yourself the money.
So it's not worth £20 extra in your opinion then? not to mention having nV soundstorm too, heck my HSF cost twice that extra amount lol.
If you read what I said unless you want the extra features of the ultra then save yourself the money. Most ultras around £85-100 wheres a normal 400 can be had for as little as £40 (see dabs value) which is a little more than £20 you have said.
Sure it is worth the £20 extra (if it's £20 more but usually the difference is more like £25-30) but if only if your going to use the features.
Yeah thats true m8 add shipping and you get £25-30 doh I got mine here http://www.cpucitystore.co.uk/ the service is first rate and got a discount on my first purchase (bit of a blagger me ) The board I got NF7-S V2.0 hits 250FSB with no mods completely stock too . Definetly recommend them. Btw - DABS.com are stupidly expensive
Hmm dabsvalue by any chance? what brand thats a pretty rock bottom price . I bought my last gear in 2002 from dabs way too expensive didn't know about all these cheap smaller companies then
