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Upgrading, woo woo!
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 Re: Upgrading, woo woo!
Posted by ishbog on Mon Sep 12th at 4:03am 2005

finally upgrading mobo, cpu, gfx card, and ram

MSI K8N Neo4/SLI Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail 124
BFG Tech BFGR68256GTOCX Geforce 6800GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail 309
CORSAIR ValueSelect 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model VS1GBKIT400 - Retail 89
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor Model ADA3500BPBOX - Retail 219

total: 741

comments, suggestions, reccommendations? $700s about all i can spend atm.




www.nysteo.com

If animals weren't meant to be eaten, then they wouldn't be so delicious and easy to catch!

Face it: if crime didn't pay, there would be very few criminals.



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 Re: Upgrading, woo woo!
Posted by Nickelplate on Mon Sep 12th at 4:32am 2005

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Why did you have to get dad's permission?




I tried sniffing coke, but the ice cubes kept getting stuck in my nose.
http://www.dimebowl.com



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 Re: Upgrading, woo woo!
Posted by satchmo on Mon Sep 12th at 4:43am 2005

? quote:
Why did you have to get dad's permission?


Probably because Dad has to pay for most of the upgrades.

But congratulations. It's a pretty good system. It's not top of the line, but it's good enough to play any game currently out.



"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." -- Toulouse-Lautre, Moulin Rouge



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 Re: Upgrading, woo woo!
Posted by wizard james on Mon Sep 12th at 4:46am 2005

for 939 motherboards stick to either dfi or asus.

maybe change the ram.. ocz is alot better then corsiar nowdays..

what psu? u forgot to say that.. i am guessing this is a large upgrade.. + most 939 motherboards need a 24 pin plug with the psu..

i will watch this closely as i build computers for my job, and try to give as much as i can




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 Re: Upgrading, woo woo!
Posted by satchmo on Mon Sep 12th at 4:48am 2005

? quote:
i build computers for my job


That's a pretty cool job. I build other people's computers for fun.



"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." -- Toulouse-Lautre, Moulin Rouge



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 Re: Upgrading, woo woo!
Posted by Crono on Mon Sep 12th at 4:51am 2005

Nice.

About time someone put a list together on their own that was reasonably priced!

Only one suggestion! Change out that duel 512 pair for a 1 gb stick. Save memory slots and have a few extra cycles.

The nice thing about that board is that it's so scalable. Supports 64, FX51, FX53, FX55, FX57 (I think), and X2.


Blame it on Microsoft, God does.



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 Re: Upgrading, woo woo!
Posted by wil5on on Mon Sep 12th at 8:00am 2005

On the topic of ram, when working to a budget, in my experience, its fairly safe to stick with generic ram (provided you run everything at stock speed). Its the same chips anyway, just packaged by another company. 2 512mb sticks are cheaper than a 1gb last time I checked, by all means go with branded uber fast gig sticks if you want, but youre already over budget.


"If you talk at all during this lesson, you have detention. Do you understand?"
- My yr11 Economics teacher



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 Re: Upgrading, woo woo!
Posted by Forceflow on Mon Sep 12th at 9:57am 2005

woojay.


:: Forceflow.be :: Nuclear Dawn developer



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 Re: Upgrading, woo woo!
Posted by Madedog on Mon Sep 12th at 11:54am 2005

Mm... good s**t! I'd recommend you'd rather get an GTX 7800, you have a perfect SLI for the future that way...



HL2 tutorials 'n' stuff: http://madedog.pri.ee
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 Re: Upgrading, woo woo!
Posted by Crono on Mon Sep 12th at 7:39pm 2005

? quote:
On the topic of ram, when working to a budget, in my experience, its fairly safe to stick with generic ram (provided you run everything at stock speed). Its the same chips anyway, just packaged by another company. 2 512mb sticks are cheaper than a 1gb last time I checked, by all means go with branded uber fast gig sticks if you want, but youre already over budget.


Yes.

Pretty much all you want to ensure is that there's a warranty. Most have lifetime warranties, so even if something happens, you get replacements (as long as it's not your fault, as with any warranty).

It's odd, about a month ago, Gig sticks were cheap ($70-$80). Now they're all over $90 (All USD). Right now the cheapest I found was $89.99 on zipzoomfly.com

Madedog, no, that'd be a bad idea. He can always get a 7800, because of the board. In all actuality, by the time he needs to upgrade the video card there will be far better cards. As I said, that's a nice board for future upgrades (at the moment)


Blame it on Microsoft, God does.



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 Re: Upgrading, woo woo!
Posted by ishbog on Mon Sep 12th at 8:58pm 2005

i have to pay for it all, im 17 in high school. my dad is always making me convince him about stuff like this... hl2, mp3 player, etc.

i would like a 7800, but does it really matter? whats the perf difference from a 6800gt at ultra speeds and a 7800, same price?

i know ill prolly need a new cpu fan, ill get a zalman. a nice zalman.

is dual-channel faster than a single stick?

zipzoomfly is the same price for the same config, cept the gfx card is an MSI instead of a BFG. the bfg is $9 more, so its actually $9 more on newegg. but im fine with that.



www.nysteo.com

If animals weren't meant to be eaten, then they wouldn't be so delicious and easy to catch!

Face it: if crime didn't pay, there would be very few criminals.



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 Re: Upgrading, woo woo!
Posted by $loth on Mon Sep 12th at 9:39pm 2005

I would change the ram to Geil value, no other suggestions really seems good.




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 Re: Upgrading, woo woo!
Posted by ishbog on Tue Sep 13th at 4:06am 2005

ahhhh, why? whats better about that?


www.nysteo.com

If animals weren't meant to be eaten, then they wouldn't be so delicious and easy to catch!

Face it: if crime didn't pay, there would be very few criminals.



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 Re: Upgrading, woo woo!
Posted by satchmo on Tue Sep 13th at 4:23am 2005

I still trust premium RAMS. I got burnt on some cheap refurbished RAMS once. They didn't even allow my computer to boot up.



"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." -- Toulouse-Lautre, Moulin Rouge



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 Re: Upgrading, woo woo!
Posted by ishbog on Tue Sep 13th at 4:34am 2005

but corsair is good, to my knowledge, right?


www.nysteo.com

If animals weren't meant to be eaten, then they wouldn't be so delicious and easy to catch!

Face it: if crime didn't pay, there would be very few criminals.



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 Re: Upgrading, woo woo!
Posted by Crono on Tue Sep 13th at 5:08am 2005

Corsair is as good as anyone else (Although, far too many people think it's the best, which is rediculous, since it doesn't really matter). You're buying new parts anyway. I would actually suggest finding something cheaper if you can. For the most part the only difference is who put the ram card together, most all ram uses the same chips. As I said, as long as you've got a lifetime warranty: don't worry, you're set.

Refurbished? Satch, never buy refurbished parts and bitch, you have no right to bitch: it was refurbished!

Geil ram is more expensive duel channel ram (mostly). Not what you want at the moment. The other thing is, I haven't seen anything saying that 2 duel channel sticks of ram (lets say 1 GB each) are better then the exact same ram, but single channel with four slots filled. Because, if you use Duel channel you are limited to half of the boards slots. And the slots only support 1 GB each.

In your situation, if you still bought two 512 sticks (I really do recommend getting 1 gb stick, it's worth the extra, what? 99 cents) but they were duel channel, that's all the ram your computer could take with those sticks installed.

In any case it would limit you to 2GB of ram, maximum (Installing more disables duel channel mode ... in which case, what was the point?). The speed isn't going to make up for 2 GB of ram, it doesn't matter how much faster the memory access is it'll make virtual memory more mandatory, which is slower then both options because of the HDD accessing.

You have a good set up. A lot of people don't realize you're going for economy. If you want to go for the MSI video card you mentioned as opposed to the BFG, that'd be something you should look into. MSI stuff is packaged with a lot of stuff (games and such). BFG is really just too expensive, it started out as an economy "good stuff" brand ... then it got popular and now it's more expensive then some of the big boys ... for no reason. All the cards will pump out the same power, they're all the same chipset, for example, You should go for most bang for your buck. And between that MSI card and the BFG, I'd choose the MSI. As for your inquiry on the different between a 6800 Ultra and the 7800 (GTX I assume), there's a large difference, the 7800 is much more powerful. It may not be leaps and bounds in regards to GPU speed, but it's a completely new graphics card architecture with implementation of a lot of stuff that's up and coming (radiosity, for example), which are things the 6800 series doesn't support.

On top of that it has more video ram, which will always make things easier.

But, it's far too expensive for your system at the moment, a 6800 Ultra is a good choice, if you're not that enticed about maxing out every game that comes along your way, you may want to invest in a GT or something, but I don't know if they're much cheaper now.

You don't need a new CPU fan. The one that comes with the CPU will cool it as it needs. I thought I remember someone mentioning you "should" and that's just not true.

However! The video cards recently, much more when talking about an Ultra or 7800 or any of the equivalent ATi cards, require TONS of power. I think the power supply "recommendation" for SLi'd 7800s (from the manufacture) is 550W! That's a lot of power. So, be wary. I think the GT only needs maybe 400W That's still probably over compensating.

Note, I just noticed you ARE getting a GT! Sorry about that. <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_smile.gif">


Blame it on Microsoft, God does.



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 Re: Upgrading, woo woo!
Posted by Nickelplate on Tue Sep 13th at 5:09am 2005

Kingston Technologies has an unlimited Lifetime warranty. I don't know how good it is, but at work we used to send thier NIC's back all the timefor free, and they'd send us a new one back.


I tried sniffing coke, but the ice cubes kept getting stuck in my nose.
http://www.dimebowl.com



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 Re: Upgrading, woo woo!
Posted by ishbog on Tue Sep 13th at 9:06pm 2005

well, im lookin here at 1gb GEIL stick, but all the 1gb sticks on newegg have a CAS of 3. thats not cool. i saw some GEIL 1gb, dual channel w/head spreaders. 2 bucks less than the corsair, but while the CAS is 2.5, the timing is 2.5-4-4-8. would this be better than the corsairs, and are they overclockable?

ive read several negative reviews of the MSI mobo just now... but i think its still fine. with soundblaster 8-channel audio built in? meh.

and the BFG is overclocked to a core of 370, from 350, does that not really make much of a difference? for $10, is that worth it? and since its overclocked, id totally take it to ultra speeds and the warranty should still be good. yeh?



www.nysteo.com

If animals weren't meant to be eaten, then they wouldn't be so delicious and easy to catch!

Face it: if crime didn't pay, there would be very few criminals.



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 Re: Upgrading, woo woo!
Posted by Crono on Tue Sep 13th at 9:28pm 2005

No, overclocking anything voids the warranty if it damaged by overclocking. And honestly, almost never gives you enough performance boost. Come on ... 20 Mhz? that's not enough to warrant it (And the reason it doesn't come OC'd higher is because it will probably damage it).

I don't trust online reviews. They're all by the same people who think the CPU is responsible for all the speed of a system.

CAS timing of 3 isn't that bad. It depends though, seriously, because, if it says it goes 400Mhz, it'll go that speed (on the bus of course), the difference between a CAS of 2.5 and 3 is really ... nothing. If you want to get faster speeds in this regard I'd suggest, at some point, look for a faster HDD.

With duel channel ram, it's really iffy right now. Less versions work with less boards, for example. (It'll work with what you've got listed though) But, again, you will only be able to put in half the ram ... or the duel channel ram will only go on one channel (making go about half the speed ... as it would appear). So, if you plan on upgrading ... go cheaper right now, it'll cost less in the end.

It's your choice though.


Blame it on Microsoft, God does.



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 Re: Upgrading, woo woo!
Posted by rs6 on Tue Sep 13th at 11:53pm 2005

For RAM PNY is my personal favorite. I suggest getting that, it is usually cheaper than the kingston/corsair stuff.




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