Author Topic: New box, looking for suggestions. (Read 899 times)

mrsid2 · « **Reply #15 on:** January 29, 2003, 07:17:25 AM »

Leadtek makes good Nvidia cards image qualitywise. They have quality rf-filters which affect the 2D-desktop image quality.

I value 2D desktop quality way more than 3D quality as I have to read and work with the box.

bloom25 · « **Reply #16 on:** January 29, 2003, 11:48:26 AM »

The nForce 2 chipset is a signifcant improvement to the nForce 1 (which is an excellent chipset). It supports 333 MHz FSB Athlons (2700+ and above) and is significantly faster.

My current favorite board is the Asus A7N8X Deluxe. I recommend the Deluxe board for it's far superior feature set. It has Serial ATA, 6 channel Dolby Digital sound, dual Lan (gigabit option), IEEE1394 (firewire), and USB 2.0 all included for only about $20 more than the non-Deluxe board.

Skuzzy, that AMD user who had problems with a Radeon 9500, do you happen to know what board he was using? I'll bet it was a VIA based board. (Probably KT400) The AGP 8X feature of the KT400 chipset seems to be incompatible with ATIs 8x implementation. (Forcing AGP 4x in the bios will work around the problem BTW.)

It's because of things like this that I no longer recommend VIA chipset based boards. I have yet to encounter a hardware related conflict with the nForce series boards.

jonnyb · « **Reply #17 on:** January 29, 2003, 12:53:06 PM »

I have both a VIA KT400-based board, and an nForce2 board. The nForce2 is leaps and bounds ahead of the VIA chipset. Definitely spend your money on the nForce2 board. My suggestion is the Asus A7N8X Deluxe. It's got bells and whistles you'll probably never use, but it is solid as a rock.

The graphics card debates will rage on forever. One company or another will be releasing a new product every couple months to try and stay ahead of the curve. Current top of the line chipsets are the Ti4600 from nVidia, and the 9700 Pro from ATI. As was mentioned previously, the ATI card may be a better buy, simply because it supports DirectX 9. However, look at the software you're playing on a regular basis. Currently there are no games that utilize the features of DirectX 9. The Ti4600 will save you a buck or two over the 9700 Pro. As for manufacturers, Leadtek is my recommendation.

For an AMD system, I'd spend the extra money and go with one of the new Thoroughbred-B chips on the 333MHz FSB. This will offer significant advantages over the older Thoroughbred-A core. Not only is it better in heat dissipation (larger die size) but the extra horsepower on the front side bus helps you tweak out the most from your AMD chip.

Memory is another area to consider. With the nForce2 boards, you can utilize dual channel features. Definitely buy good memory. Mushkin and Corsair XMS get my top picks. Go with 2x256 sticks of either PC2700, or if you want the PC3200. The PC3200 doesn't offer too much of an advantage over the 2700, so if you want to save a couple bucks, stick with the 2700.

Approximate prices listed below:

Asus A7N8X Deluxe -- $126
AMD Athlon 2600+/333 MHz FSB -- $275
2x256 Meg Corsair XMS PC2700 -- $200
Leadtek A250 Ultra Ti4600 -- $240

A couple more things to consider with these components are:

1) Get a good cooling solution. Something that is either pure copper, or a copper insert into an aluminum sink. Swiftech makes great stuff. Along with this, get a good fan. Something that won't make your PC sound like an ME262 spooling up...
2) Thermal grease. Invest the 10 bucks in some Arctic Silver III.
3) Power supply. Make sure you've got at least a 300 watt supply from a trusted name. I'd suggest getting an Antec 400 Watt True Power supply (although it will set you back about $100). The 300 Watt version should cost about 60-70.

Hope some of this helps.

bloom25 · « **Reply #18 on:** January 29, 2003, 01:11:03 PM »

Pfunk, it really depends on what hardware you use if you are going to see problems with certain VIA chipsets. I've built more systems than I can count with VIA chipset based boards. ( Using the KT133, KT133a, KT266a, KT333, and KT400 - Asus A7V, A7V133, A7V266-E, A7V333, and now one A7V8X based system.) Generally they are ok, but to be honest they are not quite up to the same quality standards as the nVidia nForce 1 & 2, AMD 760 series, Intel BX, i845PE, and i850E series.

A recent example that I mentioned above is the KT400. It does not work with many DDR 400 modules available and its AGP 8x implementation does not work with the newer Radeon cards at 8x speeds. The KT133a (or more specifically the 686b southbridge used with the KT133a) had serious PCI bus issues which caused data corruption until VIA released a patch that caps PCI bus utilization at around 90 MB/sec, which has a negative impact on performance. (To be fair, Intel does the same thing on the i845 and i850 series chipsets.) I haven't had any real problems with the KT266a and KT333 based systems I've built.

Skuzzy, have you tried the nForce chipset yet?

mrsid2 · « **Reply #19 on:** January 29, 2003, 01:14:24 PM »

Bloom most of the AMD760 based systems had the same prob since they used 686b (pthui)

I cursed that chipset to hell after corrupting 80gigs of data on that POS. It corrupted every backup attempt I made and finally the raid broke. A happy day.

bloom25 · « **Reply #20 on:** January 29, 2003, 01:55:49 PM »

Abit KG7 by chance mrsid?

mrsid2 · « **Reply #21 on:** January 29, 2003, 01:57:10 PM »

Pthui!

Dont mention that word aloud!

CavemanJ · « **Reply #22 on:** January 29, 2003, 04:08:18 PM »

Aye JB, I know about cooling. Already looking at different HSF setups. Going with an Antec case and PSU, so no worries there. Built this box in an Antec and love the airflow through it. And RAM is gonna be at least 2 x 256 (had nForce in mind when I started looking

), maybe 2 x 512 if I can swing it.

I'm liking what I'm finding with the nForce2 chipset. I'm really happy with the nForce board this machine is built on, and if nForce2 is that big an improvement I think that's what I'll go with.
Ok, the Asus A7N8X Deluxe and the MSI K7N2 are 2 boards I'm looking at. Any other recommendations to check out?
Yeah Skuzzy, what bloom said, have you tried an nForce chipset?

Looks like the GF4 wins out for the vid card, and thanks for the all pros/cons here. I think it'll do what I want just fine and save a few bucks. Then next year I'll be askin again and passing the GF4 to the wife's machine

Leadtek huh? I'll give'em a look. What about Gainward? A friend of mine swears by his Gainward card (course he rebuilt his system 3 times before figuring out he had a bunk harddrive too

).

Skuzzy · « **Reply #23 on:** January 29, 2003, 05:13:59 PM »

I have not had time to try the NForce boards, and that is why I deferred to bloom25 on the AMD question.

I keep waiting for a stripped down version of the board, as I hate to pay for parts I will never use. They just dissipate power, but that's just me.

Actually, I am looking really hard at the new E7502 Intel based motherboards. They look interesting.

Pfunk · « **Reply #24 on:** January 29, 2003, 05:29:39 PM »

Leadtek cards are excellent specifially the WinFast cards with the silver heatsink and fan over the GPU, you can actually buy a GF4Ti4200 and overclock it using the "coolbits" registry hack to near 4600 levels. My roomate has a gainward card and it crapped out on him just last week, he had it for only 4 months. There are lots of threads in the AMDMB.com website as to Gainward cards doing this quite frequently. As for the RAM, if you can wait a week or so there are strong rumors floating around on the internet that the prices of DDR memory are about to drop significantly. Oh yeah and buy all this stuff from NEWEGG, you might pay more than you would other places but you cant beat their shipping, customer service, etc. Aforementioned friend RMA'ed it back to newegg no questions asked and had a new card in hand 4 days later. If you decide to buy elsewhere YOU MUST VISIT http://WWW.RESELLERRATINGS.COM and research the company you plan to buy from, pretty scary reading what some of those companies on pricewatch do to you. Newegg has a 9.5 something lifetime rating.

Moloch · « **Reply #25 on:** January 29, 2003, 05:40:22 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by ebgb
Note from Microsoft:

Sidewinder joysticks are not compatible with Via chipsets.

I'll be researching an Nforce2 board.

microsoft released a patch for this a long time ago. before the cougar, i was using a msff2. worked like a champ after the patch.

CavemanJ · « **Reply #26 on:** January 29, 2003, 06:12:38 PM »

Pfunk thanks for that ratings link! I'll deffinately be checking out anyone other than newegg or tcwo I might buy from. Good experiences with these two, and tcwo ships up to 150lb by fed ex ground for $7.