Author Topic: Upgrade. Experts pls have a look. (Read 632 times)

LUPO · « **on:** May 16, 2003, 11:19:57 AM »

Hi all.
Finally going for an upgrade.
Those are the components I'm gonna buy:

AMD Athlon XP 2400+ (Socket A)
ASUS A7N8X NForce2-S AGP8X DualChDDR400
XFX FX5600 128Mb DDR VIVO DVI AGP8X
COOLER MASTER HHCL61 SilentHeatPipe Sock.A XP2.X
COOLER MASTER Thermal Sensor CaseFan (8x8)
MAXTOR D.MaxPlus9 6Y060L0 60GB U-ATA133 7.2RPM 2MB
2 X DIMM 256 MB DDR 400Mhz (PC3200) 33,00

Any suggestion?
More or less the price is about 800 euros.
Better way to spend my money?
I don't know much about the vid card the seller suggested me. How is it?
Is it important to switch to Win XP? May I keep my old sweet win98?
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Greets,
LUPO

Sixpence · « **Reply #1 on:** May 16, 2003, 11:25:10 AM »

mobo a7n8x...

Get the deluxe http://directron.com/a7n8x.html

BTW, I'm no expert:)............But I did sleep at a holiday inn express last night:D

AKS\/\/ulfe · « **Reply #2 on:** May 16, 2003, 11:34:15 AM »

For the vid card: What's the price of the ATI 9700Pro where you are?

If it's the same as the FX5600, go with the 9700Pro... apparently they are on the same plane in terms of performance and features, and I've heard nothing but good things about the 9700Pro. The GeForce FX series, OTOH, doesn't really appear to be "next generation" over the GeForce Ti series... and there's apparently some screwing around with the drivers on the FX series, cheating in the scores that 3DMark produces (nothing new really, nVidia has been doing that with the GF3 and GF4 drivers for a while now.... only way they can say that the new drivers improve performance by 15-30%)

With that system, you *CAN* stick with Windows 98... do you have many USB devices? If you do, and you get the "Unknown Device" problem when installing those devices or upon bootup, you will have to update to Win98Second Edition (free upgrade I believe, through MS website) and get the updated uhcd.sys file for Win98SE.

Certain optical USB trackballs, mice, printers, scanners and the USB Saitek X36&X45 will produce these problems.

The rest looks pretty decent, except I dunno what this is:
COOLER MASTER HHCL61 SilentHeatPipe Sock.A XP2.X

For the memory, I believe that particular XP chip doesn't operate at more than 266Mhz Front Side Bus... so I don't see how you can go wrong with something slightly slower than 400Mhz, since the memory can't be accessed faster than the Bus can allocate.

IMO.
-SW

LUPO · « **Reply #3 on:** May 16, 2003, 11:46:41 AM »

Tks a lot for replies.
Here in Italy the ATI 9700 cost about 420 euros taxes not included.
The price for the FX 5600 is 193 euros without taxes. A big big difference in price, as you can see, AKSWulfe.

Chairboy · « **Reply #4 on:** May 16, 2003, 11:53:03 AM »

I second the A7N8X deluxe comment, it is definately worth getting the Deluxe instead of the barebones one.

AKS\/\/ulfe · « **Reply #5 on:** May 16, 2003, 12:05:50 PM »

Oh yeah, go with the FX card then LUPO- according to those who have it, it works fine in FB (in OpenGL and AH uses DX, so it should work well in AH too).

If you are looking to use that motherboard for future CPU upgrades, and it supports FSB speeds higher than 133Mhz (133 x 2 = 266FSB) then get something in the range of 333Mhz for memory, you may be able to set the CAS and Latency timing lower for better memory access performance in the BIOS.

If you need further help on BIOS settings, I can point you to a website that can help you out.
-SW

LUPO · « **Reply #6 on:** May 16, 2003, 12:20:49 PM »

Tks again, chairboy and AKSWulfe
I'll get the deluxe version. And I'm sure I'll need some help for bios settings.

This will be my first home built pc...
Start praying...

boxboy28 · « **Reply #7 on:** May 16, 2003, 01:57:17 PM »

Ya that system is a screamer ! Good choices!

Pfunk · « **Reply #8 on:** May 16, 2003, 02:38:48 PM »

That FX card actually does worse than a GF4ti4200 in benchmarks, go with a radeon 9500pro or a 9700 non pro, or for that matter a gf4ti4400 or 4600

LUPO · « **Reply #9 on:** May 16, 2003, 03:15:52 PM »

I see, Pfunk, but it seems that the mobo dosen't like so much the radeon video card. Rumors, of course...

bloom25 · « **Reply #10 on:** May 16, 2003, 04:41:43 PM »

Radeon cards work fine on that board - I've done it myself. I'd choose a Radeon 9500 Pro or 9600 Pro over the FX myself.

As has been said before, get the A7N8X Deluxe. (It has MUCH better onboard sound, firewire, and more included.)

DDR 400 memory is not required and will not help performance (it will actually hurt performance if you run it as 400 MHz) with a 2400+. The 2400+ runs on a 266 MHz FSB, and thus only requires PC2100 (DDR266) for best performance.

My suggestion would be to move up to a 2500+, which uses a 333 MHz FSB, and use DDR333 (PC2700) memory. That should actually cost the same amount as what you have above and be faster. Only the brand new XP 3200+ needs DDR400 (PC3200) memory.

bloom25 · « **Reply #11 on:** May 16, 2003, 04:49:58 PM »

I just read the 9700 Pro vs FX5600 price comment. If that's the case the FX 5600 might be a better choice. Supposedly the Det 44 series drivers helped performance on these cards, but it's hard to say how much. I haven't used an FX5600 card yet.

LUPO · « **Reply #12 on:** May 16, 2003, 06:22:34 PM »

So, the modified system would be like this:

ASUS A7N8XDel. NForce2-ST AGP8X DualChDDR400 SATA
AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Barton 512K (Socket A)
Modulo DIMM 256 MB DDR 333Mhz (PC2700)
SAPPHIRE ATI RAD9500Pro 275Mhz 128MDDR TVOutDVI 8X
MAXTOR D.MaxPlus9 6Y080L0 80GB U-ATA133 7.2RPM 2MB

Thanks a lot for the suggestions.
Any other comment or idea about this setup?

LUPO · « **Reply #13 on:** May 16, 2003, 06:47:27 PM »

Some final tuning. Is it better to get a SATA hard disk for this mobo, isn't it?

ASUS A7N8XDel. NForce2-ST AGP8X DualChDDR400 SATA 6 43394 AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Barton 512K (Socket A)
2 x Modulo DIMM 256 MB DDR 333Mhz (PC2700)
SEAGATE ST380023AS 80GB SATA 7.2RPM 8MB+adpter
SAPPHIRE ATI RAD9500Pro 275Mhz 128MDDR TVOutDVI 8X

Pfunk · « **Reply #14 on:** May 16, 2003, 08:21:50 PM »

SATA is a waste because the chipset that controls it is not very efficient, you are going to pay way more $$$ than you would with say a WD 8MB buffer special edition drive. You will not see any performance for the amount of $$$ a SATA hard drive costs, go for either an 80,120 GB Western Digital or Maxtor 8MB buffer drive.