Author Topic: New motherboard and cpu needed (Read 2671 times)

Hajo · « **Reply #60 on:** January 23, 2005, 02:31:04 PM »

ebgb he is under budget constraints as was I.

That is why I got the 3400 754.....dint wanna spend anymore.

By the way...the 3400 sposed to run at 2.1.....get the AMD original from factory not OEM....it clocks at 2.4 no oc'ing

eagl · « **Reply #61 on:** January 24, 2005, 02:23:36 AM »

My 3200 winchester A64 is running at 2300mhz right now, and so far seems stable. The MSI boards don't seem to report voltages and temperatures correctly but I had to bump up the cpu and memory voltages in bios to get them up to spec'd numbers. Without a voltmeter though, it's tough to tell if I merely increased it to spec'd value or bumped it above spec. But at the default settings, all the voltages were reported by various system utilities as being low.

Anyhow, it's cranking though some stress tests right now.

Hajo · « **Reply #62 on:** January 24, 2005, 03:46:39 PM »

Eagl...good luck. I like mine very much. Frame rates can't get any higher then they are on my machine. Smooth all the way through gameplay.

I am not exagerating when I say the increase in performance over my AthlonXP 2400 is 30 to 40% greater.

Pollock · « **Reply #63 on:** January 24, 2005, 04:17:27 PM »

it is amazing how i can justify changing my budget. I hav made the decision to to raise the budget to 300 dollars. this is my birthday present to ME

That said, I think i can go with:

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 512K 90nm (939) (Retail Box-w-Fan)
for $189.00 local BM.

or

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 1.8GHz, 512KB L2 Cache 939-Pin 64-bit
oem for around $155.00

I wonder if I should go with the retail box or should I buy the oem and get a seperate fan and heatsink.

Kev367th · « **Reply #64 on:** January 24, 2005, 04:25:42 PM »

Go with the OEM and get a good heatsink and fan.

wombatt · « **Reply #65 on:** January 24, 2005, 06:05:08 PM »

And might I suggest this heat sink.
I have one and use a 120mm fan and It works great.
Click on XP120

http://www.thermalright.com/product_default.htm

Pollock · « **Reply #66 on:** January 25, 2005, 09:34:19 PM »

I have finally made the purchase.

I got the AMD 64 3000 939 pin and Asus A8V deluxe mobo. I bought locally at monarch computer out the door for 298.00
The price went down on the chip so i jumped on it. Now I need to get a case and start building.

btw for free monarch hooks up the cpu, sink, and fan. They also load the latest bios and test the board. Also got a copy of some game called far cry and some other stuff for free.

I will post results ASAP. Thanks to everyone who expressed their opinions and recommendations, it really helped me.

Kev367th · « **Reply #67 on:** January 25, 2005, 10:00:10 PM »

Monarchs not bad used them a few times but always thought their prices a little high. Only work 30 mins from them so if I need something no-one else locally has I use them

acetnt367th · « **Reply #68 on:** January 25, 2005, 11:02:20 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Pollock
I have finally made the purchase.

I got the AMD 64 3000 939 pin and Asus A8V deluxe mobo. I bought locally at monarch computer out the door for 298.00
The price went down on the chip so i jumped on it. Now I need to get a case and start building.

btw for free monarch hooks up the cpu, sink, and fan. They also load the latest bios and test the board. Also got a copy of some game called far cry and some other stuff for free.

I will post results ASAP. Thanks to everyone who expressed their opinions and recommendations, it really helped me.

You may want to read the viaarena forums to help you setup up your A8V. I'll just shorten some of the things for you.

1. Flash your bios to 1009
2. If you have a sata drive as your boot drive - use the via sata connecters and make sure you have the sata drivers on a floppy when you load windows the first time
3. If you use the 9800pro ati card you will be limited to 4x agp. This will hopefully be fixed in the near future -- but is really a minimal loss. The via agp driver at 8x is problematic. I have heard that the default microsoft xp sp2 driver is better but with lower performance.
4. Good practice to disable unnessary onboard devices on first windows load and install each after windows is all updated

The board is still a very good one but do go to the forums and read up on it to save you a lot of headaches on installation.

Acetnt

Eagler · « **Reply #69 on:** January 26, 2005, 05:48:30 AM »

just finished installing an Asus A8V with a amd64 3400 939pin, booting from two 80gb sata raid 0

had zero trouble and my ati 9800 pro is running in apg 8x mode - np

Kev367th · « **Reply #70 on:** January 26, 2005, 09:26:10 AM »

My 'old' 980PRO ran at 8x AGP without a prob on my A8V also.

So many people are getting AMD64s - wonder how long before we can convince HTC to produce a 64 bit version of AH

acetnt367th · « **Reply #71 on:** January 26, 2005, 09:35:46 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Eagler
just finished installing an Asus A8V with a amd64 3400 939pin, booting from two 80gb sata raid 0

had zero trouble and my ati 9800 pro is running in apg 8x mode - np

Am happy to hear this. There are many who have had severe problems in getting this to happen. Since I have the same setup and would like to have it run the same way I have a couple of questions :

1. What version of via 4in1 drivers are you using?
2. Did you use the via agp driver?
3. What bios version of the A8V are you running

Have you tried to benchmark your system. I used both Aquamark and 3Dmark05. On my first install with the machine at 8X I had terrible scores and the machine was unstable during AH2. On resetting the agp to 4x (as recommended on the forums) I was able to get double the score. Could you please post your current driver setup and these scores. It will really help me determine if an improvement can be obtained on my rig

Acetnt

Kev367th · « **Reply #72 on:** January 26, 2005, 09:51:10 AM »

Hi Ace WB.

1) Use the latest VIA hyperions.
2) You MUST use the AGP driver.
3) Currently running beta 1010 BIOS (worked fine on all tho)

Never did have probs runnig my 9800PRO on the A8V.

Make sure you turn fastwrites OFF in the BIOS.

Tip for A8V owners - In the BIOS memory timings on the 2T Command Rate option, select DISABLED.
This sets your mem to run with a 1T speed instead of 2T

Eagler · « **Reply #73 on:** January 26, 2005, 10:07:05 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Kev367th
Hi Ace WB.

1) Use the latest VIA hyperions.
2) You MUST use the AGP driver.
3) Currently running beta 1010 BIOS (worked fine on all tho)

Never did have probs runnig my 9800PRO on the A8V.

Make sure you turn fastwrites OFF in the BIOS.

Tip for A8V owners - In the BIOS memory timings on the 2T Command Rate option, select DISABLED.
This sets your mem to run with a 1T speed instead of 2T

1) same
2) same
3) 1008 BIOS

Fastwrites On in bios - is this bad?

1T better than 2T?

Kev367th · « **Reply #74 on:** January 26, 2005, 10:14:44 AM »

New cards do not use fastwrites, in fact it can cause instabilities.

1T is a lot faster - your mem bandwith with 2T is around 4000+, with 1T it is 5000+
It's just back to front in the BIOS, you have to select disable to get 1T.