Athlon owners I need your help

[padawan]

I'm building an Athlon system, so far I have the following:

Abit KA7
AMD approved 300W PS
InWin Q500 Full Tower
HighSpeedPC TD2 GFD
Athlon 700 (on the way)
3dfxCool SuperHO cooler(Dual Fan)
GeForce SDR
Aureal Vortex2 PCI
WD 7200RPM ATA66 20.5GB

My Question is...What kind of memory are you guys using? I was thinking of Mushkin PC133. Any suggestions/recommendations? What are you guys using in yours? Any conflict or problems with the parts selected?

[Alfie]

As far as memory,you may want to check out here: http://memman.com/
On Memmans page there's a link under the infineon 133 mhz to a review on memory well worth reading,as it gives one, good insight on availabl memory and what seems to be working well.
There may be two devices that can give you problems the GeForce(most problems have been resolved,but can still prove to be a pain!)
The other is the Aureal soundcard.
Aureal is on the virge of chapter 11,so future support may be dubious.
I had the misfortune of attempting to install 2 Turtle Beach(retail)MontegoII sound cards using the Aureal chipset.Both cards were DOA.
Windows didn't find them,tried every trick in the book,attempted to contact tech support,no go.Installed drivers,no go.
No uninstall feature for drivers and had to go through registry and system to get rid of them.
Got a SoundBlaster Live Value and although it's on a customer's computer,find myself constantly playing with it.Ultra cool!
Easy to install.Excellent quality,excellent support,affordable.
Just make sure it's assigned to irq5,and all is well.

[Mattman]

I didn't get PC-133 CAS2 memory with my Athlon system, and now I'm biting myself in the ass wishing that I did. Mushkin and Infineon chips blow the other ones away in stability and performance. www.mushkin.com and www.memman.com are the best places to get memory. Make sure it's PC-133 and CAS-2 approved.

I have a Geforce card with my EPoX board, and it's been great. I haven't had any stability problems that some people have been talking about.

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Life without computers would be like the world without war.

[anskygamer]

hey padawan,
i just built a system almost exactly the same as yours. i bought 128megs of mushkin pc133 w/ infineon. works great. btw it was my 1st system build, very smooth... good luck, u should b in good shape

[Tiretool]

Nice choice for the motherboard padawan. I'd love to see some Quake 2 and Quake 3 demo bench test results after you get up and running!

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I think a good gift for the president would be a chocolate revolver. And since he's so busy, you'd probably have to run up to him
and hand it to him.
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tiretool@pcmech.com

[padawan]

I'll post the whole ordeal over at Maximum3D, since this is to be the new testbed for the site. The old o/c Celeron was getting a little long in the tooth, so I started getting the Athlon system ready, and ordered a Celeron II 566 (the new flip chip that is hitting 850Mhz+)and Abit Slocket!!! as our "low-end" system for testing purposes. I'm planning on photographing the whole thing, and making an Athlon o/c tutorial out of it. I have researched the Athlon memory, but I really wanted hear what people are using, since sometimes "Athlon Certified" doesn't mean crap. I think I'm going to get either the 128MB High Performance w/ Mosel REV1.5 PC133 222 or Azzo's Infineon PC133. Should be some good information over there next week, as all the parts are supposed to be in this week. It's ok if I pimp Max3D here, right? Hehe.

-Scott

[This message has been edited by padawan (edited 05-29-2000).]

[Hopper]

I can't afford an Athlon, but I did buy Enhanced Memory Systems PC 133 an have yet to find any article stating it's been bested. Then again I'm not lookin. The site below did a test using Munchkin. You can read the results here.
http://www.lostcircuits.com/motherboard/abitbh6/

Their site is at this address. Their may be a couple of good names in Memory out their. Some good reading at their site.
http://www.pc133memory.com/

[padawan]

Ok, the Athlon arrived, and I am using some Mushkin PC133 for now, if it starts acting weird I'll buy some new stuff.

Using the TD2 and a little FSB, I was able to get the 700 to run at 825 so far, not as high as I wanted, but ok nonetheless. Here's a sample benchmark I ran tonight, the rest to follow in the Max3D article:
Quake3
Fastest 134.5 fps
Normal 120 fps
HQ 72.1
1024x786x16 73.2

That's with the memory at 133Mhz, and FSB at 105. Best $180 I ever spent.