Hmm...AMD or Intel

[JayBee]

darn nubbler

Im just debating on whether or not I should get a AGP vid card, or just wait to get a vid card when I am able to upgrade everything else as well. For the fact that I don't want to get a AGP card now, and then when I upgrade later have PCI-E capibilities.

Also, would buying 1-2 Raptors really increase performance? What if I were to buy one? Two? If I cut those off my list and just went with my 80gig SATA I have now, I would be cutting off $200+...

[Doopa]

I read somewhere the human eye can only see 30fps?

Anyone know of this? If this is the case why will 8FPS in the high 60's range even matter.

I have built several machines using Intel. I have NEVER had a problem. My computer idles at 30C after being on for several hours and only in the mid 40's after hours of gaming.

Let it also be noted I am using the CPU Fan that Intel supplied me.

I really don't think it matter what processor you get. (as long as you stay away from those XEON things)

Just remember it seems like the PCI EXPRESS technology is more prevailent on Intel MOBO's. Like someone stated previous; There is only 1 manufacturer for AMD/PCI Express compatibility...

[JayBee]

k, umm... is there much of a different between the regular 9800 Pro and the 9800 Pro XT? Then how much of a difference is there between those and the x800 Pro, and 6800's?

[kram 2.0]

Yes. The Radeon 9800 Pro is the sweet spot card right now - at around 200 USD, you get a really nice 256-bit card that I consider to be one of the best buys I've made. The image quality is fantastical - 3D quality is no worse. The Radeon 9800XT is a 8% increase in performance from the R9800 Pro - IMO, it's not worth getting that since it is priced very unusually - the same price as ATI's Radeon X800 Pro which is simply a new generation of graphics. My recommendation? Either the Radeon 9800 Pro or go all the way up to the X800s or 6800s.

kram

[JayBee]

Hmm...heres comes the decision making...hmm

[JayBee]

Ok heres what I got so far for an AMD build/upgrade. Keep in mind, I already have memory, hard drive, case, 350watt psu (big enough?), and CD-ROM/CD-R drive. Was wondering if out of those things I just listed (in my sig) would work with these upgrades?

Secondly, I could maybe spend an extra $100-150 ... any suggestions (if any) on what I could use that on?

Lastly, is the 6600GT better than the 9800 PRO 256mb? If so what is a good brand to go with on that?

AMD Athlon 64 3500+, 2.2 GHz, 512KB L2 Cache 64-bit Socket 939 Processor - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...103-498&depa=1

MSI "K8N Neo2 Platinum" NVIDIA nForce3 ULTRA Chipset Motherboard For AMD Socket 939 CPU –RETAIL
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...130-468&depa=1

ATI RADEON 9800 PRO Video Card, 256MB DDR, 256-bit, DVI/TV-Out, 8X AGP –RETAIL
[url]http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-102-361&depa=1[url]

Plextor 12X DVD+/-RW Drive, Model PX-712A Black, Retail
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...131-327&depa=1

Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS PCI Sound Card, Model "SB0350" –RETAIL
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduc...102-162&DEPA=0

TOTAL: $869 w/o shipping

[Moose on the Loose]

Looks good to me. If you really want to play with all the lights and bells on you might want to consider upgrading to 6800GT, or even better (but even more expensive) x800 XT.

[JayBee]

Yea, maybe I will. Still deciding.

How long before nForce4 comes out? And any ideas on price? If its soon, and not too expensive I may just wait for that also.

[Yuanji]

i think the ASUS Nforce4 board is due out by holidays. i think it's 180-220 for the SLi board and 140-170 for the normal Nforce4 ultra board. really expensive motherboads...

[JayBee]

So if im not gonna go SLi should I just go with the Neo2 ULTRA nForce3? Or get the nForce4, or will the SLi be that beneficial to me (now/future) to go with it?

Whats the best way to go?

[Yuanji]

SLi = overcosted and Nforce4 SLi is only good for Geforce chips. totally a waste of money IMHO. if you want a PCI express card, go for the Geforce4 chipset. if not, there is no other benefit. (mabye native SATA appeals to you but i'd probably be fine just installing a driver)
EDIT- i meant nforce 4 ultra instead of geforce 4 ultra

[kram 2.0]

Originally Posted by Yuanji SLi = overcosted and Nforce4 SLi is only good for Geforce chips. totally a waste of money IMHO. if you want a PCI express card, go for the Geforce4 chipset. if not, there is no other benefit. (mabye native SATA appeals to you but i'd probably be fine just installing a driver)

A bit off topic, but what seemed interesting was there was a THG article where at the very end, they connected the Radeon X800 XT PE and a GF6800U together on dual graphics mode (not SLI) on an SLI board and found it to actually work...but I do agree with you there. SLI is a very powerful technology, but with the resources available with the Processor and all, bottlenecking is surely a huge problem there.

kram

[Yuanji]

what most people don't understand is that by the time that he/she will need to buy a card to replace the 9800Pro, 6600GT, 6800GT, or X800s because they run too slow, you will probably also have to buy a new motherboard, CPU, RAM, and almost everything. buying for the future is kinda a convoluted idea as we live in the present.

[JayBee]

So wait till the nForce4 board comes out (non SLi)? Or go with the nForce3 Neo2 ULTRA?

[Yuanji]

unless you are getting a PCI express vid card, i'd stick with the neo2. it's an amazing OCer to boot.

[JayBee]

Well what would be the difference between the 8x AGP, and PCI-E? Not much is there?

[digitalfreedom64]

I think at this point in time that since PCI-E is such a new technology that they aren't much better than AGP 8x. I may be wrong someone else may be better suited to answer that question

[nubbler]

Originally Posted by JayBee Well what would be the difference between the 8x AGP, and PCI-E? Not much is there?

Faster transfer speeds. More bandwidth.

[JayBee]

Hmm guess ill wait for the nForce4 boards to pop up, then make my decisions.

[glc]

I'll start building with AMD processors again as soon as AMD comes out with their own modern chipset or Intel comes up with a supporting chipset (fat chance). I just have not had good luck with anything that says Via, SiS, or ALi on it. Yeah, I know Nvidia has a decent chipset, but they are not without issues either - and ATI hasn't figured out how to do motherboards right yet.

If I'm going to build a pure gaming box, it will get a top end Nvidia graphics card, and it will be made by Asus, and it will cost over 400 bucks. Otherwise, it's ATI all the way for a general purpose machine and Matrox where no game will ever touch the machine.

[Avenger]

I'll start building with AMD processors again as soon as AMD comes out with their own modern chipset

And who said Intel chipsets are stable??????

You guys look to be biased towards Intel chipsets but the fact is that they're not worst or better than VIA or Nvidia.

I had a KT4 Ultra mobo (VIA KT400 chipset in it) and I had my PC working 24/7 all the time without a hickup. Currently, I'm using an Nforce2 mobo and I love how it performs just as the KT4 Ultra did.
Some of you may be asking why he changed his mobo if it was stable?; well, the answer to that is SoundStorm and Dual Channel.

JAYBEE:
If I were you, I'll wait for the Nforce4 SLI and buy the best video card that money can buy. In that time, you could save more bucks till you buy all the components needed for your next rig.

350watt psu (big enough?)

Don't even try this.
Get a better PSU (550W-600W). Thermaltake, Antec and OCZ have good PSUs in that range. Always look for rails with 32Amps in the 12V line.

My dream rig would be the following:

Nforce4 SLI mobo (Asus, MSI or GigaByte)
Athlon 64 FX 55
4 gigs of Corsair TWINX1024-3200XLPRO
2 NX6800GT-T2D256E in SLI mode
2x74 Western Digital HDD (10000 RPM and 8MB cache)
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum (or onboard sound)
LiteOn 16X DVD-RW
LiteOn 16X DVD-ROM
Thermaltake Silent PurePower Series (680W PSU)
Thermaltake Shark Full Tower Aluminum Case
Nec floppy drive
Windows XP Proffesional and Linux SuSE 9.2 (64 bit) in dual boot mode

That's all and take care.

[HAL9000]

Originally Posted by Avenger And who said Intel chipsets are stable?????? You guys look to be biased towards Intel chipsets but the fact is that they're not worst or better than VIA or Nvidia.

You gotta be joking right? Intel chipsets are bar none the most stable chipsets available... and tis a shame that you classify them in the same ranking as VIA. I'll give nVidia benefit of the doubt as I have used them with FAR greater success than VIA which always seems to be flakey somewhere, not to mention hot.

[ric449]

I hate it when people make it look like they know what they are talking about.

VIA have a long reputation for poor chipsets. Even look at AMD Zone, a full site of AMD fanatics, and VIA build a lot of chipsets for AMD processors. A lot of them still say keep away from VIA because of their poor P4 and Athlon XP performance. They are only just getting some sort of reputation back because their Athlon 64 chipsets are actually pretty good. As far as I know Intel have the most stable chipsets, because they make the processor to go with it.

Power supplies. I don't know where you got 550W-600W from. Also, 35A+ on 12V is way overkill. You just don't need all that. A good 400W unit would be fine, 450W if it is a very powerful system.

[Avenger]

You gotta be joking right

No. I'm not joking.

If you guys had a bad experience with VIA chipsets, that doesn't means that ALL the rest of the world had the same issues you guys had (Well, I never had an Intel platform, maybe, that's why I never had those problems)

If you say how unstable VIA chipsets are (or were, because they learned from their previous mistakes), why don't you mention how BADLY and HORRIBLE the first chipsets for the PII/PIII were?
Ohh, of course, we can't bash Intel, sorry for that.

As I said before, there's not a perfect chipset in the world. All have their Pros and Cons.

Regards.

[digitalfreedom64]

I've worled with all 3 chipsets at one time or another. Via has some good one here and there but over all they're pathetic. As for the nforce chipsets from what i've seen for the most part they are just as stable as intel chipsets. I'm not claiming to know everything. This is only from my experience and the research i've done on the chipsets.

[Avenger]

I hate it when people make it look like they know what they are talking about

Hey, come on, chill out. I'm just saying the thruth.
VIA had their little problems at the beginning (also Intel, Nvidia and a lot more).

If you look at current benchmarks (VIA K8T800 Pro vs Nforce3 Ultra...), the K8T800 Pro is the performance king. Anyhow, I like the idea of SLI, that's why I'm switching to Nvidia (as I did before).

You just don't need all that. A good 400W unit would be fine, 450W if it is a very powerful system

My current rig has a 500W PSU on it.
Come on dude, if you invastigate a little more, SLI chews a good amount of Amps (including the FX 55 processor). That's why the need of a bigger PSU to keep things running smooth and stable.

Regards.

[digitalfreedom64]

I agree with avenger there really is no such thing as "the perfect chipset". Intel, Via, and Nvidia al have their flaws and there good points. While none of the chipsets are perfect all we can do is to try the one with the least imperfections for what we need the system to be able to do. To me it seams that people take their loyalty to a certain chipset or a CPU to a too high of an extreme that when a company does release a hipset does put out a chipset tat may have a flaw in it that we allow it to vloud our judgment.

[HAL9000]

Originally Posted by Avenger No. I'm not joking. If you guys had a bad experience with VIA chipsets, that doesn't means that ALL the rest of the world had the same issues you guys had (Well, I never had an Intel platform, maybe, that's why I never had those problems) If you say how unstable VIA chipsets are (or were, because they learned from their previous mistakes), why don't you mention how BADLY and HORRIBLE the first chipsets for the PII/PIII were? Ohh, of course, we can't bash Intel, sorry for that. As I said before, there's not a perfect chipset in the world. All have their Pros and Cons. Regards.

The first chipsets for the PII being the LX... ya.. nothing to rave about, but still VERY stable.. much better than the VIA anyday.. the next being the BX, quite possibly the BEST chipset EVER made by ANY chipset manufacturer.

I can say that I have dealt with a "few" chipsets.. having 5000+ builds under my belt having worked for a distributor for a few years as their primary assembler/tech... I'm sorry, I can't take the word of somebody who has built a "few" systems and called the VIA stable. Like I've told many people here... gimme 5-10 minutes on one and I will make it crash... the Intel, nForce, and recent SiS/Intel chips stay stable... the rest go down in flames with VIA first to flake out.

I wish Toaster were still here to talk about stability.... any guy that can mod a board to make a RISC processor go from 800Mhz to 2Ghz+ and stay stable knows what stability is all about.

[Avenger]

I'm sorry, I can't take the word of somebody who has built a "few" systems and called the VIA stable

Sure, of course

Building 2000 PC's (and numbers are growing) will not equal 500000...+ or whatever. Half of those builds were PIIIs with the faulty chipset and sake of that I lose my first job because a customer blamed us for selling them faulty equipment. But how the hell a customer knows that was Intel's fault and even worst, how to convince your boss that doesn't have the idea how a computer adds 1+1?
The answer I got was: Don't blame Intel, come tomorrow for you liquidation.
For that reason, I work for myself and ALL my builds are AMD-based PC's with VIA, SiS and Nvidia chipsets AND without ANY problems reported (from my customers). oops, sorry, I lied, 2 customers had problems with one PC I build for them with the VIA KT133 and KT266 Apollo faulty chipsets (you know...).
The other problem was that one customer reported his machine been burning like hell because of a burned Thunderbird processor. What he didn't told me is that they tried to remove the HSF to put a high-end coolermaster HSF on it (but they failed) and it looks like they reused the same thermal pad that came with the retail HSF and burned the processor. Well, they voided the warranty and the worst of all is that they didn't finish pay the machine.

Regards.

[ric449]

I fold. If we carry this on we all know whats going to happen.