PC upgrade time

[Dud]

Originally posted by Pearl Jammzz@Fri, 2005-07-01 @ 12:05 AM

get an x800xt . I honestly would save the money and get a 3200+. not THAT much fo a dif. Depends if yo uthink the cost/performance ratio is good for you. Goodluck w/ this...

WHat PSU you using? What case? This shit matters as cheap stuff is bad for yer hardware and makes yer comp run like ass (my friend got a custom built PC from a local place...he was havin all sorts of slowness and whatnot. threw in a good PSU and it fixed it all).

And get a gig of ram, you'll love it, trust me. I'd do PC3200

[post=136096]Quoted post[/post]​

Everywhere I've gone people have been saying you get the best bang for your buck with a 6800GT. Plus I'm avoiding ATI products after all the trouble I've had with the 9800 pro. I might get a Cooler Master Centurion case with the deluxe 550 watt PSU, or I might keep my current case/PSU. I was planning on getting 2 gigs of ram (2.5 gigs when combined with my current ram). Then I'll more than likely get another Samsung CRT monitor, one that goes past 1280x1024 res (that's what I currentlly use), there's a really nice one for under $200 I think.

Hmm, I guess I didn't really need much help on this after all. I've been overriding almost every suggestion I get, except for mal's--good call on the socket 939 there.

 

[boom]

Originally posted by Dud@Thu, 2005-06-30 @ 09:33 PM

Everywhere I've gone people have been saying you get the best bang for your buck with a 6800GT. Plus I'm avoiding ATI products after all the trouble I've had with the 9800 pro. I might get a Cooler Master Centurion case with the deluxe 550 watt PSU, or I might keep my current case/PSU. I was planning on getting 2 gigs of ram (2.5 gigs when combined with my current ram). Then I'll more than likely get another Samsung CRT monitor, one that goes past 1280x1024 res (that's what I currentlly use), there's a really nice one for under $200 I think.

Hmm, I guess I didn't really need much help on this after all. I've been overriding almost every suggestion I get, except for mal's--good call on the socket 939 there.

[post=136097]Quoted post[/post]​

ATI's x800 series is evenly matched with Nvidia's 6800 series. Depending on what games you play of course. If you want to play Doom 3 a lot, Nvidia performs better. Plus you get SM 3.0. Nvidia driver support is better, but have heard that ATI has improved a lot over the past couple of years. Oh, and the 6800 GT is a great overclocker if you are into that, should get you almost same performance as a 6800 Ultra at stock speeds if you push the clock speeds.

Hardocp.com has more info on both cards strengths and weaknesses, good site for card reviews.

 

[Pearl Jammzz]

get a brand name PSU.... remember Gallstaff's thread? Ya, his plethora of problems were due to gettin a cheaper 500 watt PSU. Some of the good ones I have had personal experience with are Antec and Enermax. Both very good. Antec also makes VERY high quality cases, they look good too. Up to you though, I am just tryin to save ya lots of trouble from a shitty PSU. a good 350 is better than a cheap 600, remember that.

 

[Zziggy00]

The 6800 GT is a fantastic card.

I've got a standard 6800 to save on cost about 6 months ago and it is ture, these cards are great for overclocking.... Through Software I managed to unlock the remaing pipes and vector shaders and turned this card into a GT (difference being mine has 128 mb of ram)

 

[Dud]

Originally posted by Pearl Jammzz+Sun, 2005-07-03 @ 03:23 PM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Pearl Jammzz @ Sun, 2005-07-03 @ 03:23 PM)</div><div class='quotemain'>get a brand name PSU.... remember Gallstaff's thread? Ya, his plethora of problems were due to gettin a cheaper 500 watt PSU. Some of the good ones I have had personal experience with are Antec and Enermax. Both very good. Antec also makes VERY high quality cases, they look good too. Up to you though, I am just tryin to save ya lots of trouble from a shitty PSU. a good 350 is better than a cheap 600, remember that.

[post=136226]Quoted post[/post]​

[/b]

Antec, that's the brand I was thinking of, good call. I'm going to look through some of their stuff now.

<!--QuoteBegin-Zziggy00@Sun, 2005-07-03 @ 03:52 PM

The 6800 GT is a fantastic card.

I've got a standard 6800 to save on cost about 6 months ago and it is ture, these cards are great for overclocking.... Through Software I managed to unlock the remaing pipes and vector shaders and turned this card into a GT (difference being mine has 128 mb of ram)

[post=136230]Quoted post[/post]​

[/quote]

That's good to hear, I was considering oc'ing the 6800GT to the level of a 6800 Ultra :flamethrower:

 

[Dud]

Here's the final list:

SAMSUNG 997DF-T/T 19" CRT Monitor 15-Pin D-Sub - Retail

Antec Solution SLK3000-B Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail

Antec TruePower 2.0 TP2-550 EPS12V 550W Power Supply - Retail

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego Integrated into Chip FSB Socket 939 Processor Model ADA3700BNBOX - Retail

ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

mushkin SP3200 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM System Memory - Retail

mushkin SP3200 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM System Memory - Retail

XFX PVT45GUDF3 Geforce 6800GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail

$1308 total, ouch

 

[Borisz]

Eh, EAC ripping bloody slowly is not a problem. It reads every sector something like 80 times to assure that its an EXACT copy of the original. Well, as long as you use Secure mode. You could try using the other, less secure modes, which are faster, but don't check for errors (eg they are really useless).

As for encoding, yes, proper encoding takes some time to finish. My old AMD K6-2 500mhz cpu could do a alt-preset standard encoded mp3 at blazing 0.3x speeds. My new 3100+ athlon can hit 5x or 6x.

It's a tradeoff for good quality.

Oh, and you really don't need 2,5gb of ram, unless you plan to beta test Windows Longhorn on a virtual PC or something. I'm running an average 50 apps all the time, with the baging file disabled, with 1gb ram on XP pro SP2. And I've never ever ran out of ram, even with 3 accounts being logged in the same time.

 

[it290]

I don't know what kind of stuff you're doing, but 1G of RAM is considered middle of the road for a lot of graphics work these days.

 

[Dud]

Sure no one can really USE 2.5 gigs of ram, the real issue here is that I'm very insecure about my memory. My brother has 1 GB of ram, and I must best him, by no small margin. When I build something, I find someone I don't like and use their item (in this case a computer) and make mine better in every way. Isn't that what everyone does?

 

[Borisz]

Originally posted by it290@Mon, 2005-07-04 @ 11:47 AM

I don't know what kind of stuff you're doing, but 1G of RAM is considered middle of the road for a lot of graphics work these days.

[post=136270]Quoted post[/post]​

Well, I'm not doing anything that would require an insane amount of RAM. Mostly playing on emulators, listening to music and watching DVDs, chat, running an ftp server, instant messengers, browsing the net, occasional image editing with photoshop or paint shop pro (7.4), and building webpages (with notepad).

I usually have 300-400 megs in RAM, add 200-300 more if I'm actually doing gaming.

 

[Dud]

I decided to go with just 1 gig of quality ram, you guys are right.

here's my final list:

SAMSUNG 997DF-T/T 19" CRT Monitor 15-Pin D-Sub - Retail

Antec TruePower 2.0 TP2-550 EPS12V ATX12V 550W Power Supply - Retail

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego Integrated into Chip FSB Socket 939 Processor Model ADA3700BNBOX - Retail

ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

OCZ EL Platinum Revision 2 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model OCZ4001024ELDCPER2-K - Retail

BFG Tech BFGW68256GTOCXV Geforce 6800GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail

 

[Dud]

I've got everything set up and it's working well, except for one issue with the RAM. The timings are supposed to be 2-2-2-5, but in the BIOS there are like ten numbers relating to RAM. Does anyone know ehere I can find instructions on how to set up the timings with an ASUS A8n-SLI Deluxe motherboard?