New PC, need advice

[[DnC]]

Because TES4: Oblivion is on the horizon and MTW2 supposedly coming out somewhere late this year or early next year I am putting together a new PC (couple of things I will salvage from my old PC), however I would like to know if anyone has any recommendations for alterations in my current setup:

Case: Sweex Neptune Prescott 400 watt 2x USB 2.0. sound
Cooler: Zalman CNPS7700-Cu CPU Cooler (put on top the processor right?)
DVD: ASUS 16x DVD Player retail Black
DVDRW: NEC 4550 dvdwriter black bulk
HDD: Maxtor 250GB PATA 7200RPM 16MB Diamond Max 10
Memory: Kingston ValueRam 1Gb PC4200 533Mhz CL4 (KVR533D2N4/1G) DDR2
Motherbord: Asus A8N-Sli SE or Asus A8N-SLI Nforce4 Ultra Skt 939 or Asus A8N-SLI DELUXE
Processor: Athlon 64 3500+ Skt 939 2000 F 512kb Venice tray or Athlon 64 3500+ Skt 939 2000 FSB Boxed 512kb Venice
Graphicscard: ASUS EN6800GT/2DT/ 256mb GF FX 6800.DVI. PCI-e
Audiocard: Creative SB Audigy 4 Bulk

Together this setup costs about €940-980,-.

I don't need an expensive, high-end machine, but sufficient enough for about two years (can always upgrade certain things later on).

The main things I am unsure about are the processor, motherbord and audiocard.

- Processor: Athlon 64 3500+ Skt 939 2000 F 512kb Venice tray or Athlon 64 3500+ Skt 939 2000 FSB Boxed 512kb Venice?
- Motherbord: Asus A8N-Sli SE or Asus A8N-SLI Nforce4 Ultra Skt 939 or Asus A8N-SLI DELUXE?
('m open for other processors and motherbords aswell ofcourse.)
- Is the audiocard a decent one or rubbish? Know of a better one, but not overly expensive? This one is btw €51,-.

- More memory isn't really neccesary, right?
- One more question; What's the difference between tray and boxed with the processors?

I'm open to any other suggestions on the rest of my setup aswell, as long as it isn't too expensive.

[Monarch]

"Memory: Kingston ValueRam 1Gb PC4200 533Mhz CL4 (KVR533D2N4/1G) DDR2"

I'm not so good with the whole PC gobbledegook. You planning a gig of ram right?

Personally, I would have thought thats enough. But in the m2tw forum I got told I would need to upgrade my ram, currently I have one gig.

[Phatose]

Your memory choice is unacceptable. AMD Socket 939 processors can't use DDR2, they use DDR1.

An audigy 4 is a fine card as far as gaming PCs goes. Drivers can sometimes be a pain, but that's creative labs for you. Most of the time the audigy drivers are OK though, it was the older Live drivers that were really unpleasant.

How much is that 6800GT setting you back?

For the cooler, are you more concerned about noise or temperature? The zalmans are nice and quiet, but you'll get better cooling from a thermalright XP-90 or SI-120, or the Thermaltake Big Typhoon, though the last one is a massive beast. I hear scythe makes some pretty good coolers too.

[orangat]

Never ever neglect the PSU. Personally I'm leery of any psu that comes with the case unless the manufacturer is reputable. Stick to good brands like Seasonic, Enermax, Fortron, Powerpc&cooling, Zalman.

Xaser, Aspire are terrible brands.

[[DnC]]

Thanks for the reactions!

Good to know DDR2 doesn't work with AMD's. It would be better if I'd put 2 gigs of DDR1's in then or is that a bit excessive? Perhaps 1,5 gig? I thought DDR2 was a faster and better memory type. Btw the DDR2 one is just as expensive, if not less, as the DDR1.

- Kingston 1GB DDR PC3200 CL3 ValueRAM (KVR400X64C3A/1G) €83,70
- Kingston 1GB DDR PC3200 CL3 (2x512) Dual Channel Kit ValueRAM €84,95
- Kingston 1GB DDR PC2700 CL2.5 ValueRAM (KVR333X64C25/1G) €89,90

Which is the best one? The last one has a faster CL, but is it really worth it? It's only a few bucks difference, so I'd like to know which one is "actually" better.


"How much is that 6800GT setting you back?"

In what context do you mean by this? Money-wise or performance-wise (unlikely)?
Anyways my current graphicscard is an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB. I've seen charts that do show that the GF 6800 GT has a considerable increase in performance incomparance with the 9800 Pro. Maybe I'll take a look at the GF 7800's to see whether or not it's worth the higher price. I was a bit disappointed with the 9800 Pro, that's why I'm looking at Geforce again. However maybe the ASUS ATI EAX800XL 256Mb PCI-e which costs €275,50, whereas the GF 6800 GT costs €259,95, is the better pick. Not to keen on a misbuy again though.


Because my old PSU was to weak to feed my 9800 Pro properly, I bought an Antec Truepower 480 Watt. Going to take this one out and put the 400 Watt of the new sys in my old PC (My mom's getting my old PC - cycling )


The zalman cooler is just fine then

[Phatose]

DDR2 generally reaches higher clockspeeds, but has a much higher latency too. It's finally starting to get to the point where DDR2 is overtaking DDR1 with pure clockspeed, but it's taken a while. For an A64 though, it's a moot point, the memory controller is on the chip and only does DDR1.

Of the three memory options, you'd generally want to avoid the third - PC3200 is the speed A64 memory typically runs at, using PC2700 even at a lower latency isn't going to help performance.

Beyond that, well, depends on your intents. I've got 1 GB, and it does just fine in most games, but a few more recent games would like to have more. You should be aware though, that to use dual channel RAM you need 2 or 4 dimms. Ideally 2, as A64s running four dimms turn on 2T memory timing which has some performance impact. It's not huge, but if you can avoid it, all the better.

So, ideally if you're going to stick with 1 GB, decide so now and get 2 512 MB DIMMs, and if you're gonna go for 2 GB, get 2 1 GB dimms.


With that said though, you should probably just pick whatever PC3200 ram you can get at the best price in the configuration you want. The actual performance gain from more expensive memory is pretty much negligible.





I ask about the GT primarily because I thought they were phasing those out in favor of the 6800GS. Practically identical performance between the two. Can't comment more then that though, as I'm not up on how graphics card prices are in the UK.