PC Spec

Bah

I'm just about to buy the following from Jes-Computer for a new system I'm building:

Abit IC7-MAX3 €169.90
Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro Lite-RTL €188.99
DDR PC400 512MB Mushkin Dual-Kit Level 1 €139.99
Zalman CNPS-7000 AlCu €26.99

I've already got an Antec Sonata case, NEC 2500 DVD-/+RW, DVD drive, floppy drive, etc. I'm planning on getting the processor from Overclock as soon as the (supposed) Intel price cuts kick in this month. Delivery from JES usually takes about 2 weeks, with bank transfers and all that, so they should all arrive at roughly the same time.

Any comments/changes you would make?

The prices I've set there are pretty much as high as I can go, leaving about €200 for a processor. It's not going to be much of a gaming PC ( I'm not even sure if I should really get the 9800 pro - the price is great, but I'm not sure I'd use it that much...) The only reason I'm going for the MAX-3 is because JES don't stock the IC7-G, which is all that I really need. The added shipping costs of buying it somewhere else just make it cheaper to buy the more "expensive" board from JES.

Thanks for any input.

Jammer

Looks alright to me. Maybe stretch to 1GB of RAM if you can. Games usualy load faster and have better gameplay with an extra 215mb. Also, if your thinking Prescott P4 you might need faster RAM. PC4000 ish. Read the PC Spec sticky at the top of the tweaking/modding forum, its very helpful.

Bah

I was hoping to get a Northwood, but they seem to be pretty hard to get lately... so it'll probably be a Prescott (Maybe a 3.2Ghz? Depends on how much the price comes down really).

Would there be any real point in getting PC4000, when Abit says the board only supports DDR400 (PC3200)? Like I said, it's not going to be a huge gaming system, and I'm trying to keep costs down. 1GB would be nice, but some people seem to think 4 sticks of 256MB ramcan be better than 2 sticks of 512MB ram. I think I'll just stick with 2*256Mb, then get another 2 sticks in a few months time?

Jammer

Yeah..they're a matched set so should be grand with the dual ddr slots. Pentiums benefit from that.

Northwoods are hard to come by. yeah the RAM will work!

Col_Loki wrote:

Generally people with intel systems go for higher bandwidth. This requires Pc3700/4000/4200 Memory. With the 2.4C, 2.6C, 2.8C it is a very good idea to get Pc4000 Memory . With the 3.0C , 3.2C, 3.4C its better to stick with Pc3500/Pc3700 memory as you wont take advantage of the extra FSB speed needed to run Pc4000 (unless you have super cooling).
Generally the faster the chip the less the actual MHZ overclock will be, and this the lower the FSB value - So the faster the chip the slower the recomended memory BUT with tighter timings (thats the big thing).

Do u know you could get an AMD 64 3200+ with similar motherboard for the same money? I was about to buy a prescott, then saw AMD64 was in or around the same price...i'm stuck in between now. Prescotts run very very hot, and seem shadowed by the AMD64's. The performance gain you get with the 1mb l2 cache, is eaten away by something to do with the bandwidth pipeline being made longer, or something like that.

Bah

Jammer wrote:

Do u know you could get an AMD 64 3200+ with similar motherboard for the same money? I was about to buy a prescott, then saw AMD64 was in or around the same price...i'm stuck in between now. Prescotts run very very hot, and seem shadowed by the AMD64's.

I was thinking about an AMD64, but I decided to go with a Pentium 4, preferably Northwood, but I'd settle for a Prescott. I think I'll probably hold off ordering anything until Monday though, just to think about it for a little longer. Could you recommend a good motherboard comparable to the MAX-3 for the AMD 64?

Mac daddy

Subway i have pretty much the same spec as you- i got a 2.8 northwood of overclockers.co.uk
Memory is Ozc PC4000 mobo is only ment to support PC3200 and i have the same gfx card out of this baby i'm banging out 3.5Ghz- go for the higher spec memory- check my sig-
Other difference is i have the zalman 7000 CU pure chopper one

Mac daddy

And the mobo is sweet to

jesus_thats_gre

I bought a 2.8 Prescott with 512mb PC4000 OCZ Ram.. I would strongly suggest getting a gig of Ram straight of the bat too. I would also recommend getting at least 3500 ram and even higher if you want to overclock it high. The faster ram will allow you alot of room and will actually let you overclock alot and keep timings at 1:1.

Up to this week, I would recommended staying away from the Prescott and would have advised you to get a northwood. However, the performance I have been getting in Doom 3 has pleased me no end, and the benchmarks for the game online show that the Prescott at 2.8 will outperform a Northwood at 3.2..

Combined this with the fact that I am running my 2.8 at 3.4 with a ****ty heatsink and you can see where I am going. Get a real good heatsink and a good fan and you will definetly hit 3.6 and maybe 3.7 or 3.8 with a good fan cranked up. Regarding Doom 3 performance, the difference between the Northwood and Prescott will actually increase as you scale the speeds up. The performance difference at 3.2 is 7% according to anandtech..

The graphics card is deadly too. I have mine clocked at 450/375 at the moment. On the older drivers I was getting some sparkles in Doom 3 only but not since I upgraded the divers. All that is left now is a better cooler.

Jammer

subway.ie wrote:

Could you recommend a good motherboard comparable to the MAX-3 for the AMD 64?

I would suggest the MSI Neo Platinum, it has nforce 3 250 chipset with the usual RAID, SATA, USB2, Firewire, GBLan...check out the link - http://www.msicomputer.co.uk/Products.aspx?product_id=703494&cat_id=77

It doesn't have the cooling, but AMD64's run pretty low temp as stock. I read a review of the 2.8Prescott with the IC7-MAX3, the mobo reached 120degrees celcius and melted plastic (used to space the motherboard from the case) into liquid form. Thats seriously hot stuff. (Link to review : http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NTg3LDE=)

On jes the P4 2.8E and the IC7-MAX3 adds up to 340euro, the AMD64 3200+ and the Neo Platinum adds up to 331.

I'm in two minds myself, but am leaning towards the AMD64 due to the benchmark/reviews ive been reading.

jesus_thats_gre

the AMD64 is better value for money and more powerful.. Simple really...

BKtje

Amd 64 really is the better option atm. Tho since your waiting for the intel price cuts u might as well wait and see what prices are when it happens.

The msi k8n is a great board but its not without problems. They are slowly being sorted with bios revisions tho

Jammer

I seems chipsets are not really THAT important with the AMD64's? The chip die itself has the memory controller, so it has no (in theory) front side bus? I'd still stick to the nforce as i haven't had problems with the board i have now, and i want GBLan