New gaming rig

TheDuke

Hi guys...

I want to upgrade my machine but want to spend realtively little money... ideally I'd like to horse up my present system... last time I built a machine was back in '96 so it's been a while....

My present gaming rig is a :
a Dell 4800 with
* P4 1.7MHz 200FSB
* Motherboard 200MHz, 4AGP
* 756MB DDR 200Mhz
* Gainward GeForce FX5600 Ultra 256MB 333MHz (APG8) - a recent upgrade to buy me a little time ...

to get some more power the key thing I want to improve it the overall speed from the 200MHz to 800Mhz as well as allow my lovely card to run at 8xAGP

Can my system take a new mother board (MSI,etc.) or what do I need to look out for?
Once I got that I presume fitting the new processor (one with FSB of 800 MHz) and memory should be pretty easy - everything else can come accross as is.

Or do I need to go for a brand new box... etc... getting a second PC out of th upgrade is not really a requirements.

Anyhow, anyone got any ideas...

Also, give that the price ususally falls greatest post chirstmas I'll probably wait till then....

Thanks in advance for your help,

The Duke : ))

Btw, the automated email updates don't seem to work for me.... I couldn;t find an admin link to report this... anyone know it? Tnx

Ciaran500

Dell cases don't normally take well to a motherboard and psu upgrade. You will probaly need a new case.

grimloch

Ciaran500 wrote:

Dell cases don't normally take well to a motherboard and psu upgrade. You will probaly need a new case.

im pretty sure never is the word, dell cases dont take ''normaol'' mobos or psus and vice versa, youll need a new case and psu before you even start,

everything should be grand after that, the folks here will be happy to help you and give advice if you need it

Col_Loki

TBH theres not much you can take from that system to a new one ....... GFX cards/Hard drives/CD Drives/PCI cards.

There are a few choices, and it depends alot on your budget. Like ciaran [edit] and Grimloch said, i dont think the Dell cases & PSU's are compatable with regular "ATX" motherboards.

Have a look here, might be a little help...... http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=152842

And give us a guideline of what your budget is, what your main use is, any preference for AMD/Intel?

joePC

OK its a Dell so
1. Case wont support new Motherboard (New case)
2. Power supply wont work with new MB (New Power supply)
3. New RAM if your getting a P4 800Mhz FSB

So pretty much a new system, you can keep your GFX card & thats about it, your hard drive should also be upgraded.

Thanks JoePC

TheDuke

tnx guys...

seeing that the DELL case is not ATX compatible I definitely start from scratch and go for the mophing upgrade (build one, get two )

after I wrote this I spent some time on komplett.ie to get a feel for prices so I think it fair to say that I'll be in the €600-€800 range.

I need this so bad to proplery enjoy all the eye candy of the latest and greatest games... :cool: ... and the present system is 3 years old...

I will probably only take accross the graphics card as there is still plenty of steam left in it... and of course my faithfull CD\DVD burner for all my backups

What I will do is put togther a komplett.ie rig and post it here for advice.

Also, another burning questions is that if the FSB and mother board 800Mhz but there isn't any memory that runs at that speed (I think 533Mhz is that fastes) doesn't that mean that the whole bus can only run at the mem speed.... I really want to get my head arround the bottlenecks...

Thanks again guys... great to be back in DIY

stevenmu

The FSB/Motherboard is actually only at 200mhz. It uses quad-pumping, doing 4 times the work for each mhz to give an effective speed of 800mhz. I think the proper ram to get is PC3200/DDR 400

TheDuke

Hi guys,

here's a bones of a rig... could you let me know what's right/wrong with it (tnx!).

Chenbro Gaming Box Black/Metallic Silver 350W Powersypply
Intel Pentium 4 530 3.0 GHz Boxed Socket LGA775, 1MB cache
TwinMOS PC4300 TwiSTER DDR 256MB CL3 Chip = TSOP, (DDR-PC533MHz)
Abit AS8 Mainboard for S775, DDR400 I865P,SATA,ATX,LAN,Dual-DDR,AGP8x
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 160GB IDE ATA/133 8MB cache 7200RPM


Also, can some one tell me the difference between socket 478 abd 775 - it seem 775 is a later one - correct?

As for the mem, just read your message Steve... so going to DDR-PC533Mhz doesn't make much of a difference?

Also, I am only just getting my head arround dual DDR... does this mean that there are two pipes between the proc and the mem so that it can actually read at 2 x the mem speed?

bringitdown

Socket 775 are newer alright and take only Prescott P4 (?) chips which have a reputation for running hot - (hotter than say the P4 Northwood) so cooling is an issue you mayl need to look at.

Your mobo has a SATA controller so why not use it, the price difference between ATA and SATA is not that much at the mo and SATA does offer better performance.

You'll need at least 512Mb of RAM and ideally use 2 matched DIMMs to take advantage of the DUAL DDR capability of the mobo... else just get 1 stick of 512 and buy another when you get the money. DUAL DDR gives a significant boost to your peak bandwidth by using both sticks at the same time.

All you need to know is here: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=152842

stevenmu

TheDuke wrote:

As for the mem, just read your message Steve... so going to DDR-PC533Mhz doesn't make much of a difference?

I think it will overclock better but other than that I don't now if you'll notice any difference, maybe sombody else could confirm this ?

You might want to think about a beefier PSU aswell, 350w is about minimum and when you go to upgrade your graphics card it'll want plenty of power available

TheDuke

thanks for the link - allot to digest

****** Dont be fooled by 256mb of ram on the cards, its a marketing ploy and doesent have performance gains over 128mb.... get 128mb cards with a faster GPU ******

guess who's the ass that bought one .... lol


Reliablity will be a big thing cause my wife wil also use it for her home office tasks, so I want a pretty sturdy system to limmit 'support calls' ... so am i better off with a 478 mobo?

Also, I read the article/link and it says that 'the faster the proc the slower the mem just with tighter timings '

I will also go for 2 RAM's so I can make use of the dual c right away... and then upgrade the other two slots over time.

I'll check out SATA (didn't know it existed)

Thanks to all - always need a little direction when embarking on my new ventures and what better people to ask but da boards crowd

TheDuke

Hi guys...

I've done a bush of homework now and am slowly getting back up to speed..

I got very interrested about PCI Express as it just made a whole load of sense.

However, I can find a bulk of Express compatible cards but not BTX compatible motherboard.... what am I missing here... or is it only just comming into the market...

cause if it does what it's supposed to I'll wait a bit tills it's fully established...

Deadwing

It is a fairly new development duke, (pci-e, that is) And sadly it would render any pci cards you have now redundant if you got a pci-e mobo, so if you were planning on getting one, hold off for a while till its fully established and you can get all the expansion cards you need in pci-e standard.

Just to give you some comparisons, heres the system im building:

N4ce chicago silver atx tower w/ clear side panel E70
Asus k8v SE deluxe mobo E170
Western digital caviar 120gb hdd 8mb cache E89
AMD 64 3000+ E170
Fancy pants cold cathode light
(and yet to be purchased)
Nvidia Geforce 6800

Thats the guts of the pc there for 499, and the geforce should set me back around another 400 or so, so all in all thats a nice little system for less than a grand.
(btw most of this stuff was bought offline, so im sure you could get it online for cheaper, i just dont have a credit card so i cant order online!)

TheDuke

It is a fairly new development

so I gather... but this technology sounds just so right...

the real irony of todays PC's is that all peripheral items have outstripped the performance of the bus! :eek:

This is like comparing a HUB with a SWITCH and architecturally there is a huge difference...

Seeing that I buy a new machine every 3 years I will hold off for another few months to see where the PCI-e is going...

Thanks a mill to all... great eye opener this thread!