what you think of this build

awhir

any better parts for the same price whats the best ram for the same price?




AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3800BVBOX)
£179.95 £179.95
DFI LanParty UT NF4 SLI-D (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-013-DF) 1
£94.95 £94.95
OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC3200 Dual Channel Platinum Series EL-DDR CAS2 1
£139.95 £139.95
Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR) 1
£15.95 £15.95
LG GSA-H10ABAL 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-043-LG) 1
£22.95 £22.95
CA-008-TT Thermaltake VA7000BWA Shark Aluminium Full Tower - Black (CA-008-TT) 1
£69.95 £69.95
Tagan TG580-U15 580W ATX2.01 Easycon SLi Compliant Modular Silent PSU (CA-009-TG) 1
£89.95 £89.95
Seagate Barracude 7200.9 NCQ 300GB ST3300622AS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-066-SE) 1
£68.95 £68.95
Microsoft Windows XP Professional Edition inc. SP2 - OEM - 1Pk (E85-04026) (OS-002-MS) 1
£79.95 £79.95
XFX GeForce 7900 GT Extreme Edition 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (PVT71G-UDER) (GX-076-XF) 1
£224.95 £224.95

Subtotal £987.50

unkel

Very decent selection

Personally, I wouldn't go with the TT case. Might look good, but plenty of better ones out there. Think Coolermaster / Antec / Lian-Li etc.

The Arctic HSF is great value for money and does a good job. There are quieter and cooler ones about though, but they are more expensive

8T8

I'd consider changing the graphics card as well this X1800XT 512MB costs almost the same price £229 and will offer the same performance as the 7900GT but you get 512MB of RAM on it plus you will be able to do AA + HDR lighting in any future games that use it (the 7900 cant).

It's a better card for the long term if you plan to keep this graphics card for a while.

conzy

8T8 wrote:

I'd consider changing the graphics card as well this X1800XT 512MB costs almost the same price £229 and will offer the same performance as the 7900GT but you get 512MB of RAM on it plus you will be able to do AA + HDR lighting in any future games that use it (the 7900 cant).

It's a better card for the long term if you plan to keep this graphics card for a while.

What?

The 7900GT supports AA and hardware HDR, it also runs cooler, runs quieter, and overclocks like a bat out of Hell sometimes past 7900GTX speeds.

But the X1800XT is also a beast........

I would go with the 7900gt if you plan on overclocking it

Spear

conzymaher wrote:

What?

The 7900GT supports AA and hardware HDR, it also runs cooler, runs quieter, and overclocks like a bat out of Hell sometimes past 7900GTX speeds.

He means AA and HDR simultaneously which isn't currently possible in the drivers.

8T8

Correct but its not a driver issue the GeForce 6 & 7 series lack the hardware support for what is called floating point blending to use AA and HDR lighting simultaneously.

Now before someone goes but what about Half Life 2 that had AA+HDR that technically wasn't HDR it is integer based not floating point based so think of it as "near-HDR" it doesn't give quite the full effect but if a game uses FP HDR your up the creek without a paddle if you also want to use AA on NVIDIA GF6/7 cards. For example ATI just relased a beta driver to allow AA+HDR on Oblivion & their was the FarCry AA+HDR patch as well.

Along with better dynamic branching support future DX9 games provided they make use of this stuff will run faster on the X1800XT then the 7900GT card.

If you couldn't care less about HDR and AA then the 7900GT is a fine card but I think the X1800XT with its 512MB of RAM is a better long term choice. NVIDIA will be releasing the G80 (Direct-X10 graphics card) at the end of this year which will feature AA+HDR support.

Some future console ports could run better with 512MB as the Xbox 360 and PS3 both feature 512MB of RAM and CoD2 was one of the first games to actually really benefit from 512MB.

conzy

Woah, Thanks for clearing that up:)

So, I cannot run Anti Aliasing and hardware HDR simultaneously:eek:

And HDR in Source is software based? Is it rendered by the GPU or CPU?

So a X1800XT can fully implement AA and HDR simultaneously?

Thanks

8T8

conzymaher wrote:

So, I cannot run Anti Aliasing and hardware HDR simultaneously:eek:

Correct. [When dealing with the floating point based HDR lighting which is everything so far bar Valve's Source based games edit- I think Age of Empires III uses a smiliar method to Valves as well - correction no it doesnt confirmed it uses FP HDR]

conzymaher wrote:

And HDR in Source is software based? Is it rendered by the GPU or CPU?

Not exactly they use an alternate method which mimicks for want of a better word HDR lighting it is done by the GPU, the advantage of this method is that it allows any DX9 graphics card to use it plus to use AA at the same time.

The downside is that is cannot not make full use of the range of light available in "real HDR" lighting. It's not a major thing but its something that a game developers artists might be able to better exploit down the road if using floating point based HDR lighting. Then again someone might not notice the difference between the two it's hard to tell with this sort of thing due to the way people perceive it.

conzymaher wrote:

So a X1800XT can fully implement AA and HDR simultaneously?

Thanks

Yes but a developer must code their engine to support AA+HDR which now that the X1K series is out most future games should, the ones that do HDR so far have had to be patched in a manner to support the X1K series like Oblivion and FarCry.

awhir

updated version.aslo what is crossfire like any good boards out for it under 160


AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3800BVBOX) (CP-134-AM) 1
£179.95 £179.95
DFI LanParty UT NF4 SLI-D (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-013-DF) 1
£94.95 £94.95
OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC3200 Dual Channel Platinum Series EL-DDR CAS2 (OCZ4002048ELDCPE-K) (MY-057-OC) 1
£139.95 £139.95
Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR) 1
£15.95 £15.95
LG GSA-H10ABAL 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-043-LG) 1
£22.95 £22.95
Tagan TG580-U15 580W ATX2.01 Easycon SLi Compliant Modular Silent PSU (CA-009-TG) 1
£89.95 £89.95
Seagate Barracude 7200.9 NCQ 300GB ST3300622AS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-066-SE) 1
£72.95 £72.95
Microsoft Windows XP Professional Edition inc. SP2 - OEM - 1Pk (E85-04026) (OS-002-MS) 1
£79.95 £79.95
PowerColor ATI Radeon X1800 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-048-PC) 1
£194.95 £194.95
CoolerMaster Stacker STC-T01 - Silver Trim (No PSU) (CA-054-CM) 1
£89.50 £89.50
Subtotal £981.05
VAT £171.69
Total £1,152.74

awhir

found a few review and the DFI's LANParty RDX200 won them out.were can you buy this and what price range would it be.

edit looks a bit exp.lol

8T8

Komplett sell the DFI RDX200 but at a hefty price of €236

An alternative if your looking for a brand name Crossfire motherboard is MSI who sell one called the Neo 2 Crossfire with the ULI south-bridge which is the good one as the ATI one has crappy USB2 performance plus it comes with HD Audio.

awhir

think i might just go for the dfi board i have now and the 7900gt because of the sli option.

gamer

i think its a bad idea to get a dual core cpu, at present,if games are your main priority,get a fast amd athlon64 cpu 3400+,socket 754, 160euro ,depends on what you intend to use the pc for.BUT YOU WOULD have to change motherboard to match the cpu,too.

uberpixie

why not wait a little while and see how the new intel/amd stuff performs?

At the very least the socket 939 stuff will fall in price....

awhir

might asswell wait for the drx 10 too.............

uberpixie

claregalway Qs wrote:

might asswell wait for the drx 10 too.............

Well you may as well get in at towards the start of a new socket to get the max amount of life/upgrade path out of it.

Intel might actually pull a rabbit out of the hat this time and have a dacent cpu.

AMD stuff there won't be any real performance difference between socket 939 and AM2 at the start: it's just with socket 939 you have a def limit already to the highest speed cpu you can put in.

At least with AM2 you can drag a little more life out of a rig with longer upgrade path.

Screw dx10, it's only for vista and vista will be a mess for the first year it's released, when ever that is:-)

awhir

when will the new proccesers be realesed

conzy

SLI and crossfire arent all that they are cracked up to be. Yes, if you buy to of the best cards and run them in SLI you have the best performance, but I dont think its a good upgrade path.

The best card allways beats 2 of the previous generation's cards in SLI.

A 7800gtx beats 2 6800ultra in SLI..........

And BUY NOW!!!!!!!!

AM2 is nothing more than a socket change and DDR2 (which get bet by overclocked DDR)

And The new Intel Tech is months away and will probably be shockingly overpriced.

Buy the best single graphics card you can afford, How about you get a 3700 and a X1900XT instead of a 7900gt and a X2 3800.

You can always buy a X2 3800 in a few moths when the price drops

uberpixie

conzymaher wrote:

And BUY NOW!!!!!!!
You can always buy a X2 3800 in a few moths when the price drops

Theres only 100 quid in the difference in 3700+ vs X2 3800+: if you are going to buy now just get the X2 3800+ .

Would agree with getting 1 dacent gfx card as well.

awhir

ok doka

awhir

does the plastic side panel come with the CoolerMaster Stacker or do you have to buy it.

whats a good overclocking ram i am looking at this 1 at the mo any better 1s for the same price http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatal...aMY_2d057_2dOC

awhir

anyone

astrofool

the one with the window?

It does not come with a window by default. You can get the window from www.overclock.co.uk

conzy

And seen as you will be overclocking, you dont have to worry about the upgrade path as much. Your X2 3800 will probably hit 2.6ghz. Having FX-60 performance for the next year or so isnt to shabby:p

Also overclocked DDR performs better than DDR2, so AM2 offers no advantages.....

Very nice rig, did you order yet?

awhir

this the finnal 1 ordering now

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3800BVBOX)
£179.95 £179.95
DFI LanParty UT NF4 SLI-D (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-013-DF)
£94.95 £94.95
Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR)
£15.95 £15.95
16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-043-LG)
£22.95 £22.95
Seagate Barracude 7200.9 NCQ 300GB ST3300622AS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM
£72.95 £72.95
PowerColor ATI Radeon X1800 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI
(PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-048-PC)
£194.95 £194.95
CoolerMaster Stacker STC-T01 - Silver Trim (No PSU) (CA-054-CM)
£89.50 £89.50
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition inc. SP2 - OEM - 1Pk (N09-01528) (OS-001-MS)
£49.95 £49.95
Enermax Liberty 620W ELT620AWT ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CA-024-EN)
£89.95 £89.95
Belkin F5D7000UK 802.11g Wireless PCI Adapter (NW-007-BE)
£16.95 £16.95
G.Skill 2GB DDR HZ PC4000 (2x1GB) CAS3 Dual Channel Kit
(F1-4000USU2-2GBHZ) (MY-008-GS)
£129.95 £129.95
Subtotal £958.00
VAT £167.65
Total £1,125.65

awhir

just ordered it there.