Building an AMD machine for a mate

jesus_thats_gre

Heh Lads

Gonna be building an AMD64 machine for a mate after Christmas and need some advice..

Prob gonna go with the AMD64 3500+ Winchester but am not sure what RAM or Motherboard would be best to go with it.. I don't need the best board out there, just something that will moderately overclock and probably would be best if it was an nForce4. Is it worth it going for DDR2?

Thanks

feylya

Well, I'm getting the Gigabyte nForce4 Ultra mobo. I'm sure you'll see what it's like...


if overclockers ever send it

KeRbDoG

jesus_thats_gre wrote:

Heh Lads

Gonna be building an AMD64 machine for a mate after Christmas and need some advice..

Prob gonna go with the AMD64 3500+ Winchester but am not sure what RAM or Motherboard would be best to go with it.. I don't need the best board out there, just something that will moderately overclock and probably would be best if it was an nForce4. Is it worth it going for DDR2?

Thanks

Well big man,
Why build a AMD64 when the windies OS wont release WindowsXP64 for a year or so?

feylya

Well, the beta is out and downloaded

BloodBath

The beta sucks but anyway it's a perfectly good 32 bit processor as well.


BloodBath

ViperVenoM

exactly i always wonder why people say why buy a 64bit cpu when the 64bit os sucks..ive had a 64bit rig for 4month now and its **** hot using xp pro!

i dont know what ddr2 is up to these days but i know when it came out it wasnt "so" great as it had quite loose timings so with that ill say no i wouldnt bother with it but i dunno it could have got a lot better now! but im still happy with the "old" stuff

jesus_thats_gre

kerbdog wrote:

Well big man,
Why build a AMD64 when the windies OS wont release WindowsXP64 for a year or so?

Ah sure look who it is.. Tis for a mate who is only going to play it for games. Simple choice to be honest Budget is also an issue so the more bang for his buck the better!!

jesus_thats_gre

anyone else got any info to share? I need some recomendations lads..

Its going to be paired with a 6600GT

Winters

Apparently DDR2 gives little to none performance gain over normal DDR. DDR2 is just an extension of DDR to allow it to go past the 400mhz limit with DDR.

afaik anyway.

The DDR2 on graphics cards though does give a performance increase. However the GDDR3 is overtaking this on gfx cards.

galwaydude18

go the athlon 64 way! they are way cool! i have one im my rig and my god is it damn fast!!!

iganokage

i paired my athlon 64 3500+ in my new system build (couple months ago) with an abit av8-3rd eye mobo, comes highly recommended

http://www2.abit.com.tw/page/uk/motherboard/motherboard_detail.php?pMODEL_NAME=AV8-3rd+Eye&fMTYPE=Socket+939

mr_angry

I'd be tempted to wait and get a dual-core CPU. Shouldn't be long before AMD make them available.

Might be worth reading these articles aswell:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20262
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20252

jesus_thats_gre

mr_angry wrote:

I'd be tempted to wait and get a dual-core CPU. Shouldn't be long before AMD make them available.

Might be worth reading these articles aswell:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20262
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20252[/QUOTE]

I will give em a look. Its not for myself and have a budget of about 1500 euro that has to encompass as decent 17 inch TFT.

mr_angry

Oops, right enough. If this person isn't worried about overclocking, then the 3500+ should be fine, but February might still be the best time to buy.

HungryJoey

Go Athlon 64 Dude...Don't listen to anybody telling you its not worth getting a 64-Bit CPU. Obviously , well more then likely you aren't gonna be using the 64-Bit CPU Part but why not go for Athlon 64 when they are the best Performers out there at the moment. The Own Benchmakrs. Also , i don't recomend going for the 3500+. It is a little pricey. The A 64 3000+ 939 90nm Winchester is an awsome overclocker and performer. It is worth the 150Euro ( Komplett) Rather then throwing out all the cash on a 3500+ But then again, Its your choice. Couple the 3000+ 90nm with a K8N NEO 2 and you are flying and jsut go for 1GB DDR Corsair Valueselect PC3200 and u have a killer system.

astrofool

dual core won't be till mid next year.

ddr2 doesn't work with a64, it also doesn't perform any better than ddr1 due to higher latency.

Azza

From what I have heard DDR2 and SSE3 are on the next AMD 64 90nm chip but disabled like the Pentinum 4 Prescott has 64 bit extensions but disabled. DDR2 would not be a good a good choice for AMD 64 at the moment not only is it pricy but the AMD 64's hypertransport is 200mhz so it only supports up to 400mhz or pc 3200 at stock. So unless your planning to overclock its a no brainer as the DDR2 tends to have slacker timings than DDR.

Interestingly AMD have confirmed the various technologys in there exsiting K8 and new K9 and K10 and even K11 architectures. They include PCI Express 2??? DDR2 , DDR3 and hypertransport 3!!!...(did not even know there was a 2) although the article I read said it did not state dates or which architecture gets which technology.

As for Dual cores AMD are getting to the dual cores first but there going server route which makes sense while Intel go desktop dual core shortly afterwards. Again like 64bit at the moment its something of a red herring as dual core will not offer major benefits at first if any in the desktop enviroment. Bascially just a reverse of the current 64bit situation. Most people are saying higher speed single processors will be still better for most people so looks like AMD has got more headroom there.

astrofool

hypertransport speeds have nothing to do with ram speed on a64, if you put a 400-channel, 65536-bit memory system into the a64, it would be able to read it cos its all on chip.

there's no huge difference between ddr1 and 2, so updating the chip to support wouldn't be a huge problem, they would have to release a new socket for it though, which would annoy alot of people with their brand new s939 boards however.

Hypertransport started at 800mhz, and is now at 1000mhz in the s939 chips, 1200mhz is planned and so on.

It's estimated that desktop dual core will happen about the same time from both, with AMD however being in first in the server market (lower volumes, so less demand capacity wise). It's also gonna be another a64 situation, where people have to wait for the support from programs for their dual core chips to gain any performance (although straight off the bat, windows should be able to utilise it, making hyperthreading a thing of the past).

Azza

Hyper threading was always abit of a lame duck.

As for hyper transport its default set to 200 then multiplied to whatever. The AMD 64's have no front side bus so to speak so I was unsure what way to word it. However the difference between 100mhz and 1000mhz hypertransport is very very small.