Considering upgrading

Stephen

I'm considering upgrading my PC in the near future (i.e. within a month). Its main purpose is games, multimedia and minor dabbling in Linux.
Currently I've got an Abit NF7-S 2.0 with an AMD XP2800+ plugged into it, along with a Radeon 9800 Pro/128mb (agp/256bit) and three IDE hard disks. There's also 1GB of TwinMOS PC3200 ram in there (1x512 + 2x256).

I'm planning on upgrading to an AMD64 rig, so off I went to Komplett. As far as I can tell, I will be able to use my existing PC3200 ram without any trouble - is this correct?

I've picked out the following parts from Komplett, all of which are currently listed as in stock:

Abit AN8, nForce4, Socket-939, ATX SATA, GbLAN, Firewire, DDR, Sound, PCI-Ex16 --- €123

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2.0GHz Socket 939, 512KB, BOXED w/fan --- €199

Club3D GeForce 6600GT 128MB GDDR3 PCI Express, VGA, DVI, Tv-Out, Retail --- €184

Total cost: €506 plus a tenner for GLS delivery. (Crap as they are, I find them good when I get them to deliver stuff to work)

I went for a PCI-E board + 6600GT as my usual upgrade cycle is upgrade Motherboard/CPU/ram 1 year, upgrade graphics card the next, repeat. I can't see PCI-Express going anywhere for a while, so I will try to sell on the 9800 Pro and NF7-S 2.0 to help finance this. The 9800 pro has an Arctic cooler on it too btw. I hope to get about 120 for the 9800 Pro + arctic cooler, and dunno how much to expect for the motherboard/CPU/HSF combination.

Is the HSF included with the A64 any good, or should I buy a separate one? Noise isn't too much of a factor, as my case fans, 400W PSU and 3 hard disks are fairly noisy by themselves anyway. I don't plan to overclock so that shouldn't affect this decision either.

That 6600GT is one of the 500/1000MHz Club3D ones, which apparently are supposed to be quite decent for the money. Anyone know if there are any games or anything thrown in with the "retail" box?

Am I missing anything, given the above and the fact that I have a case, 400W antec PSU, fans, hard disks, optical drives etc already?

Any other thoughts welcome.

Thanks

4Xcut

If your not overclocking the stock heatsink and fan should be grand. They're actually supposed to be quite good as stock coolers go.

christophicus

And the memory that you have will work with an athlon 64.

Stephen

Any opinions on that motherboard?

unkel

You've got all angles covered, Stephen

Stephen wrote:

Club3D GeForce 6600GT 128MB GDDR3 PCI Express, VGA, DVI, Tv-Out, Retail --- €184

For only a tad more, you can get yourself a 6800GT these days. In a years time you can get another one for next to nothing to SLI it

Stephen wrote:

I will try to sell on the 9800 Pro and NF7-S 2.0 to help finance this. The 9800 pro has an Arctic cooler on it too btw. I hope to get about 120 for the 9800 Pro + arctic cooler, and dunno how much to expect for the motherboard/CPU/HSF combination.

Since the latest generation has come out, the second hand value of the 9800 pro has gone down to €80-€90 and with arctic to about €100. Budget realistically at €200 for gpu / cpu / mobo

Stephen wrote:

Total cost: €506 plus a tenner for GLS delivery

Minus above €200 leaves you with a €300 bill (or a bit more for better graphics) for a substantial upgrade. Not bad at all mate :cool:

Edit: the memory will work fine on the Athlon64. The mobo might not be the very best overclocker (which you don't care about much anyway) but it is NF4 SLI and that price is good

Stephen

Didn't realise it was an SLI board, heh.
All of Komplett's 6800GT's are around the 350 euro + region... I wouldn't call that a little bit extra! Is there somewhere cheaper?

Edit: according to Abit's site it is not SLI - they have seperate AN8 SLI and 'fatal1ty' versions of the board with SLI.

Edit again: Ah, komplett have the SLI version (with better onboard sound) for an extra 20 quid or so.

KdjaCL

Stephen wrote:

Any opinions on that motherboard?

Thats my new mobo too , SLi with hopefully 2 6800s found a few articles about how to get cards of different type to work together ie 6600 and a 6800.

I gonna get the 3700 tho and using my ram in this (2700) until i can get more, the only thing about the AN8 is it onl takes 2700 and 3200 ram bit odd considering its SLI.


/odd how our pcs get upgraded together every 18 months or so, maybe they get married


kdjac

Stephen

Question: Vanilla Radeon X800 256MB GDDR3/256bit vs 6600GT 128MB GDDR3/128 bit.
X800 is about 40 quid more expensive - is it worth it?

astrofool

there's a vanilla AN8, AND an AN8-SLI, one has SLI, the other doesn't..

Stephen

Any idea what extra goodies you get with a Sapphire X800 full retail box? My Sapphire 9800 pro was a cardboard box OEM style deal.

Stephen

*cough* Just bumping this with some additional questions... I've been looking around Komplett at the various different PCI-express graphics cards that they're offering in my price range.
I'm now looking at this for about €50 more than a 6600GT/128MB/128bit. Is it worth it, bearing in mind that I probably won't be going for an SLI motherboard?

zuma

Its a superiour card to the 6600GT no doubt about it...get it if you have the money!

KdjaCL

You dont have to use the SLi feature straight away so getting it in an getting a Nvidia gives you the option further down the road.

And with a possible 4gb of ram in the AN8 its not a bad deal as it supports a decent few Cpus.


For longterm value getting SLi and nvida seems to be the best bet. But for straight out of the box power that card is a decent choice.

kdjac

Stephen

Yeah, I don't really see myself ever using SLI. When the time comes I'd probably just get a newer, beefier card that will beat the **** out of two current day midrange cards. The AN8 I have listed above in my first post is a non-SLI version.
I've been told here that my existing ram (2x256 +1x512) will be fine, so I assume if I was to drop another 1GB stick into the last remaining slot at a later date it will work ok?

christophicus

Yeah tha card is supposed to be very overclockable as well.I would however spend the money on the sli motherboard instead of the card.You also get a hardware fire wall on the board and nTune which will overclock everthing for you so you can do it without any worry of breaking anything.

Yeah the last 1gig stick will work, but you wont need that much memory for years.