Rate my build :)

Khannie

Ok, here's what I'm thinking of getting:

A64 3700+ San Diego core
Gigabyte SLI mobo, does this need a new PSU? I have a nice 450W "be quiet" psu that works with my Asus A7N8X mobo and I'd like to keep it if I can.
6800GT (can I SLI this with another one of the same brand in a years time?, also would a 6600GT be a bottleneck if I got one instead?)
2x80GB samsung SATA2 for raid0 lovin'

Currently have a case, psu, optical drives and 768MB of PC3200 that I'd like to bring to the new machine.

masteroftherealm

Very nice. The 450w will do till u go SLI and your well better off going for the 6800GT now while you can. All in all one very nice system

Col_Loki

The only thing about the PSU is it has a 20pin connector while the board has a 24pin one.... im not 100% sure if it will still work (think it might). But power wise you should be ok.


Other than that it looks pretty good.

[edit] One thing i might change is that i would get a good cooler and a 3000+ and overclock. Its just the 3700+ is expensive and the market is shifting toward the Dual cores and they will be going down in price quite a bit over the next couple of months. Plus the 3000+ overclocks very well, mine is currently at 2.5ghz , havent tested higher yet.....

HungryJoey

You mention is it possible to add another 6800GT later on in about a year, More then likely it will cause problem's. In order for two nVidia card's to run together, Each card MUST Have the same BIOS on each card, So that means the same core, Memory and more then likely the same Manufacturer of card. IF you got one a year later you would probably have to flash the same BIOS onto each card which may cause a little bit of hassle.

And i would stick with the CPU you selected simply because it has a higher multiplier then the 3000+ 939 with a multiplier of 9 which makes it harder to Overclock also makes in Nessecary to have very good ram to reach speeds of 2.5ghz.. Needs a FSB of atleast 270Mhz to acheive them speed's with the 3000+ CPU, Where as the 3700+ Will do that speed much easier, Has a Multiplier of 12x IIRC ( not 100% though ) And as you mentioned using your own 768Mb of RAM, It is probably value RAM then is it ? Which overall makes the 3700+ a much better choice.

About the 20Pin ATX connecter, If you havn't already bought the system... Komplett sell 20 pin to 24 Pin Converter's If i rember correctly, that should do the job.

PSU : 450watt's is plenty just make sure it has PLENTY of Amp's on the 12V Rail, If its anything like a Qtech, you would be pushing the PSU a little to much as 450watt Qtech PSU's only have about 12-14 Amps which is Very low for a system of your power, So just make sure of the PSU.

Overall, Nice system, Hope it bring's you plenty of Fun

Hj

Col_Loki

And i would stick with the CPU you selected simply because it has a higher multiplier then the 3000+ 939 with a multiplier of 9 which makes it harder to Overclock also makes in Nessecary to have very good ram to reach speeds of 2.5ghz.. Needs a FSB of atleast 270Mhz to acheive them speed's with the 3000+ CPU, Where as the 3700+ Will do that speed much easier, Has a Multiplier of 12x IIRC ( not 100% though ) And as you mentioned using your own 768Mb of RAM, It is probably value RAM then is it ? Which overall makes the 3700+ a much better choice.

You would just use dividers for the memory. The AMD64 doesent really suffer performance wise from using dividers like the XP/Intels would. And im not talking a crazy overclock, just mabye up to 2.2ghz (3500+) which should be pretty easy. The chip is €140 less....... Might be better spend on sorting out Dual Channel Ram ? IE you might aswell get a S754 system since you will only be running single channel with 756mb Ram, that being the main difference between the sockets (dont get the S754 btw).

HungryJoey

VERY good point you got there... But the 3700+ San diego will last longer then the 3000+ and thats fact... Using divider's only looses memory bandwidth and we don't want that now do we ? I stick think 3700+ is a good choice.

Khannie

Nice one. Thanks for the feedback lads.

I'll defo get that 20->24 pin converter HJ. I was wondering about the mobo connector allright. The PSU's a quality one. Plenty of juice on the rails and they're steady as a steady thing.

Col: Was considering going with the 3000 and overclocking, but I heard that the 3700 San Diego is a decent overclocker too (and the cheapest of the SD core chips). I don't expect to need to overclock it until a fair while from now if at all. My ram isn't expensive stuff (corsair methinks) so I'd have to replace that if I wanted to OC properly.

Looks like the 6800GT is the way to go.

Thanks again.

Edit: Jaysus, you were fast with the replies there lads. I thought the dual channel didn't have much of an impact on AMD systems. Is that wrong?

Col_Loki

VERY good point you got there... But the 3700+ San diego will last longer then the 3000+ and thats fact... Using divider's only looses memory bandwidth and we don't want that now do we ? I stick think 3700+ is a good choice.

The performance difference between using a divider and not is very small on the AMD64's so that shouldnt really be a factor (where it is on the XP/Intels).

I definetly think some decent Ram (Dual Channel atleast) & a slightly overclocked 3000+ would be better than a 3700+ and Single Channel DDR. (Based on AMD's rating sceme Single V Dual DDR is 300+ Points). Added to the fact that if he is upgrading in the future he will have decent memory already in the system so will reduce the cost? Not to mention the much higher memory speeds that can be hit........

Edit: Jaysus, you were fast with the replies there lads. I thought the dual channel didn't have much of an impact on AMD systems. Is that wrong?

About 300+ based on AMD's rating (S754 v S939).

[edit] BTW My 3000+ is now Running Prime95 @ 2.6ghz (1.6v) ......

HungryJoey

Well Khannie... Its all up to you, You can go spend your money on almost or porbably the best Single Core out there from AMD or you can buy a cheaper Venice and OC it to the performance of a 3700+ Let alone the fact that the 3700+ has 1Mb of L2 cache which will do justice to the 3700+ although more cache is intel's answer to everything So what do you prefer, A stock 3700+ with savage performce or a pushed Venice with the same performance or lower due to half the cache level. And if you ever want to Overclock with the 3700+, It will probably bring you to extreme speed's with that 90n san Diego core although the Venice is a 90n Aswel, well up to you.

And more then likely then if its corsair its Value select with Timing's of 2.5 -3 -3 -7, I had that stuff before my OCZ Gold and it did About 225 Mhz in my motherboard which will allow a 250 Mhz overclock most probably until you do Purchase Some better RAM ( if ).

Hj

EDIT : Loki, 2.6Ghz is damn impressive, Very nice.

Gone West

Why raid0? For the same price you could get a nice 250gb.
As you know, if one drive fails, then you lose everything.
Its not really noticably faster to start up games, really. It is a nice bit handier, however if you are moving a bunch of linux distros over a gigabit lan or whatnot.
Just my thoughts

astrofool

those 20->24 pin converters do nothing khannie, just more a peace of mind thing that all pins are connected. The same 12v is used for both, so the converter adds nothing, a real 24 pin psu has a rail for the new 4 pins seperately.

I was in the same situation a while ago, having a 20pin 520w all braided psu from performance-pcs.com , but decided to go for a new enermax 600w with the SLI connectors and 24 pin. I'm sure I didn't have to tho

unkel

Col_Loki wrote:

BTW My 3000+ is now Running Prime95 @ 2.6ghz (1.6v) ......

Excellent OC

BTW I'm very glad you are around again on these forums

Khannie

Thanks all. For a variety of reasons I ended up getting a 200GB SATA2 Samsung P120 drive (will probably add another if RAID 0 benchmarks warrant it, but will probably change memory to dual channel as a priority first).

Also got the 3700+, gigabyte mobo and xfx 6800GT. Yummy. Can't wait for it to arrive.

mp3guy

is this your linux box you're talking about?

DonkeyStyle \o/

Three thumbs up

unkel

Best of luck with your new rig

Khannie wrote:

will probably add another if RAID 0 benchmarks warrant it

They won't

Col_Loki

Excellent OC

BTW I'm very glad you are around again on these forums

Cheers unkel, am happy to be back . Has been quite a bit of inactivity, upgrade is doing me wonders!!

Currently running 2.55ghz, 282mhz FSB DDR564 @ 2.5-3-3-7.

Also got the 3700+, gigabyte mobo and xfx 6800GT. Yummy. Can't wait for it to arrive.

I bet you will be pretty happy with the performance. Hope it works out nicely for you mate.

BTW Might be worth selling the 256mb stick and getting another 512mb one.... just to run dual channel...... if not it will still be a sweet rig.

Azza

Nice build Khannie.....you'll be required to attend a few lans so you can show it off.

One thing you in particular might find interesting as I believe you mentioned you where considering waiting for dual cores I've heard UT2K7 will be supporting dual cores.......as in the game should see some performance benefits with a dual core cpu powering the system. How much of a benefit of course is purely spectulative at this point.

Khannie

mp3guy wrote:

is this your linux box you're talking about?

It will be

I'm gonna check the performance of the 6800GT in linux, and if it's as good as the 6600GT in windows then I'll probably stick with it for now. Nvidia's drivers are getting better all the time.

Col: It's 3x256, though 2 of them are a pair, so I might sell one and buy two more in a pair (or I might just sell all three and buy 2x512).

Azza: Yeah, I'm not surprised that the next gen games are gonna support the dual cores. If the 3700+ is a bit of a laggard with 2k7 comes out then I'll probably bump that up to a dual core. I've at least another year left 'til that happens though.

Thanks again to everyone. It's nice to get the reassurance before you hand over a chunk of change. Just in waiting mode now. ctrl + r, ctrl +r, etc. (reload page)

Gone West

unkel wrote:

Excellent OC

BTW I'm very glad you are around again on these forums

BTW, that 3000+64 bit I bought off yourself is running at around 2.5ghz~
Pretty good, I reckon. Its starting to get a little hot, since I wrapped my case in fur though.

Khannie: Sounds good about that 200gig drive, I dont really like RAID0 myself you see. I've lost too much data using it.

VeVeX

FuzzyLogic wrote:

Why raid0? For the same price you could get a nice 250gb.
As you know, if one drive fails, then you lose everything.

What happens then if his 250gb fails ?

HungryJoey

Hey Kol, You are running @ 280+ Mhz FSB with your RAM. What Votage are you feeding that RAM ? you got a nice DFI board anyway which won't be short of Volt's. My MSI K8N Neo ( 754 ) Can only provide 2.85V's which really suck's , cant get my RAM above 210Mhz or timing's tighter then 2-3-2-2-5 1t Because of the Lack of voltage's.

Hj

Malafus

VeVeX wrote:

What happens then if his 250gb fails ?

I think the point was that with RAID0 you stand double the chance of losing all your data, as one drive failure leads to the loss of data on both drives.

Gone West

Thats exactly my point. And, more than likely he would be using this as his main drive, which is more than likely pretty important stuff.
My ideal setup would be:
[raid1]
[2xraptors in raid0][2xraptors in raid0]
That way you have both speed and redundance. It is, however prohibitively expensive.

Also, If a large drive was to fail, some data (80%+) can nearly always be recovered.
However, as Raid0 stripes the data(note: not mirrors)over the 2 disks, at byte level striping, coherent data recovery would be almost impossible. Unlike Raid5 or something that uses block level striping.

*I lost several hundred gigs of data when one of my 250WD's in Raid0 failed, thats why I dislike it so much.

Azza

I had 2 raptors in raid 0 before....performance gain was almost non exsistant combined with doubling the risk of data loss if one hard drive goes in my view its not worth it.

CyberGhost

HungryJoey wrote:

PSU : 450watt's is plenty just make sure it has PLENTY of Amp's on the 12V Rail, If its anything like a Qtech, you would be pushing the PSU a little to much as 450watt Qtech PSU's only have about 12-14 Amps which is Very low for a system of your power, So just make sure of the PSU.

Hj

sorry to steal the thread, but,

can anyone please explain what are those PSU rails?? are they like cables or something? the only thing I look at when buying a psu is wattage, are those Amps important for running cards and mobo or hard drives and such?

Khannie

Rails are the actual voltage at a given current that your PSU puts out. So it will have a 12V rail, but it wont run at exactly 12V. Some vary wildly from this when under load (cheap) others don't (quality).

Astro: You sure about that on the 24 pin thing? I'm pretty sure I bought the wrong converter (there was only one on komplett and I got 24->20 instead of 20->24). The order's gone for picking, so I'm not gonna change it for the sake of a fiver at this stage.

CyberGhost

Thanks for explaining Khannie

Khannie

You're most welcome cyberghost.

For those that are interested in the ATX thing: Astrofool is spot on. If you have a decent per-output amp rating on the 12V line and your video card has a separate molex / power input you should be fine with a 20pin ATX cable in a 24pin socket. Different mobo manufacturers have differing stances on this though.

unkel

FuzzyLogic wrote:

BTW, that 3000+64 bit I bought off yourself is running at around 2.5ghz~
Pretty good, I reckon

The infamous pins and needles one

If you're brave you might want to reseat it. I can't remember for sure but I might not have used AS5 the last time I assembled it

Khannie

Everything arrived this morning. Particularly impressed with the motherboard on first glance. Every cable imagineable with it (sata power and data x2, ide x2, etc. etc.) and (best bit), the extra four pins on the ATX connector were covered in a piece of (easily removeable) black plastic so you know exactly where to put your 20 pin connector.

I'll be putting my new baby together this evening when I get home from work. Can't wait.