Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: an0n on January 15, 2006, 08:19:06 pm
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I've decided to build a PC.
As with most of my plans, this one will probably never reach completion, but it's nice to hope.
And I'm hocking Fattonys.com on eBay to the highest bidder to get the cash to build the ****er.
The Specs:[/u]
- 1x Gigabyte K8N-SLI Motherboard
- 1x AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ Dual-core 2.4Ghz processor with 2MB Cache
- 2x MAXTOR 250GB 7200RPM 16MB ATA-133 hard-drives
- 2x INNO3D GeFORCE 6800GS 256MB DDR3 PCI-E
- 4x 1Gb Generic DDR SDRAM
- 1x Xpro 701 7.1 Subwoofer And Speakers
- 1x 17" TFT Monitor
Plus a track-ball mouse, keyboard, drives etc; a ****load of RAM, HD, CPU and case coolers; and a 15-minute Belkin UPS.
I'm pretty sure it all meshes, but if you see any problems, speak up.
This ***** is going to tear the ass out of anything that comes it's way.
Plus I might invest in a ton of cathodes and **** from ThinkGeek to make it glow like I filled it with Radium.
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fattonys.com?
I don't see that bringing all that much cash to be honest.
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Aside from the obvious Simpson's reference, there's a whole network of Fattonys casino sites.
Fattonys-roulette.com, fattonys-craps.com etc etc.
And I've been offered £1.2k for it before. Probably from the casino people.
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Forget my comment. :D
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Demand more. :) Rig looks good, the only thing I can think of that's worth mentioning is that I hear Serial ATA harddrives are the hot thang right now? Anyway, you might check that out (I know little :blah: )
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Get Seagate SATA drives instead of Maxtor. I had a maxtor drive and it died on me within 2 years.
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The drives, monitor and to an extent the GFX cards are all cost-savers.
I intend to upgrade them pretty much constantly, as more cash rolls in. But I might upgrade the starter drives, if they're the least bit unreliable.
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And I've been offered £1.2k for it before. Probably from the casino people.
That's pretty good. :yes:
I'm pretty sure it all meshes, but if you see any problems, speak up.
uh, what are you going to use it for?
And generic memory usually sucks. Get brand name value memory, which costs only slightly more and is far more reliable.
Also, you may want to wait ten days for the X1900 line to be released. If nothing else, it might cause price drops on everything else.
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Urgh.
I was trying to keep the cost under £2k, but **** it.
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If you're working on a budget, drop the 4800 and get a much cheaper 3800 or Opteron 165 instead. The performance differences aren't very significant and they both will pretty much always be able to overclock beyond the 4800's stock speed on the right motherboard.
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dont get the 4800+ (unless u just have the spare cash laying around of course)
instead get the 4400+, it has the same core, cache but just a different clock speed and much lower price
u might want to also check into this mobo
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=246494
it is one of the best gaming mobos out there IMO
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Even the 4400 is rather expensive at $500, considering that the 165 tops out at the same speeds for $320 once both are overclocked. Although it's a good compromise if you don't want to overclock.
That SLI-DR board is excellent though; it's what I use. DFI boards overclock unlike anything else out there, although they are a little pricey. The newer expert version is also worth looking at.
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Unless you're going to be running massively RAM hungry applications, you might do better with just 2x1Gb. This is because of AMD's built-in memory controller can only handle 2 DIMMs, so going with 4 will considerably increase memory latency. And you can always add the last two if you ever need them.
Plus, for a gaming rig, I'd probably (actually not probably but definitely, as I just bought the stuff 3 days ago and it's waiting for shipping :D) go with a slightly slower processor and use the money saved to get a 7800GT or GTX instead of the 6800.
Don't get me wrong, it looks real good as is... just think this might make it perform even better for games :)
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It's primarily for games, but I also kinda wanted it for MAX too.
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Track-ball mouse? You mean one of those horrible deals with the red trackball on top? I thought those had died, and rightly so. They're unusable.
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Track-ball mouse? You mean one of those horrible deals with the red trackball on top? I thought those had died, and rightly so. They're unusable.
Been using one for 3 years on my desktop. Works great. Good for FPS, RTS, and photoshop like work. Annoying to miss a scrollbutton, but that's something to get used to. For just navigating around an OS, I'm actually starting to prefer a glidepad by now, but off course gaming or anything more then clicking on menus is impossible with those.
I can still use mouses, but they're rather annoying (pain in the right shoulder, if I use them too often.)
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I bought 2x1GB of G.Skill HZ memory from overclockers.co.uk yesterday. It should overclock very nicely; it uses Samsung's UCCC chips, which are the higher capacity versions of the TCCD/TCC5 chips overclockers worldwide know and love. They can reach insane clock speeds at fairly low voltages, but the latencies can need to be as high as 3-4-4-10 at 270MHz.
BTW, is that rig going to be watercooled? X2s do run quite cool anyway but I'm wondering how far I can push my 4200+ since it usually runs at around 30 degrees C (with fans off) in FEAR or Doom 3.
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It's primarily for games, but I also kinda wanted it for MAX too.
For modern games the video card(s) are king, so you'll get the most out of your money by going heavy on that and skimping on pretty much everything else, but 3D rendering on the other hand is entirely processor dependent. Also, note that SLI is really only suitable for modern games due to issues with vsync, although it shines in those games, so if you play older games make sure that one card by itself is fast enough at the settings you want.
Also, 32-bit XP will only be able to use 3.2GB (or something around there) of the memory, so you will need to use something else in programs where you want to use of the full 4GB.
I bought 2x1GB of G.Skill HZ memory from overclockers.co.uk yesterday. It should overclock very nicely; it uses Samsung's UCCC chips, which are the higher capacity versions of the TCCD/TCC5 chips overclockers worldwide know and love. They can reach insane clock speeds at fairly low voltages, but the latencies can need to be as high as 3-4-4-10 at 270MHz.
BTW, is that rig going to be watercooled? X2s do run quite cool anyway but I'm wondering how far I can push my 4200+ since it usually runs at around 30 degrees C (with fans off) in FEAR or Doom 3.
I'm thinking of getting those sticks myself, as they are only about $15 more than value memory. Although the high timings generally negate the effect of the bandwidth, so the G.Skill 2-3-2 sticks for the same price may be a better option. I don't really need 2GB at the moment but I could use some memory for a second computer, so I might as well transfer my existing 1GB pack to that and switch the main system to some 2GB pack.
As for the 4200, most of the Manchesters do 2.5-2.7ghz on good air cooling, although you can afford to take the vcore a bit higher due to the watercooling. I think most of these A64s aren't really limited by the temperature though, except maybe some of the 2x1MB dual cores and FXs. I can get a stable 3ghz with 1.52V on a single core 146 with just an XP90.
I can still use mouses, but they're rather annoying (pain in the right shoulder, if I use them too often.
I just keep my sensitivity cranked up, so I rarely need to move my wrist/arm at all, which I think is what can cause the pain.
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Pain in the shoulder? Why is your shoulder moving?
My parents both get problems in their wrists from using a mouse (yes, they're old :p), so the main pc at home has a trackball thingy. Personally, I think they're even worse than those little joystick things on laptops. I avoid it like the plague. In fact, I use a one-button iMac usb mouse instead if I ever have to use that machine...
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Both shoulder and wrists, actually. Not sure what causes it.
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Strange. How is your arm placed when you're using the mouse? Is your forearm resting on the desk, or is it off the surface? My arm hardly moves at all. I move the mouse primarily with my fingers, and my wrist pivots a bit, but not much more than that. My arm and shoulder are relaxed most of the time.
Oh well - whatever works best for you, I suppose. I only know I hate using trackballs. :) And those touchpads on laptops, for that matter...
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the high timings generally negate the effect of the bandwidth, so the G.Skill 2-3-2 sticks for the same price may be a better option.
Not entirely accurate. Latency is an issue when doing many small reads, but that's why CPUs have cache. When transferring large blocks of data (the main issue in games) bandwidth is king.
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These benchmarks show that a somewhat lower bandwidth combined with lower timings are the fastest combination on a single core (I'm comparing the 2.5-2-2 at 237mhz and 3-4-3 at 290mhz benchmarks):
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=28&threadid=1475190&enterthread=y
It may be different for dual cores though; I'm not sure whether those prefer bandwidth or latency.
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IIRC, AMD64s generally prefer bandwidth (up to a point), especially those with larger L2 caches. Can't remember how the X2s differ.