Originally posted by CP5670
yeah, I'm looking forward to trying that. The problem right now is my crappy power supply; I had to remove one of the CD drives and a side fan for now to get the card to work stably at the stock 370/1000 speed and the autodetect thing only shows 385/1030, although I'm not going to push it at all just yet. I will be ordering a new psu in a day or two and am looking around at possible options. The OCZ 520w model looks nice; any of you have that?
Allready nice speeds, though I wouldn't push it too much.
On the PSU you mentioned, its overkill, pure and simple, unless your going to SLI the thing, a Antec 500w would be enough.
The dual channel thing is nice but does not really do much for any of the AMD processors, although since it's free performance you might as well use it. You want the same amount of memory in each channel; two 512 sticks would work fine. I actually have three modules in this mode on an AXP but they are of different sizes (two 256s and one 512, although all are 400mhz).
Right now there is not much point in getting 2gb unless you do lots of heavy graphics editing or stuff like that, although you do want 1gb. Normal 3-3-3-8 stuff will be fine from some well known brand; smaller timings hardly do anything and cost a lot more.
As for your system, get a single large hard disk (the new 16mb cache drives are almost as fast as raptors but larger and cheaper), drop the extra cd drive and spend the money on a second GT instead. I think nforce 4 will support two PCIE x16 slots and two GTs in the SLI mode will be insanely fast. Also, get a dedicated soundcard if you play games a lot. The Audigy2 ZS's drivers can be annoying but it's much better than the soundstorm in games unless you want to use a digital receiver. The retail version also comes with like $120 worth of games, more than the soundcard's price. The music/DVD quality is similar though. [/B]
Yes, it dosn't do much, but it helps if you do cache intensitive stuff (loading in and out of RAM also), or stuff like video editing, but basicly its helpful.
Did I say there was a reason for 2GB? Unless you will be keeping this computer till UE 3.0, 2GB will go to waste.
The low timing RAM's will help, if like you, I overclock, even 2-3-2 timing would be helpful, although the AMD memory controller practicly does their work.
Actully the larger cache isn't that useful unless I do heavy compiling or graphical work, its acess times that will rule when I search for files or do tweaking, idea is super fast start-up, with the most importent games and programs stuck there. Also, 1 larger drive negates the speed benefit of RAID0.
Not really, the idea is this PC gets funding from my dad, and later, after my birthday, if I have enough money and benchs show its worth it, i'll stick a GT and a CPU upgrade.
Soundcard is redudent with the Soundstorm 2, its audigy level, and its CPU footprint is tiny.
The only possible use for an audigy now would be if I run though my PC the entire house, sending 2 channels to stero, 6 channels to surround, 2 to my speakers etc. then a audigy would be nice.
