The time has come... Upgrade! - Questions, thoughts, ideas. Please share.....
 

Hey guys, hope your holidays were great.....


OK, here is the deal, I am doing some research on some new gear.

Motherboard
CPU
Video
RAM

-- I have been looking at the AMD 64 3500+ [processors] with the 939 chipset. I like the looks of the Gigabyte GA-K8NS Ultra-939 with a Gig of DDR400 RAM. Video, I think I am going with the ATI 9800 Pro 256M.

QUESTIONS:
:rolleyes: What is the main difference between the 754 (.13 micron) and 939 (90nm) sockets? Speed increase? Will the dual channel memory be better overall?

:rolleyes: Will i see a sizeable increase going from the 128M video card to the 256M card or will the difference only be noticed on paper over 1600x1200 4xAA/8xAF.

:rolleyes: Raedon ATI 9800 Pro. Why is the sapphire, powercooler and rosemill cards so much cheaper. Are they slower? Do they have different hardware than the true ATI cards?

:rolleyes: X700 Pro 256M is much cheaper than the 9800 Pro. Why? Is it much slower? If you look at the architecture of the two. The X700 looks better. Anyone seen any benchmarks that compares the two?

:rolleyes: What is the best board for the 939 socket. Will I notice a difference in speed from the 754 socket? Is it worth the extra money?

:rolleyes: Is nForce3 250 dommed from the start? Nvidia disabled the HyperTranport feature on these chipsets. Should I stick with VIA and head down the K8T800 path?

:rolleyes: PCI-Express? Better than AGP 8x?



OK - that is enough for now. As you can see, I am a very analitical person who wants the best bang for the buck. So...... calling all gaming/tech guru's - impress me........ Also please NOTE: Suggestions are welcome but please, stick to the topic and I have a ballpark price I want to stay under.....

Thanks for any information you can offer.

Well, there isn't really anything that is going to take complete advantage of 256mb of onboard ram. From what I've heard, the 256mb cards are a little slower than their 128mb counterparts because the card is spending more time addressing more memory.

They cannot call them ATI-based cards unless they use ATI standards. The reference boards and whatnot I'm sure are the exact same and I would be willing to be too that in order to put ATI's branding anywhere on the box, that ATI is going to test and approve the cards before release. At least I would hope so.

PCI-Express is coming. The thing with PCIe is that it can be used for more than video as AGP (accelerated graphics port) like the name says is only video. I use AGP currently though and am not going to buy new hardware just because of PCIe.

Thanks for the info Bendsley..

Well, I went ahead and placed my order. I got:

MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum nForce3 250G Ultra
AMD Athlon64 3500+ socket 939 90nm
(2) 512M Cas2 DDR400
GeForce 6600 GT

I think I should be happy with the results. Decided to go with the Geforce over the ATI after seeing head-to-head comparisons.

I seem some great choices in there...your machine should FLY!! For a lot of information on hardware, i recommend http://www.tomshardware.com/

You did good. I wouldn't recommend anything else!

-Lasereth

Good call. I spent many hours researching video cards and ended up getting one of these puppies. Best bang for the buck, from what I read everywhere.

Very nice selection indeed. :thumbsup:

keep us posted on how your new rig runs!

Be prepared for dissapointment with the 6600gt unless your one of the lucky few that gets one that performs how its supposed too. In the last two weeks I've played with 4 different cards, 2 different brands, and none of them have played games decently. I know some people have gotten them to work well, but a lot of people are really dissapointed in the 6600s.

Thanks guys for all the information. Should be arriving this Friday.! I will be a busy one on Sat for sure......

Irishsean: What kind of problems did they/you have? I did not run across any horror stories with my research.