Suave

All prices are in Canadian dollars. Basically, I just want input on how effective it looks as far as gaming, and how cost-efficient it appears to be. Also, any glaring incompatibilities would be nice to know about. ^_^

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MikeSty

Another half gig of RAM would be nice.

portwineboy

Yea I'm with Mike. Another 512 RAM at least...and if you can I would consider going to 2GB. I don't know about anyone else but with 1 GB of good Corsair RAM I'm paging out to disk once a session in BF2. I looked at RAM useage and BF2 was taking up almost 800MB.

I also think you should take a look at Lasereth's videocard guide which is stickied in this forum. I think you can get a better card for less money, but I didn't run the CAD exchange.

Maybe also consider XP Pro instead of Home?

I still use a sep. sound card even though I have good onboard sound in my somewhat older ASUS mobo. I'd be willing to be you will be find with the onboard sound though, they have gotten quite good with that.

The mobo, chip, psu, case, HD are all awesome IMO.

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Suave

Well the RAM I'm definitely considering (I already have another 512 stick that I can add to it, but it's a different brand). The card, as far as the ones available is at least one of the better ones. What would the advantages of using WinXP Pro be?

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portwineboy

Eh I guess the only benefits to Pro would be Remote Desktop, mulitprocessor support and the encrypting file system...none of which you need to game with...

As for the vid card I'd lean more towards a 256MB one. It's gonna drive the price up $100 though. I did look at the exchange rate and that is a good price you are getting and it is a very good card.

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Suave

Okay, and as far as RAM goes, could I buy a gig of dual channel RAM and still use my extra 512 meg and have everything work?

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soccerchamp76

Yes, you can have 1.5 GB of RAM in a computer, just make sure that all the memory matches (speeds, etc)

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Martian

No, you can't buy a gigabyte of dual channel RAM, because it doesn't exist. Dual channel is a motherboard implemented feature and means that the RAM slots have two seperate busses to transfer data back and forth. The RAM itself isn't any different.

You can mix different speeds too, but you will have to run the RAM at the speed of the slowest stick. So if you have two 533 sticks and one 400 stick, you'll want to run it all at 400. But yeah, there's no technical issue with that so long as you have a third slot to plug the other stick into. Also, dual channel and CAS latency 2 don't seem to like each other very much, so run the RAM at 2.5 to avoid stability issues.

As for the video card, an 6600GT will likely give you all the performance you need. You may not be able to run Battlefield 2 at 1600x1200 with all the settings maxed out, but you will be able to run it. I'd stick with that for now unless you already know that you're going to be running all the latest games and will need absolute bleeding edge performance. It's usually not worth the price of admission though, if you ask me. I could put an entire box together for what some of the top end video cards go for.

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Suave

So what would a "dual channel" memory kit (two sticks of 512 meg of RAM) refer to, if the RAM itself cannot be "dual channel"? I'm just going off what the sites are showing.

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MooseMan3000

A "dual channel kit" is just two sticks of exactly identical memory. As in, memory that's guaranteed to work in dual channel mode. As to whether you can run 1 gig in dual channel then 512 in single channel... chances are you can't, but that would depend entirely on your motherboard, not the memory. See if you can find the manual for your mobo online and see what it says. Like others said, though, I would definitely have at least 1 gig of RAM. 512 generally won't cut it for newer games. Just for compatibility issues, I would get 1024 of the same type of RAM rather than trying to add your existing RAM to the new stuff. It just makes things easier on you.

Windows XP Pro would be nice, but it's completely unnecessary for your applications. It's just an extraneous expense.

As for the video card: the 6600 GT is good, but I would recommend getting a plain old 6800 instead. They both support the same graphics technologies, but the 6800 is significantly more powerful. I would shy away from anything but current gen cards (i.e. no Radeon 9800), mostly because of the support for newer technologies. Even though a 6600 and a 9800 look similiar at first glance, in newer games the 6600 would almost definitely outperform the older card because it's designed with the newer graphics technologies in mind. However, you're going to pay well over $100 CAD more for the 6800 vs the 6600GT. If that's too much, stick with the 6600. It's a very good card.

One last thing you might want to consider upgrading is the HDD. Instead of a bigger storage drive, you should look at the possibility of getting a WD raptor. For $150 CAD or so you can get the 10000 RPM 36 GB Raptor, which significantly outperforms any 7200 RPM drive in seek, read, and write times. It will make game loads go a lot faster, if that's a concern for you. The drive even outperforms most 10000 RPM SCSI drives, and it's significantly cheaper. You may look into getting this and adding a bigger storage drive later.

All around it's a pretty good setup. With a few tweaks it can be a monster!

One question though... why the Antec media case? Is it going to be a media PC as well? I just personally don't like the look of that case for a desktop, that's the only reason I ask. There's no problem using it, though.

Suave

I just went with a case that had a built in PSU (since separate case and separate PSU seems to double the price generally) with a 450W output to make sure there was enough power to run anything I might add in.

I thought about a Raptor HDD as well, but even with my current comp I've used almost 30 gigs, so with a new one that I'd be installing more games and such on, 36 doesn't give me much room to move (and the larger drive is out of my range).

If anyone has specific brands they know are better or whatever, then feel free to let loose. My putting together this system was basically fumbling around in the dark once I got past the video card and CPU.

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MikeSty

[QUOTE=Martian]
You can mix different speeds too, but you will have to run the RAM at the speed of the slowest stick. So if you have two 533 sticks and one 400 stick, you'll want to run it all at 400. But yeah, there's no technical issue with that so long as you have a third slot to plug the other stick into. Also, dual channel and CAS latency 2 don't seem to like each other very much, so run the RAM at 2.5 to avoid stability issues.[QUOTE]

Do you really have much choice? AFAIK you MUST run at the lowest speed.

jujueye

Perfect. That's what I was going to say. I'll also add to that same idea: Take advantage of that dual channel motherboard! Two moatched sticks of ram will work great. I think you'll hinder the performance by adding that last 512, but that's pretty motherboard dependant. Check the user manual. eah, it'll give you more ram, but likely at a slightly lowe speed. Tradeoffs....

Martian

No, you don't. You'll fry the slower memory unless you get some really good cooling on there, but it is technically possible to run RAM at higher than specified speed.

As for the dual channel thing, my A7N8X supports assymmetric dual channel. I have 768 mb (256 on one channel, 512 on the other in 3 256mb sticks) and it runs dual channel beautifually. I can't see them removing the feature on the A8V, unless the Via chipset hates it.

And I'd steer clear of the Raptor. I've seen three fail personally within a year and a half of purchase and heard stories of more. Plus, 36gb just isn't practical and the boost in performance of 10 000 rpm over 7200 rpm just isn't signifigant enough to justify the extra trouble. The Caviar with 8mb cache will do you just fine, I reckon.

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I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame

Suave

Well thanks for the responses everyone. I tweaked it a bit, but it's just linked for your interest (should you have any ). There's no RAM now because I'd be buying a gig from another retailer.

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Lasereth

Dual channel benefits are basically a huge urban legend. It does help, but not noticeably in games. Having 1 GB of RAM is always better than having a lesser amount of dual channel. Get at least 1 GB of RAM. The videocard is midrange, so don't expect anything more than midrange performance. Someone mentioned the GeForce 6800 is an alternative...a good choice, especially since their prices are very close to each other at NewEgg.com. The processor is perfect. I don't really care about motherboards, because chipset performance is so minimal between mobos that you won't notice a difference. The rest looks great!

-Lasereth

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Suave

Thanks. If newegg shipped to Canada, then I'd probably go with a 6800. The places I have access to all have about a 175+ dollar price difference between the two cards though. I might also wait until the X1800 is in full swing and hopefully the older cards drop a bit in price again.

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pacaveli

the case and power supply are nice, antec makes very good power supplies, i have a 350 wat one, so 450 shoudl be more than enough

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shakran

BUT, if you want to network computers together, stick with Pro. I made the mistake of getting Home to save cash and it's a royal pissant to network.

sashime76

Not all PC games are created equal. Far Cry, Doom 3 are much more hardware intensive (CPU, RAM, Video RAM, etc) than others, like Unreal, Half Life. I agreed with at least 1 GB of RAM, save up some more $$$ and get 256MB video card if you can.

cj22009

Suave stay away from the asus board I have had to rma to of them. Neither one of them has been over clocked or anything go with dfi or abit. I am usually a asus fan but for some reason the a8v-e d is real buggy other than that do a gig of ram insted of 512 but it looks like a good set up

henlin

I know the raptor isn't practical for him but I'd like to put a good word in for them and asus m/boards. I've been running my system from a 36gb raptor for the past two years, never had any problems with it. The same goes for my a7n8x, no issues whatsoever. Just because someone knows a few other people who had problems with a product is no reason to dismiss it out of hand.

portwineboy

Ah. Very good to know. I usually only work with Pro so my Home xp is very low.

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muckluck

I've had trouble with ASUS, my A7N8X died. I emailed their customer support and they just told me to RMA it, and it went smooth; however, the board they sent back was complete crap. My newly replaced board couldn't OC at all, 5 Mhz above the default FSB and it would be wicked unstable. My suggestion would be to go with ABIT and stay away from XP home.

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