I can't decide...

Mac · 01-03-2007, 08:55 PM

I've been pounding my head on way earlier advice from Chem about the next machine. So I am going to give in, but I can't really decide on whats a GOOD one. I've read far more bad reviews on some of these boards with RAM and whatnot with these New Conroe's. I'm not an over-clocker. I want it sweet and simple, but sharp.. Asus was pointed out by Chem but I'm not convinced.

gonna go either 6600 or 6400 for the CPU Intel dual core 2
at least 2-4 gigs of ram... Video card.. I'm going kinda low end for now until I see some nice dx10s within a good pricerange.. those 8800 are just down right stupid in price..

{OF}Eaglerapids · 02-24-2007, 10:04 AM

I'm also starting to think of building a new machine. I've decided to get a E6600 but after being with AMD for so long, getting up to speed on the Intel-based mobos is starting to make my head hurt:-).
It looks like the newest greatest is the 975 chipset but so far I'm seeing boards with great potential but the bios's are early and buggy. Do I want to go through the growing pains of these early boards? I do want to overclock, the Conroe seems to o/c to at least 3Gig on air. But my goodness, the choices: hybrid 650's, 650's, 680's, 965's, 975's. I'm gonna go with a GeForce 7950GT KO, I think so I should probably go with an Invidia chipset based board, I suppose.
I haven't found a board yet where the reviews are overwhelming in how great the board is without half the guys saying they had to RMA their board twice, to problems with controllers, etc etc....
What motherboards do you guys like?

ChemicalWarrior · 02-24-2007, 10:40 AM

The highest end are the Nvidia 680i chipsets, they had early issues on the reference designs that have since been fixed however. With that said, I personally would not go with a 680i based motherboard unless you want SLI. Instead I would go with a P965 based motherboard, that's an Intel chipset.

My personal motherboard is a Gigabyte 965P-DS3. It is a great motherboard and allowed me to overclock my Core 2 Duo E6300 from 1.8GHz to 3.2GHz, so it has a lot of head rooom. The Asus P5B-Deluxe is another solid choice and will likely give you just as much headroom and be just as stable and solid. I would say the boards are all out of their growing pain stages, ER mentioned 975i which is actually a chipset that started life in late Pentium D and was designed to go all the way to Quad Core Core 2 Duo's, its actually getting relatively old.

The reason why you've heard of these RAM issues is because people still be to stupid and not read manual information, etc. Higher end RAM often does not work error free at stock voltages and instead the manual will say to use 2.0v instead of 1.8v. That is covered by the warranty and will almost always work. Of course there's a number of boards out there from Intel that do not allow such adjustments, so when people get that shiny pack of DDR2-1066 that needs 2.1v and the board only supplies 1.8v of course they will run into issues.

ER, I would highly suggest you do not go with a GeForce 7950GT. Either spend a few more bucks on going to an Nvidia 8800GTS based (640MB varient if you can afford or 320MB which should be about $30 from the 7950GT). Or if you do not want to spend anymore money then pick up an ATi based card from that time. The GeForce 7 series still gets on my nerves for being praised for no good reasons. They had worse image quality than ATi parts and generally in the upper end were slower. But as stated, I'd much rather recommend you a 8800 part as it will certainly give you MUCH greater lifetime on the cards usefulness, it is also a DirectX 10 part so if you move to Vista you can have that rather nice feature.

{OF}Eaglerapids · 02-24-2007, 11:33 AM

My reason for the 7900 series and especially that particular card was to get High Def HDCP functionality and to hold off on DirectX 10 till I have to go to Vista in a year or so, well whenever that happens. By then newer X10 cards will be out. In the meantime the 7950 has 512megs of ram compared to 340 for the GTS. Does my reasoning hold up in that sense?

I'm gonna stop considering the SLI boards for a second and look at my choices. I'd like to have it there but the chances of getting two cards? I don't think I would, really. But in the long run I have to wonder if it would get me more longevity on the board in two years when something else comes along and these current cards are cheap, you know what i mean?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131149
This board is quad core ready, I like that for future proofing.

ChemicalWarrior · 02-24-2007, 11:44 AM

Nearly all P965 boards are Quad Core, the chipset supports it on all the only need is a BIOS update which most all have already (My Gigabyte does).

Your reasoning on the card really does not hold up however. The 7950GT will rarely have enough power to push settings up so high as to need 512MB, only in a rare occasion would it matter and even then I'd personally rather have a 8800GTS has the spill over will not be dramatic enough to cause the 8800GTS to still be slower. I highly recommend going up to the 8800GTS, it just a much better long term investment. It is much faster, much better image quality, much better features, etc. DirectX 10 is really a small part of the pie for the card, as its DirectX 9 speed is still rather significantly faster than that of the 7950GT.

ChemicalWarrior · 02-24-2007, 11:48 AM

Here's a nice article that goes into some of the math when consider a 320MB 8800GTS.

Soul · 02-24-2007, 12:53 PM

I am running a dual core amd opteron and happily play the games I am into right now. Once some of the newer games are out I will look towards replacing the video card and hope I don't need to replace any other parts :/

ChemicalWarrior · 02-24-2007, 12:59 PM

As long as you got an PCIe slot you should be fine Soul. Nvidia might be releasing an AGP DirectX 10 part, but that will be a mid-range (think the replacement for 7600GT) part.

Skidz · 02-24-2007, 03:22 PM

I'm relegating my PC to server status for now and using my Mac exclusively. I don't have any time to game right now anyway and my rig is seriously aged. At this point I'm hoping to build a new PC sometime '08. Man I miss gaming!

{OF}Erad · 02-24-2007, 05:36 PM

Well, if anybody lives near a Frys Electronics, and wants to upgarde an older system and reuse AGP card and DDR400 RAM, here is an Intel Core 2 Duo Processor E4300 & ECS P4M800Pro-M V2 Motherboard for only $158.99. Newegg charges more for just the CPU.
http://www.netaffilia.com/ad/electro.../23/23188.html
Might have to see what else they have when I am in Houston tomorrow...