-Need help on a new computer...

-Hi there, I'm hoping some might be kind enough to help me out as I
know nothing about computers anymore and would rather not do 20+ hours
of research...

What I do:
Surf and play poker on-line: Not power intensive.

What I would like to do:
Play newer shoot'em up games: Very power intensive.

While I like to play games I care far more about the game play and
less about the graphics. I want to play on line against others so I
need it to be smooth but I don't care about the graphics that have to
do with ambience like reflections and how light and shadow is cast. I
would just like it to be smooth, not choppy and no lagging or bogging
down.

I would like suggestions for components that will work well together.
I definitely want AMD and can't afford top of the line so would like
to have a motherboard that will likely be able to take a good upgrade
cpu in 9-12 months.

Motherboard?
CPU?
RAM?
HD?
Video Card?

I can put it together myself and can overclock and do minor things
like that.

any other thoughts or suggestions?

thank you very much
Eric

On Thu, 23 Dec 2004 15:56:08 +0000, Eric wrote:

snip

I would like suggestions for components that will work well together.
I definitely want AMD and can't afford top of the line so would like

The all important question... What's the budget?

to have a motherboard that will likely be able to take a good upgrade
cpu in 9-12 months.

Forget about upgrades. Things change too fast to bother. Besides
motherboards in the arena you seem to want to play are cheap.

--
Keith

"Eric" wrote in message
...

" I definitely want AMD and can't afford top of the line so would like to
have a motherboard that will likely be able to take a good upgrade cpu in
9-12 months. I can put it together myself and can overclock and do minor
things like that. "


- DFI LANParty UT nF3 250Gb http://tinyurl.com/4eduv
- AMD Sempron 3100+ skt754 http://tinyurl.com/5nyt7
- Kingmax 2x 512MB PC3700 CL2.5 http://tinyurl.com/3km4g
- Seagate 200GB 7200RPM 8MB SATA http://tinyurl.com/42mas
- Leadtek GeForce 6600GT 128MB http://tinyurl.com/5cyko

On Thu, 23 Dec 2004 15:56:08 GMT, Eric wrote:

-Hi there, I'm hoping some might be kind enough to help me out as I
know nothing about computers anymore and would rather not do 20+ hours
of research...

What I do:
Surf and play poker on-line: Not power intensive.

What I would like to do:
Play newer shoot'em up games: Very power intensive.

While I like to play games I care far more about the game play and
less about the graphics. I want to play on line against others so I
need it to be smooth but I don't care about the graphics that have to
do with ambience like reflections and how light and shadow is cast. I
would just like it to be smooth, not choppy and no lagging or bogging
down.

I would like suggestions for components that will work well together.
I definitely want AMD and can't afford top of the line so would like
to have a motherboard that will likely be able to take a good upgrade
cpu in 9-12 months.

Uhh.. good luck on that one. It's VERY difficult to buy a motherboard
today expecting a good CPU upgrade more than about 6-months down the
line. That being said, a Socket 939 Athlon64 is probably your best
bet here.

Motherboard?

As mentioned above, Socket 939 Athlon64 board. Ideally I would
recommend an nForce4 chipset, though unfortunately these are still a
bit few and far between. I see on www.newegg.com that they offer a
Chaintech board, the VNF4/Ultra, using the nForce4 Ultra chipset and
selling for a decent price ($129). They also have an Asus A8N-SLI
board using the nForce4 SLI chipset (allows for multiple video cards
to be used together, really not worth much of anything IMO unless
you've got more money than brains). Unfortunately that board sells
for a somewhat less than decent price of $269.

While I normally try to stick to one of the big name motherboard
manufacturers (mostly MSI), I did recently purchase a dirt-cheap
Chaintech board for my system the last time I needed a new board and I
was very pleasantly surprised. I actually also now have a Chaintech
sound card and video card, both of which work quite well, so I'm at
least semi-confident in tossing in a recommendation for that Chaintech
motherboard.

CPU?

Athlon64 in socket 939. Which one you get depends on your budget.
Newegg sells an OEM Athlon64 3000+ for only $165, or you could jump up
to a retail box 3200+ for $240. The 3500+ is listed at both $274 and
$369 at the moment, and I'm guessing that one of those is a mistake.
Anything higher than that is likely to rather quickly reduce your
bang/buck ratio.

RAM?

The CPU and motherboard combo require dual-channel memory, so you'll
need 2 of whatever you get. Probably either 2 x 256MB or 2 x 512MB,
depending on your budget. Either way it'll be DDR400 / PC3200 memory,
and ideally from a list of known-good memory for your board.
Chaintech has a link for recommended memory for the above-mentioned
motherboard, but at the moment it's blank. You might want keep an eye
on the spec page though:

http://www.chaintechusa.com/tw/eng/p...o=13&PISNo=318

The list for the Asus board is available at this following link:

http://usa.asus.com/products/mb/qvl/A8N-QVL.pdf


Newegg lists 2 x 256MB of Kingston ValueSelect memory (on Asus' list)
for $73, or 2 x 512MB of similar stuff for $139.

HD?

See www.storagereview.com for the latest and greatest info on hard
drives and the like. Personally though I would probably opt for a
Seagate SATA 120GB hard drive with 8MB of cache, which Newegg has
listed at $100. Of course, if you need a larger (or smaller) hard
drive that is also available. Other manufacturers are fine as well,
though I like the low-noise aspect of Seagate drives and they seem to
be doing fairly well on the reliability front these days (though hard
drives die on a fairly regular basis regardless of who makes them, so
always back up your important data!).

Video Card?

If you can afford one, a PCI-Express card using the nVidia GeForce
6600GT chipset seems to be the best bet for good price/performance in
the mid-range of things. They start at $186 for a Gigabyte or XFX
card. A slightly cheaper option is the non-GT version of the GeForce
6600 which starts at $119. Word of warning on that one though, some
of the 6600 cards are apparently using 64-bit memory buses, which will
rather dramatically reduce your performance.

I can put it together myself and can overclock and do minor things
like that.

any other thoughts or suggestions?

With all the above, I would probably put together something like the
following:

Chaintech VNF4/Ultra motherboard $129
AMD Athlon64 3500+ Retail $274
2 x 512MB Kingston PC3200 memory $139
Seagate SATA 120GB hard drive $100
XFX GeForce 6600GT vid card $186

Total cost for this stuff: $826. Add in a DVD-RW drive (~$50 or $60),
a decent case + power supply (something like an Antec Sonata for $100)
and you should have a very good system coming in at right around the
$1000 mark. Of course, you can make it cheaper to suit your budget if
need be.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla underscore 20 at yahoo dot ca

On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 02:40:13 -0500, Tony Hill
wrote:

On Thu, 23 Dec 2004 15:56:08 GMT, Eric wrote:

-Hi there, I'm hoping some might be kind enough to help me out as I
know nothing about computers anymore and would rather not do 20+ hours
of research...

What I do:
Surf and play poker on-line: Not power intensive.

What I would like to do:
Play newer shoot'em up games: Very power intensive.

While I like to play games I care far more about the game play and
less about the graphics. I want to play on line against others so I
need it to be smooth but I don't care about the graphics that have to
do with ambience like reflections and how light and shadow is cast. I
would just like it to be smooth, not choppy and no lagging or bogging
down.

I would like suggestions for components that will work well together.
I definitely want AMD and can't afford top of the line so would like
to have a motherboard that will likely be able to take a good upgrade
cpu in 9-12 months.

Uhh.. good luck on that one. It's VERY difficult to buy a motherboard
today expecting a good CPU upgrade more than about 6-months down the
line. That being said, a Socket 939 Athlon64 is probably your best
bet here.

Motherboard?

As mentioned above, Socket 939 Athlon64 board. Ideally I would
recommend an nForce4 chipset, though unfortunately these are still a
bit few and far between. I see on www.newegg.com that they offer a
Chaintech board, the VNF4/Ultra, using the nForce4 Ultra chipset and
selling for a decent price ($129). They also have an Asus A8N-SLI
board using the nForce4 SLI chipset (allows for multiple video cards
to be used together, really not worth much of anything IMO unless
you've got more money than brains). Unfortunately that board sells
for a somewhat less than decent price of $269.

They also have a Gigabyte nForce4 but like the other two you mention, it is
also out of stock. The five new MSI PCIe boards, 2 ATI and 3 nForce4
should be coming out soon too.

While I normally try to stick to one of the big name motherboard
manufacturers (mostly MSI), I did recently purchase a dirt-cheap
Chaintech board for my system the last time I needed a new board and I
was very pleasantly surprised. I actually also now have a Chaintech
sound card and video card, both of which work quite well, so I'm at
least semi-confident in tossing in a recommendation for that Chaintech
motherboard.

CPU?

Athlon64 in socket 939. Which one you get depends on your budget.
Newegg sells an OEM Athlon64 3000+ for only $165, or you could jump up
to a retail box 3200+ for $240. The 3500+ is listed at both $274 and
$369 at the moment, and I'm guessing that one of those is a mistake.
Anything higher than that is likely to rather quickly reduce your
bang/buck ratio.

Nope, that's the current price premium over a 130nm for a 90nm 3500+, which
I got for $295. end of Nov.; the MSI K8N Neo2 Plat. has also gone up by
$13. and is also out of stock. Hey, I feel lucky.:-)

Makes you wonder what is going on with the 90nm Athlon64s, especially the
3500+ which goes out of stock very quickly - maybe some big OEM gobbling
them up? I wonder who?:-)

RAM?

The CPU and motherboard combo require dual-channel memory, so you'll
need 2 of whatever you get. Probably either 2 x 256MB or 2 x 512MB,
depending on your budget. Either way it'll be DDR400 / PC3200 memory,
and ideally from a list of known-good memory for your board.
Chaintech has a link for recommended memory for the above-mentioned
motherboard, but at the moment it's blank. You might want keep an eye
on the spec page though:

http://www.chaintechusa.com/tw/eng/p...o=13&PISNo=318

The list for the Asus board is available at this following link:

http://usa.asus.com/products/mb/qvl/A8N-QVL.pdf


Newegg lists 2 x 256MB of Kingston ValueSelect memory (on Asus' list)
for $73, or 2 x 512MB of similar stuff for $139.

With the MSI K8N Neo2 I have two 512MB Crucial PC3200 DIMMs w. 512Mb chips
designated at www.newegg.com as 8T in the part number. They will not run
at tighter timings than 3-3-3-8 but they *do* work at 1T command rate...
which seems to be the key to Sandra giving 5.8GB/s on buffered bandwidth.
Plus, if I need to add memory I won't get into the AMD spec'd limit of
DDR333 with 2 ranks of memory per channel.

HD?

See www.storagereview.com for the latest and greatest info on hard
drives and the like. Personally though I would probably opt for a
Seagate SATA 120GB hard drive with 8MB of cache, which Newegg has
listed at $100. Of course, if you need a larger (or smaller) hard
drive that is also available. Other manufacturers are fine as well,
though I like the low-noise aspect of Seagate drives and they seem to
be doing fairly well on the reliability front these days (though hard
drives die on a fairly regular basis regardless of who makes them, so
always back up your important data!).

The new Seagates are not as quiet as the ones from a few months ago -
Seagate got held up for licensing on the head-positioning noise reduction
patents and just dropped the feature. They are still relatively quiet
though and still my choice.

Video Card?

If you can afford one, a PCI-Express card using the nVidia GeForce
6600GT chipset seems to be the best bet for good price/performance in
the mid-range of things. They start at $186 for a Gigabyte or XFX
card. A slightly cheaper option is the non-GT version of the GeForce
6600 which starts at $119. Word of warning on that one though, some
of the 6600 cards are apparently using 64-bit memory buses, which will
rather dramatically reduce your performance.

Agree on the video card and note that the XFX 6600GT is a dual DVI model
and seems to come with two VGA adapters - nice flexibility. Since the AGP
8x 6600GTs seem to be going for ~$30. more than the equivalent PCIe
version, any extra money here is better spent for a PCIe mbrd.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

In article , fammacd=!
says...

On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 02:40:13 -0500, Tony Hill wrote:

snip

Nope, that's the current price premium over a 130nm for a 90nm 3500+, which
I got for $295. end of Nov.; the MSI K8N Neo2 Plat. has also gone up by
$13. and is also out of stock. Hey, I feel lucky.:-)

Makes you wonder what is going on with the 90nm Athlon64s, especially the
3500+ which goes out of stock very quickly - maybe some big OEM gobbling
them up? I wonder who?:-)

Interesting. If someone has to "gobble" them up to make production,
something's wrong somewhere. Inventory costs $$.

With the MSI K8N Neo2 I have two 512MB Crucial PC3200 DIMMs w. 512Mb chips
designated at www.newegg.com as 8T in the part number. They will not run
at tighter timings than 3-3-3-8 but they *do* work at 1T command rate...
which seems to be the key to Sandra giving 5.8GB/s on buffered bandwidth.
Plus, if I need to add memory I won't get into the AMD spec'd limit of
DDR333 with 2 ranks of memory per channel.

Hmm, Even registered? Santa found the snow drift my new sticks of
memory were in yesterday, but I haven't had time to plug them in.

See www.storagereview.com for the latest and greatest info on hard
drives and the like. Personally though I would probably opt for a
Seagate SATA 120GB hard drive with 8MB of cache, which Newegg has
listed at $100. Of course, if you need a larger (or smaller) hard
drive that is also available. Other manufacturers are fine as well,
though I like the low-noise aspect of Seagate drives and they seem to
be doing fairly well on the reliability front these days (though hard
drives die on a fairly regular basis regardless of who makes them, so
always back up your important data!).

Also note that Seagate has a five year warranty.

The new Seagates are not as quiet as the ones from a few months ago -
Seagate got held up for licensing on the head-positioning noise reduction
patents and just dropped the feature. They are still relatively quiet
though and still my choice.

I have one that's a few months old (perhaps July) and it's very quiet.
IIRC that patent was all about the UI interface into the
performance/noise tradeoff feature. I believe Seagate left the feature
in the microcode, but stopped shipping the UI.

Video Card?

If you can afford one, a PCI-Express card using the nVidia GeForce
6600GT chipset seems to be the best bet for good price/performance in
the mid-range of things. They start at $186 for a Gigabyte or XFX
card. A slightly cheaper option is the non-GT version of the GeForce
6600 which starts at $119. Word of warning on that one though, some
of the 6600 cards are apparently using 64-bit memory buses, which will
rather dramatically reduce your performance.

Agree on the video card and note that the XFX 6600GT is a dual DVI model
and seems to come with two VGA adapters - nice flexibility. Since the AGP
8x 6600GTs seem to be going for ~$30. more than the equivalent PCIe
version, any extra money here is better spent for a PCIe mbrd.

Yikes! I guess AGP is dead. Apparently it died in its sleep.

--
Keith

On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 10:04:21 -0500, Keith R. Williams wrote:

In article , fammacd=!
says...
[snippo]
Agree on the video card and note that the XFX 6600GT is a dual DVI model
and seems to come with two VGA adapters - nice flexibility. Since the AGP
8x 6600GTs seem to be going for ~$30. more than the equivalent PCIe
version, any extra money here is better spent for a PCIe mbrd.

Yikes! I guess AGP is dead. Apparently it died in its sleep.

Puhlease. It knew the end was near for months...

;-)

On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 18:21:32 +0000, daytripper wrote:

On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 10:04:21 -0500, Keith R. Williams wrote:

In article , fammacd=!
says...
[snippo]
Agree on the video card and note that the XFX 6600GT is a dual DVI model
and seems to come with two VGA adapters - nice flexibility. Since the AGP
8x 6600GTs seem to be going for ~$30. more than the equivalent PCIe
version, any extra money here is better spent for a PCIe mbrd.

Yikes! I guess AGP is dead. Apparently it died in its sleep.

Puhlease. It knew the end was near for months...

;-)

When was the last time you saw a technology disappear this fast? Ok, ok,
ok! DRDRAM. Interesting both were born of the same father at about the
same time (with the cacheless Celeron).

My point though is that there are a *lot* of AGP slots out there, and
damned few PCI-E. Since I don't have one of the latter, it does sorta
concern me. :-(

--
Keith

On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 10:04:21 -0500, Keith R. Williams
wrote:

In article , fammacd=!
says...

On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 02:40:13 -0500, Tony Hill wrote:

snip

Nope, that's the current price premium over a 130nm for a 90nm 3500+, which
I got for $295. end of Nov.; the MSI K8N Neo2 Plat. has also gone up by
$13. and is also out of stock. Hey, I feel lucky.:-)

Makes you wonder what is going on with the 90nm Athlon64s, especially the
3500+ which goes out of stock very quickly - maybe some big OEM gobbling
them up? I wonder who?:-)

Interesting. If someone has to "gobble" them up to make production,
something's wrong somewhere. Inventory costs $$.

Ramp-up for roll-out?? I've seen AMD docs which say those are made in
Dresden but I though they didn't have any 90nm there yet?? It had occurred
to me that if they came from East Fishkill, maybe AMD had hit the limit on
their wafer "ration" there... for whatever reason.

With the MSI K8N Neo2 I have two 512MB Crucial PC3200 DIMMs w. 512Mb chips
designated at www.newegg.com as 8T in the part number. They will not run
at tighter timings than 3-3-3-8 but they *do* work at 1T command rate...
which seems to be the key to Sandra giving 5.8GB/s on buffered bandwidth.
Plus, if I need to add memory I won't get into the AMD spec'd limit of
DDR333 with 2 ranks of memory per channel.

Hmm, Even registered? Santa found the snow drift my new sticks of
memory were in yesterday, but I haven't had time to plug them in.

I've only looked at Athlon64 Skt939 details which are quite different from
Skt940: inverted address signals across channels?... weird. Does this mean
the mbrd designer has to re-invert at the DIMM socket for the
channel/socket? Well I was sure I'd seen an AMD doc mention this about 2
ranks per channel at 400DDR but can no longer find it - mbrd mfrs do
mention it though. Anyway it seems to be for Skt939 unbuffered operation
only... as is the 2T timing for commands.

See www.storagereview.com for the latest and greatest info on hard
drives and the like. Personally though I would probably opt for a
Seagate SATA 120GB hard drive with 8MB of cache, which Newegg has
listed at $100. Of course, if you need a larger (or smaller) hard
drive that is also available. Other manufacturers are fine as well,
though I like the low-noise aspect of Seagate drives and they seem to
be doing fairly well on the reliability front these days (though hard
drives die on a fairly regular basis regardless of who makes them, so
always back up your important data!).

Also note that Seagate has a five year warranty.

The new Seagates are not as quiet as the ones from a few months ago -
Seagate got held up for licensing on the head-positioning noise reduction
patents and just dropped the feature. They are still relatively quiet
though and still my choice.

I have one that's a few months old (perhaps July) and it's very quiet.
IIRC that patent was all about the UI interface into the
performance/noise tradeoff feature. I believe Seagate left the feature
in the microcode, but stopped shipping the UI.

The SATAs I've bought definitely have more head noise than the PATA models
- still not objectionable and the spindle is near-silent.

Video Card?

If you can afford one, a PCI-Express card using the nVidia GeForce
6600GT chipset seems to be the best bet for good price/performance in
the mid-range of things. They start at $186 for a Gigabyte or XFX
card. A slightly cheaper option is the non-GT version of the GeForce
6600 which starts at $119. Word of warning on that one though, some
of the 6600 cards are apparently using 64-bit memory buses, which will
rather dramatically reduce your performance.

Agree on the video card and note that the XFX 6600GT is a dual DVI model
and seems to come with two VGA adapters - nice flexibility. Since the AGP
8x 6600GTs seem to be going for ~$30. more than the equivalent PCIe
version, any extra money here is better spent for a PCIe mbrd.

Yikes! I guess AGP is dead. Apparently it died in its sleep.

Well at the top-end, like 6800GTs, which is more amenable to the gamer
upgrade market, are apparently widely available in AGP 8x. For the lower
and mid-range, yep, AGP is dying fast.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

In article , fammacd=!
says...
On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 10:04:21 -0500, Keith R. Williams
wrote:

In article , fammacd=!
says...

On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 02:40:13 -0500, Tony Hill wrote:

snip

Nope, that's the current price premium over a 130nm for a 90nm 3500+, which
I got for $295. end of Nov.; the MSI K8N Neo2 Plat. has also gone up by
$13. and is also out of stock. Hey, I feel lucky.:-)

Makes you wonder what is going on with the 90nm Athlon64s, especially the
3500+ which goes out of stock very quickly - maybe some big OEM gobbling
them up? I wonder who?:-)

Interesting. If someone has to "gobble" them up to make production,
something's wrong somewhere. Inventory costs $$.

Ramp-up for roll-out?? I've seen AMD docs which say those are made in
Dresden but I though they didn't have any 90nm there yet?? It had occurred
to me that if they came from East Fishkill, maybe AMD had hit the limit on
their wafer "ration" there... for whatever reason.

Or their wafer ration is *zero*. I haven't any idea though. I make it
a point to stay away from "E. Fishkill" and anywhere or anything close.
I've been successful for the past eleven years. ;-)

With the MSI K8N Neo2 I have two 512MB Crucial PC3200 DIMMs w. 512Mb chips
designated at www.newegg.com as 8T in the part number. They will not run
at tighter timings than 3-3-3-8 but they *do* work at 1T command rate...
which seems to be the key to Sandra giving 5.8GB/s on buffered bandwidth.
Plus, if I need to add memory I won't get into the AMD spec'd limit of
DDR333 with 2 ranks of memory per channel.

Hmm, Even registered? Santa found the snow drift my new sticks of
memory were in yesterday, but I haven't had time to plug them in.

I've only looked at Athlon64 Skt939 details which are quite different from
Skt940: inverted address signals across channels?... weird. Does this mean
the mbrd designer has to re-invert at the DIMM socket for the
channel/socket?

Who cares if the addresses are inverted? It simply selects a different
part of the array. They are rectangular and a power of two long.
Inverting the addresses on one side reduces the current in the rails
(thus switching current), since both sides are pumping out the "same"
address; half are now '1's and half '0's.


Well I was sure I'd seen an AMD doc mention this about 2
ranks per channel at 400DDR but can no longer find it - mbrd mfrs do
mention it though. Anyway it seems to be for Skt939 unbuffered operation
only... as is the 2T timing for commands.

I put the memory in last night and it seems to work, though I haven't
done anything to stress it. The new DIMMs are dual rank, so I'm
running three ranks on each channel. It is socket 940 so it had
*better* work.

snip

The new Seagates are not as quiet as the ones from a few months ago -
Seagate got held up for licensing on the head-positioning noise reduction
patents and just dropped the feature. They are still relatively quiet
though and still my choice.

I have one that's a few months old (perhaps July) and it's very quiet.
IIRC that patent was all about the UI interface into the
performance/noise tradeoff feature. I believe Seagate left the feature
in the microcode, but stopped shipping the UI.

The SATAs I've bought definitely have more head noise than the PATA models
- still not objectionable and the spindle is near-silent.

I could only hear the hears move when I was backing up my old machine
to the SATA drive on the new (it's empty and useless on the new system,
so why not?) before reinstalling WinBlows on the old. At least I saved
the data. What a PITA, even so.

You're right though the spindle is silent. There is no whine at all,
just a little clicking when the heads move.

Video Card?

If you can afford one, a PCI-Express card using the nVidia GeForce
6600GT chipset seems to be the best bet for good price/performance in
the mid-range of things. They start at $186 for a Gigabyte or XFX
card. A slightly cheaper option is the non-GT version of the GeForce
6600 which starts at $119. Word of warning on that one though, some
of the 6600 cards are apparently using 64-bit memory buses, which will
rather dramatically reduce your performance.

Agree on the video card and note that the XFX 6600GT is a dual DVI model
and seems to come with two VGA adapters - nice flexibility. Since the AGP
8x 6600GTs seem to be going for ~$30. more than the equivalent PCIe
version, any extra money here is better spent for a PCIe mbrd.

Yikes! I guess AGP is dead. Apparently it died in its sleep.

Well at the top-end, like 6800GTs, which is more amenable to the gamer
upgrade market, are apparently widely available in AGP 8x. For the lower
and mid-range, yep, AGP is dying fast.

Hmm, I guess I'm going to have to budget for a graphics card. Maybe
last years off eBay...

--
Keith