need help on buying a big upgrade

[Prican25]

well theres a pc show this weekend and i have decided to finally upgrade from my old dual p3 1ghz as it seen better days with things i like to do.

 

i got my eyes on getting althon 64 and seeing the latest is 4000, do you think i should go for the 4000 or go with 3800?

 

also if you can recomend a great board to go along with it cuz i'm not sure what would be a good choice. as of right now i see a asus deluxe board that looks pretty good.

 

and lastly, how memory should i get? my old system had 1280mb so i was thinking about getting just 1gb of ddr.

[Gryph]

Well getting the 3800 or 4000 is all up to you depending on how much you want to spend. I think the 4000+ comes with 1 mb L2 cache while the 3800+ come with 512K. I don't know if 3800+ with 1 mb cache is around, I'm sort of out of the loop with this.

 

From what I hear the MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum is a great socket 939 motherboard. Check this great article about Socket 939 motherboards at Anandtech out: http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2128&p=1

 

Also, 1 gb of DDR RAM should suit you fine. Of course, more is better always better but you won't be lacking anything with 1 gb.

[ovalprocess]

if you are going to upgrade now, you might as well go with a pci-express motherboard. Most of these are going to incorporate nvidias new SLI technology, which is also a plus for the long run.

 

as for processor and ram, if you want this pc to last as long as your previous one has, then you might as well throw 2gb of ddr in it along with the 4000+ amd athlon 64. im pretty sure that only the fx chips and the 4000 still have the 1 meg cache.

[mad37man]

I would get the 3800 and get a memory upgrade ( to 1 gig )with a dual monitor switch and it would be a pretty good deal probably.

 

Also you could maybe try building your own computer out of scratch...if you look at directions and you know what a computer does it shouldnt be that hard.

[Wizard]

Any Asus board that is a or above a Delux is good(anything lower should be avoided like the plague). Depends if you have the money or not for a 4000 or a 3800. The 939s are in right now, if your cheap, go with the 754, but that goes up to 3400(right now anyways, they aren't completely phased out yet) and doesn't support the dual channel. Older FX generations are demoted too xx00+. And it will be the same way with all future FX CPUs. You can think of them as undamaged celerons or amd semprons with crazy power with the x86-64 extensions(like what a semprons are, it's a amd 64 without the 64 bit extensions). If you do end up getting a 939, 1 GB Dual Channel Non ECC ram will do wonders.

 

Problem with SLI is nothing right now is worth it. At all. You either need to wait until nVidia makes a profile for your game, or make your own. High cost + crazy power usage = not good enough yet. SLI is a waste of god damn money right now.

[Gryph]

SLI has never been worth the price, even back in the Voodoo2 days. Sure it was awesome but I wouldn't spend that much.

[Prican25]

well i just came back from the pc show and to my surprise athlon 64 4000 was no where to be found, some vendors claimed that only test chips were sent out and that possibly in a month or so it should be out on the market. oh well

 

i thought about it again and i decided to look for a athlon 64 3800 and so far i ran into one deal that sounds pretty good: athlon 64 3800 with a MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum for $544.

 

heres the link for the mobo which seems nice: http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec....atinum&class=mb

 

think thats a good deal?

[Gryph]

At MonarchComputers.com I found the 3800+ and that mobo for 525 but that was without shipping.

[Prican25]

ahh so then i'm getting a good deal then pretty much as its $544 cash or $588 credit heh

 

now that this is a pci express board, i'll need to get a new gfx card and also need to get memory, any good suggestions on what to look for?

 

i'm not not gonna pay $500+ for just a card (they had geforce 6800 ultra for $559) but i wouldn't mind something good below the best. memory on other hand i would want the best as i read that athlon 64's work best with low latency memory.

Edited March 5, 2005 by Prican25

[Wizard]

OCZ Brand is good type. So is kingston. Up to you on which side. A Geforce 6800 GT is good enough. PCI-E right now is still isn't worth it, yet(Give it 2 more years until it becomes standard). AGP 8X isn't even fully utilized due to the CPU.

[Prican25]

well i went to the show today and unfortunatly the one shop that had 3800 didn't

 

so now i'll order the stuff online but hey, at least i bought some cd's and a dvd/vcr for $74 for my sister.

 

Update: just made a nice setup from MonarchComputer.com, costing me $1270 total.

 

Athlon 64 3800

MSI K8N NEO4 Platinum

eVGA 6800 GT 256MB

Swiftech MCX64-V Heatsink

1 GB DDR (2 pcs 512) PC-3200 OCZ

Enermax EG565P-FMA REV.2.0 ATX 2.0 535W Power Supply

 

and tomorrow i'm gonna get a 300gb hdd for $169 (no rebate) at office depot to finally replace my old 40gb scsi.

 

might be much but i think i'll be happy with this setup for a while and finally be able to do more things faster and be able to play more games at better speed.

 

only thing really left is to replace my big NEC MultiSync XE21 to possibly a 19" lcd but i'm still looking for prices on that.