Opteron or Athlon

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: starwars7
Thank you guys for all of the help, this will be my first build. Right now I am thinking of something like this, I'm already at max budget, but I'd like to be sure that it will play the newest games at close to max settings and last me for quite some time.

Case: Lian-Li PC-7A PLUS-W
PSU: Sparkle FSP550-PLG-SLI 550W
Motherboard: EPoX EP-9NPA+Ultra ATX AMD
Processor: AMD OPTERON 144
Video Card: eVGA 256-P2-N386 Geforce 6800GS 256MB
Hard Drive: Western Digital 3.0Gbps 250GB 7200RPM 16MB Caviar SE16
DVD RW: NEC Black IDE DVD Burner Model ND-3550A - Retail
Memory: G.SKILL 512MB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Unbuffered
Protection: BELKIN F8E093 Anti-Static Wrist Strap - Retail

Any cooling suggestions. I believe someone had mentioned these:

Fan: Panaflo 92mm High Output - FBA09A12H1BX
Heat Sink: Thermalright XP-90 Heatsink, No Fan, P4,478 K8,754/939/940

you will probably want to go 2GB of ram and you could cut back on the psu if needed to something like a quality 400-450W unit.

also you may want to check out some of the deals and also look at benchmarks for the ati x850xt, i think it is a little better than the 6800gs as the x850xt usually equal something between a 6800gt - 6800ultra. i have seen them for ~$200

 

[starwars7]

I'll definitely do that, thanks for the input!

 

[5t3v0]

Absolutely, 2Gb of RAM + X850 XT. If I was building from scratch & not reusing my RAM, I'd have gone the 2 x 1Gb route. Probably will later in the year. You could get the GTO² like mine if you still can but modding the BIOS does void warranty & there's no guarantee you'll get it up to XT PE speeds. I couldn't get much above XT speed with mine (see sig) & then just after I bought it the XT came down in price to just a few £ more that the GTO² so I could have had a fully warrantied card instead XT should overclock a bit too. Other than that, its a great spec. Have fun building it.

 

[starwars7]

I've been thinking about the Opteron thing, and with the AM2 comming out, do you think that it is worth waiting until then to buy all of these parts and take advantage of the new chipset. Or since it will not be proven tech and will be more expensive, should I go ahead with a 939?

Thanks!

 

[pendulum79]

I'd stick with 939. Your opteron won't become crap overnight and you'd getter a better return in gaming from updating the graphics before the cpu when you're further down the line. And it doesn't seem like DDR2 will give an instant performance boost compared to DDR on 939. By the time you're upgrading (12-18 months maybe) then AM2 should offer an appreciable performance benefit. Also, any kinks should be ironed out, an example being when socket 754 was released the nforce 3 chipset had no pci lock.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: starwars7
I've been thinking about the Opteron thing, and with the AM2 comming out, do you think that it is worth waiting until then to buy all of these parts and take advantage of the new chipset. Or since it will not be proven tech and will be more expensive, should I go ahead with a 939?

Thanks!

my thoughts on this would be that if you are going to wait, you will never build, because when am2 comes out, i am sure intel will put something out new, then amd again. the best time to do it is now and understand that you will will never have the ultimate unless you spend $10,000 on a machine. also the difference between a $10,000 machine and a $1500 machine wouldn't even be that much, especially with all the knowledge and assistance you can get from this forum.

 

[starwars7]

those are both great points. I'm going to stick with the 939's, make the slight adjustments you guys mentioned and go for it.

Thanks!

 

[5t3v0]

If you go for the 6800GS, get an SLi board and SLi compliant PSU. That way you'll have an upgrade path for the future. I saw this review on neoseeker for the eVGA card where they OCed it to 512/1151. With that in mind, it might be worth getting.

 

[starwars7]

nifty article! I may try and scrape up some cash for a 7800 GT, if I can't I'll pick up a X850 XT or a SLi board and the 6800GS, I guess it will depend on what I find.