Ultimate Gaming System

[Wahsapa]

"1GB DDR2-667 XMS2-5400 Xtreme Performance Memory"

to say what everybody else has said but a little bit louder.... DDR2 WILL NOT WORK WITH AMD, PERIOD do not get it

if i were you i would cancel the order on the X800 and get a 6800Ultra. i dont see any reason to get a X800, i dont think anybody else does either. the 6800Ultra is faster and more feature filled. not to mention the replacment for the X800 is coming out pretty soon.

with the money your dropping i wouldnt even consider 'computer' speakers like the klipschs or logitechs. instead i'd save up a little more and get a real home theatre speaker set(with real speakers) check out avsforum.com and head-fi.com and see what they have to say

i like the gigabyte board(the snxp pro one). 8 phase power seems nice, especially with a pc p&c psu.

sony cd drive? i think you should get plextor, lite-on, lg... ANYBODY but sony.

also i would get the regular 3500+ 939 if i were you. i think your paying to much for the FX53's preformances. your just going to replace it in 2 years with a dual core A64 anyway, so why spend so much money now.

with all the fans might as well look into water cooling. you could get a pretty nice water cooling setup with the money saved on not buying ddr2 and an fx53.

 

[MegaWorks]

Originally posted by: bjc112

Originally posted by: MegaWorks
yep! that's a sick a$$ machine you got there enjoy it!

3yrs ago my system was the ultimate

------------------------------------------------------
AMD Athlon XP T-Bred B DLT3C 1700+ @ 2.3GHZ (1.775v) 400FSB = 3200+
Abit NF7-S V.2 (nForce2-U400)
Corsair TwinX XMS 3200LL 512MB @ 2-3-2-6 (2.6v)
Sapphire Radeon 9500 Pro Platinum Edition 128MB (380/600)
Antec TrueBlue 480W
Thermalright SLK-947U with 92mm Vantec Tornado @2800RPM
Antec PlusView 1000AMG
Cambridge SoundWorks MegaWorks THX 550 5.1

And your machine is still damn good..

Throw in a new GPU and maybe some ram and your all set..

I was thinking of adding 512mb corsair 3200LL stick with my TwinX, would duel channel work normaly after adding the new stick?

 

[caz67]

Not bad at all... I would personally go with either the ASUS or GIGABYTE board. If you are looking for TOP of the line, you need to dump that ATI card, and get NVIDIA.. 6800Ultra rocks.

 

[Vicious38]

Hmm... So 939 Socket Motherboards don't support DDR2 and DDR 550 MHz? So far the most it supports is DDR 400 MHz? If thats so, should I go OCZ or Corsair?

 

[Vicious38]

Also... No one has yet helped me with picking out my Motherboard. Mind you I don't plan on being a heavy Overclocker. People say Gigabyte is great in every aspect except Overclocking and I'm ok with that. So come on people MSI, Gigabyte, Asus, or Abit?

 

[Mik3y]

currently, ddr2 sucks more hten ddr. u'll have to wait till nforce 4 for ddr 2 or via's next chipset.

 

[imported_Phil]

Abit, for sure. However, I'm biased as I love Abit boards.

 

[silky]

If you got the cash(which you apparently do) go with Raid 0 Raptors and for memory I beleive OCZ 3700EB is your best choice for the AMD.

 

[Vicious38]

Can you use any OCZ Memory till DDR 400 MHz on your 939 Motherboards? I went to there website and checked Compatibility for each 939 Motherboard, none of them mentioned OCZ...

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: Hardcore
BS, Farcry and Doom3, as well as many other older games like EQ, SWG, FFXI, and others run much better on 1gb. As for 2gb, true not too many games would benefit that much from it, but in the near future it would... i can think of EQ2 that would run much better on 2gb than on 1gb. Perhaps he just wants to futureproof his system more. I've been running 1gb on my systems for almost 3 years now, and when i build my next system in the next couple of months, i plan on upgrading to 2gb minimum.

Didn't the Anandtech review show it running about the same on 512MB and 1GB?

Anyway, that's an awesome power supply. I have one. Great piece of hardware.

 

[Gerbil333]

Nice job going with 2gb's of RAM! I still haven't found a way to use up 1gb of memory at once, but I'm sure in another 12-18 months, 2gb will start being the standard. That's pure 0wnage!

Instead of the ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition ATI Radeon, I think I'd go with a GeForce 6800 Ultra. It has more features than the X800, and it's faster in many games.

Personally, I've had mixed luck with MSI. They create nice boards, but the reliability is iffy. I steer clear of them if at all possible. If you can get an Asus board (I think the A8V 2.0 is out), that would be a safer choice. I'm not alone with this opinion. There are tons of people who agree with me. At the same time, I have a hard time not picking MSI boards when building my own computers -- they always appear to be great according to their specs!

I wouldn't use the Western Digital 250GB Caviar Special Edition 8MB Buffer 7,200RPM Serial ATA Hard Drive, which I'm assuming will be for storage purposes. I have a WD drive in this computer at the moment, but I'm becoming less of a fan of WD every day. Seagate's 7200.7's may be a tad slower, but the difference isn't noticeable without benchmarks from my experience. More importantly, they have a 5 year warranty, and they're quiet. WD isn't nearly as reliable.

Last: Why all Sony optical drives? Are you just going by brand name? Check out some of the current popular models. NEC seems to be dominating the DVD burner market according to user satisfaction. Pioneer is also doing well.

Originally posted by: Chaotic42

Originally posted by: Hardcore
BS, Farcry and Doom3, as well as many other older games like EQ, SWG, FFXI, and others run much better on 1gb. As for 2gb, true not too many games would benefit that much from it, but in the near future it would... i can think of EQ2 that would run much better on 2gb than on 1gb. Perhaps he just wants to futureproof his system more. I've been running 1gb on my systems for almost 3 years now, and when i build my next system in the next couple of months, i plan on upgrading to 2gb minimum.

Didn't the Anandtech review show it running about the same on 512MB and 1GB?

I had 512mb's of Corsair TWINX up until about 2 months ago. UT2k4, FarCry, and other huge games were REALLY bogging down my system. It was taking about 15 seconds to exit UT2k4 after a couple hours of gameplay. After upgrading to 1gb (Kingston 2x512mb HyperX PC3200), the game now exits immediatelly. Until you upgrade from 512mb to 1gb, you really can't understand the difference. Then again, you won't notice a thing unless you're playing some of these newer games.

Benchmarks don't clearly show off differences between amounts of system memory.

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: Gerbil333
I had 512mb's of Corsair TWINX up until about 2 months ago. UT2k4, FarCry, and other huge games were REALLY bogging down my system. It was taking about 15 seconds to exit UT2k4 after a couple hours of gameplay. After upgrading to 1gb (Kingston 2x512mb HyperX PC3200), the game now exits immediatelly. Until you upgrade from 512mb to 1gb, you really can't understand the difference. Then again, you won't notice a thing unless you're playing some of these newer games.

Benchmarks don't clearly show off differences between amounts of system memory.

Well, I had 1.25GB but 512MB of it died. I don't game as much anymore, so when the USPS lost the DIMM when I sent it back, I banked the $150.

Stuff loads a bit more slowly, but memory prices are too high for me to worry about upgrading.

 

[Goi]

Why would you need 2 combo drives? Or are you just listing it twice? Also, what case are you gonna be using?

If this is gonna be a gaming system, I'd go with a 21-24" CRT instead, of FDTrinitron or DiamondtronNF variety. Make sure it doesn 2048x1536@85Hz too. If you can, go for a dual monitor setup too

And yeah, personally I'd go with the 6800U too.

 

[EGGO]

You should try getting the RAM that I'm getting, Corsair's TWINX2048RE-3200, which they said was designed Specifically for the Athlon 64 FX.

 

[TGHI]

holy moneybags.

 

[GhandiInstinct]

For those of you that think 2GB ram is overkill for games. Have you considered the fact that it increases loading times by 30-50%? My friend just bought another gig and Doom 3 levels load a lot faster. So it's good for multi-tasking, games and loading speed.

 

[EGGO]

Really now? Wow that will be great. I thought the only application that would need this is Photoshop (trust me, for my projects it will take 2 gigs) and other video-editing software.

 

[konakona]

i strongly recommend against any klipsch "multimedia' speakers. they are the antipode of what you can expect from quality speakers - bloated uncontrolled bass, shrill highs and lack of any midrange to speak of. their higher end stuff which i havnt heard are known to be much better in this respect, but as far as promedia series go i can confidently tell you to stay away from them.
another thing is i noticed you are going with a 20'' LCD. not only this would be outrageously overpriced, it wont be nearly as good as 22'' diamondtron. this might come down to a personal preference, but truth be told i am yet to see any LCDs matching the visual quality of my diamondtron.

 

[GhandiInstinct]

Vanillah I disagree. My friend just got the 5.1 Ultras and was playing Doom 3. It blew us both away. Strongest sub in the market lol.

 

[konakona]

Originally posted by: GhandiInstinct
Vanillah I disagree. My friend just got the 5.1 Ultras and was playing Doom 3. It blew us both away. Strongest sub in the market lol.

so we arent in much disagreement at all then

bloated uncontrolled bass, shrill highs and lack of any midrange to speak of

 

[OffTopic1]

Originally posted by: Hardcore

Originally posted by: Vicious38
Well, I figured out how much everything is going to cost and I'm going to order all the parts next week. This will be my Rig. Do you think anything should be changed? I have a few concerns about the motherboard, I heard MSI has alot of problems, although I never used it myself. I finally made my decision between Intel and AMD. I'd appreciate any of your opinions...

I've only had a problem with MSI once, and their RMA was absolutely fantastic. It was outsourced of course, and the company where i shipped it to was here in Toronto, Canada, so your experience in the US may be different... but i just wanted to add that my experience with MSI boards in the past has been good, and when i did have a problem, RMA was a painless experience (unlike some companies like IBM or Hercules).

I wouldn't go too crazy with the system because of the rapid technology changes and price drop.

Purchase what you need for the current games, then sell your system to buy a newer system to meet the new game titles.

I personally had purchased a $6500 system, and then had to replace it with a system that was almost 2X as fast for $1500 at 2.5 year later.

 

[Vicious38]

Well... I'm not quite sure about the Monitor I'll be getting, but I had great expierence with my past ViewSonic Monitors. As for Video Cards, I think it's a matter of loyality... Some games were made for the nVidia's GeForce 6800 Ultra Edition and some games were made for ATI's Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition. I for one have been using ATI for a long time, and I still have a Radeon 9000 Pro working nicely in one of my old computers. As I said earlier I'm not to big on overclocking and thats what I heard nVidia was best at. I've also been loyal to Western Digital, they've worked great for me and I haven't came across a problem with any of there internal or external drives yet, Maxtor and Seagate are another thing though. No one can change my mind about how much memory I'm going to have, 2 GB is what I'm getting plane and simple. The only thing that remains is what Motherboard I'll be getting and what brand of memory I'd be getting for the particular motherboard. DDR2 doesn't work on any 939 Socket Motherboards, actually nothing about 400 MHz.

So please, what are you suggestions on Socket 939 Motherboards and what brand memory?

 

[SilthDraeth]

I keep mulling the motherboards over and over, and since you claim the price doesnt matter, then go with the Gigabyte motherboard. It has 6 phase power supply, so you have steadier voltage. (At least that is what I read on this site). I want the Gigabyte board myself, but I cant buy anything right now, but given three grand, I would jump all over it.

Gigabyte board.
Then get the recently reviewed ballistix ram.
As far as monitors go, I love viewsonic. Though I believe thats just personal preference. I would go with the best lcd monitor, over a crt, just because they are more aestheticaly pleasing.

 

[Goi]

Originally posted by: Vicious38
Well... I'm not quite sure about the Monitor I'll be getting, but I had great expierence with my past ViewSonic Monitors. As for Video Cards, I think it's a matter of loyality... Some games were made for the nVidia's GeForce 6800 Ultra Edition and some games were made for ATI's Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition. I for one have been using ATI for a long time, and I still have a Radeon 9000 Pro working nicely in one of my old computers. As I said earlier I'm not to big on overclocking and thats what I heard nVidia was best at. I've also been loyal to Western Digital, they've worked great for me and I haven't came across a problem with any of there internal or external drives yet, Maxtor and Seagate are another thing though. No one can change my mind about how much memory I'm going to have, 2 GB is what I'm getting plane and simple. The only thing that remains is what Motherboard I'll be getting and what brand of memory I'd be getting for the particular motherboard. DDR2 doesn't work on any 939 Socket Motherboards, actually nothing about 400 MHz.

So please, what are you suggestions on Socket 939 Motherboards and what brand memory?

Well, just to let you know, Viewsonic don't make the best monitors, and LCDs aren't much for gaming, so it won't be ultimate till you change that

As for memory, if you want "ultimate", get those ultra low latency PC3200 memory modules that do 2-2-2-5

 

[Runner20]

Originally posted by: Vicious38

Originally posted by: klah
Have you actually found somewhere with a X800XT or s939-FX53 or are you going to just try ebay?

I already have a 939 Socket AMD Athlon? 64 FX-53 and I ordered the ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition from ATI's website a while back and it should be here anyday now. Only things I haven't bought are the Memory, Motherboard, Sound Card, Speakers, and Hard Drives. Sound Card and Hard Drives I'm buying tomorrow and the Memory and Motherboard I'm still trying to make a final decision.

Ahahahaah ... drool ..... Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition ... drool ....... ahahahah ......