240.00$ motherboard, ram, x2 3600 combo

[happy medium]

This seems like a good cheap gaming rig combo. Just wondering what are the chances of me hitting 2.8 with this combo and ram? I was going to to pair this with a 320mb 8800gts for 259.00$ more. 500 bucks seems cheap for this performance.

board ,cpu combo 134.00$

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138026

ddr-667 2x 1gb Super Talent ram. 104.00$

http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=T6UX2GC5

8800gts evga 259.00$ And I'll overclock the crap out of it

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130082

500 watt Enhance psu - 70.00$

http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=PS-E5150GH

I game at 1280x1024. Is this a good 570.00$ dollar combo?
I have a good hard drive and I can get 250.00$ for my current cpu, ram, and video card
So I will spend 320.00$ after I sell my stuff.

edit: or should I just wait for the e4300 price drops and go for the gigabyte ds3 combo which still will be 100.00$ more

 

[DrMrLordX]

Yeah, probably. I've heard the T-Force gets cranky at around 270-280 FSB, but I have no personal experience with it. You should be able to hit at least 2.7 ghz.

If you can get the DFI NF M2-UltraII + X2-3600+ combo for a good price (I think NewEgg has this?) that would be a better board choice. That thing peaks at around 400-440 mhz HTT which is awesome. 3.1ghz should be possible unless the chip complains.

 

[rmed64]

Looks good, whichever one fits to your budget the most. Wait till mid april and the 3600+ X2 will be $69 msrp and probably lower on newegg/zipzoomfly.

And as for the T550, I hear they have a new revision so it can easily pass 300 HTT

 

[happy medium]

Originally posted by: DrMrLordX
Yeah, probably. I've heard the T-Force gets cranky at around 270-280 FSB, but I have no personal experience with it. You should be able to hit at least 2.7 ghz.

If you can get the DFI NF M2-UltraII + X2-3600+ combo for a good price (I think NewEgg has this?) that would be a better board choice. That thing peaks at around 400-440 mhz HTT which is awesome. 3.1ghz should be possible unless the chip complains.

Looks like that board is having trouble with the x2 3600


Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 day to 1 week


3/27/2007 6:02:46 PM

Rating + 2Rating + 2Rating + 2Rating + 2Rating + 2 Frustrated

Pros: ??

Cons: This will not post. I've already RMA'd one board and the second one does the same thing. Interesting, I also purchased the board with the 3600+ Brisbane processor. Sounds like the same bios issue as the previous two reviewers.

Other Thoughts: I have wasted almost two weeks, only to find out that newegg created a "combo" of incompatible parts. Now, it is too late to RMA the processor and I don't want to deal with getting a new bios chip from DFI. This is unacceptable on newegg's part.




Thanks ARmed I'll look into that new revision and the 3600 x2 is 69.00$ on new egg now.

 

[happy medium]

Originally posted by: DrMrLordX
Yeah, probably. I've heard the T-Force gets cranky at around 270-280 FSB, but I have no personal experience with it. You should be able to hit at least 2.7 ghz.

If you can get the DFI NF M2-UltraII + X2-3600+ combo for a good price (I think NewEgg has this?) that would be a better board choice. That thing peaks at around 400-440 mhz HTT which is awesome. 3.1ghz should be possible unless the chip complains.

How much would my ram have to overclock to reach 2.8? Is the Super Talent enough? I heard it does 800/900. How do I do the math for that?

 

[cubeless]

i'm getting the biostar 550 combo w/3600... superrtalent 667... that'll give a run to 333 fsb, so i am hoping to get to 9x300 at least, or 2.7ghz...

i read around a bunch and the latest rev of the board is supposed to make it to 300 at least...

wee shall see...

312 would be 2.8...

and i'm gonna use the rosewill 500rp that jonnyguru likes (and i do too, since it's running in another one of my boxes...)... same vid, too... with a hansg 19 1440x900 lcd... low buck last for a while net-new pc...

 

[DrMrLordX]

Originally posted by: happy medium

Looks like that board is having trouble with the x2 3600

Honestly, I'd take NewEgg user reviews with a grain of salt. Some folks on there have complained about the UltraII-M2 and SLI-M2 board quality, but I haven't seen any similar complaints anywhere else. Go figure.

I used an Abit NF-M2 nView with my Brisbane and it worked wonders . . . the board topped out at about 360 mhz HTT and the chip went to 3.2 ghz. I don't have personal experience with either the TForce 550 or the NF UltraII-M2, but the NF-M2 nView worked very well for me.

If they have new revisions of the TForce 550 that do 300 mhz HTT easily, then you'll hit 2750 mhz almost without a doubt. Most of these Brisbanes hit a wall somewhere between 2.9-3.1 ghz.

Originally posted by: happy medium


How much would my ram have to overclock to reach 2.8? Is the Super Talent enough? I heard it does 800/900. How do I do the math for that?

Depends on what ratio you want to run, what timings, etc. That Super Talent will do DDR2-800 5-5-5-15 2T easily, and might get tighter timings or do DDR2-900 with those timings. You might even get 1T, though I wouldn't fret over it . . . I compared 1T and 2T on my Brisbane and found that all it did was lower latency by 4 cycles.

If you run 300 mhz HTT on the Biostar board, you need the following speeds based on which ratio you use:

1:1 -> DDR2-600
3:4 -> DDR2-800
2:3 -> DDR2-900

I'd go with the 3:4 ratio myself. The board should support it . . . I think.

Just keep in mind that Brisbanes tend to run their memory a wee bit slower than they should due to some funkiness with the way multipliers work. For example, I got around 95% of the memory speed I was supposed to get when using the 9.5 CPU multiplier. So in reality, you can expect memory speeds of DDR2-570, DDR2-780, and DDR2-855 respectively with the above-mentioned ratios.

The Super Talent should work out okay.

 

[ItsAlive]

I just ordered a Brisbane X2 3600+, Im going to swap out for my Windsor chip. Im currently running the DFI Ultra-II board and it is a great overclocker, however I was able to flash my bios to the latest one that supports the Brisbane chips since I already had a chip that works with the board. Its hard to say if any of the DFI boards are shipping with the updated bios, but if youre willing to wait and contact DFI and replace the bios chip, I think you would be pleasantly suprised by the abilities of this board. Also you can hardmod it to work with SLI if you ever decide to go that route.

The Biostar board seems to be a great board, and with the combo deal the price is very nice. You may find that you can reach your chips limits using it anyways. There are alot of reviews on this board being used with the Brisbanes since it is one of the best budget overclockers combos on the market atm. Seems to me that these will work with the new chips without a bios update.

As for waiting for c2d price drops, it might be a good idea to wait....however its hard to say wether the new line of AMD chips will out perform c2d, cost the same or less, and/or be compatible with the current AM2 socket type.

If it were my choice Id say grab the combo for cheap and hope that the new AMD chips are compatible this would widen your upgrade path and still give you great bang for your buck.

 

[Extelleron]

Originally posted by: ItsAlive
I just ordered a Brisbane X2 3600+, Im going to swap out for my Windsor chip. Im currently running the DFI Ultra-II board and it is a great overclocker, however I was able to flash my bios to the latest one that supports the Brisbane chips since I already had a chip that works with the board. Its hard to say if any of the DFI boards are shipping with the updated bios, but if youre willing to wait and contact DFI and replace the bios chip, I think you would be pleasantly suprised by the abilities of this board. Also you can hardmod it to work with SLI if you ever decide to go that route.

The Biostar board seems to be a great board, and with the combo deal the price is very nice. You may find that you can reach your chips limits using it anyways. There are alot of reviews on this board being used with the Brisbanes since it is one of the best budget overclockers combos on the market atm. Seems to me that these will work with the new chips without a bios update.

As for waiting for c2d price drops, it might be a good idea to wait....however its hard to say wether the new line of AMD chips will out perform c2d, cost the same or less, and/or be compatible with the current AM2 socket type.

If it were my choice Id say grab the combo for cheap and hope that the new AMD chips are compatible this would widen your upgrade path and still give you great bang for your buck.

Why would you want a Brisbane when you already have a 90nm A64 @ 2.8GHz? The Brisbane might overclock a little higher and is a great value but it also has a higher latency L2 cache which reduces performance a little bit, and will probably be enough to offset any additional clockspeed you will acheive.

 

[happy medium]

Thanks for your replies. Thanks alot.

Will this cpu at 2.7/2.8 have the muscle to push a 320 8800gts or is it overkill?
I'm a Intel guy never owned a AMD chip.

Speaking of AMD upgrades are there any future AMD cpu's that will pop in this motherboard.
Will the new kL8 cpu pop right in?

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: happy medium
Will this cpu at 2.7/2.8 have the muscle to push a 320 8800gts or is it overkill?
I'm a Intel guy never owned a AMD chip.

You won't be cpu-bound, if that's what you mean, but it should be enough cpu horsepower that your 8800GTS isn't sitting around all day, waiting for data from the cpu, like it would be if you ran the processor at it's stock speed.

 

[nyker96]

dude I got the same setup in mind, cool beans!

 

[happy medium]

Originally posted by: nyker96
dude I got the same setup in mind, cool beans!

So mabe you can answer my question? Is the am2 socket a dead end?
I'm sure in the near future theres gonna be new faster cpu's from AMD to compete with core 2. Will they pop in this motherboard and run with a simple bios upgrade or will it be a new socket. I searched I didn't find anything on this question. I don't wanna buy this setup and upgrade the whole system in a year.


Edit: If I buy the core 2 route with the gigabyte board and many others they are setup for 1333 fsb and quad core. If the AMD system is a dead end , I'll save and spend the extra 100 bucks for the e4300, gigabyte ds3 combo and get to 3.0ghz with the same ram and have future cpu upgradability.

 

[DrMrLordX]

AM2 will supposedly support AM3 chips (K10, etc) without some of the new whiz-bang features that will be supported on AM3 boards (Torrenza maybe, DDR3, faster hypertransport speeds etc). It remains to be seen whether or not any AM3 features will really make AM2 users wish they had a new board or not.

But, AM2 does not look like a dead end.

 

[happy medium]

Unless I read it wrong it says Am3 chips will work with Am2+ boards and Am2+ chips will work with AM2 boards. Am2+ chips will work in Am2 boards but, won't support the new faster bus and other features. So Am3 chip won't work in regular Am2 boards? Just the Amd+ chips?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socket_AM2%2B

 

[secretanchitman]

yep, i did a similar thing, but i went with socket 939 because i wanted to reuse my ram (ddr500 and its damn good).

i went with an opteron 170, evga 8800GTS 320MB ($259 after rebates), and the asus a8n32-sli deluxe for 600 bucks.

 

[ItsAlive]

The reason I picked up the Brisbane is because my temps with the Windsor chip are a lil higher than I'd like to get to 2.8, also I have read that the new chips can do near 2.8 on stock voltage, where as my windsor chip needs a voltage bump....and I plan on upgrading a backup system with the chip im currently running. Performance with my current chip far exceeds anything I would ever use it for as is. So if I can lower temps and power consumption with minimal performance loss then Im all for it.....hehehe

Originally posted by: Extelleron

Originally posted by: ItsAlive
I just ordered a Brisbane X2 3600+, Im going to swap out for my Windsor chip. Im currently running the DFI Ultra-II board and it is a great overclocker, however I was able to flash my bios to the latest one that supports the Brisbane chips since I already had a chip that works with the board. Its hard to say if any of the DFI boards are shipping with the updated bios, but if youre willing to wait and contact DFI and replace the bios chip, I think you would be pleasantly suprised by the abilities of this board. Also you can hardmod it to work with SLI if you ever decide to go that route.

The Biostar board seems to be a great board, and with the combo deal the price is very nice. You may find that you can reach your chips limits using it anyways. There are alot of reviews on this board being used with the Brisbanes since it is one of the best budget overclockers combos on the market atm. Seems to me that these will work with the new chips without a bios update.

As for waiting for c2d price drops, it might be a good idea to wait....however its hard to say wether the new line of AMD chips will out perform c2d, cost the same or less, and/or be compatible with the current AM2 socket type.

If it were my choice Id say grab the combo for cheap and hope that the new AMD chips are compatible this would widen your upgrade path and still give you great bang for your buck.

Why would you want a Brisbane when you already have a 90nm A64 @ 2.8GHz? The Brisbane might overclock a little higher and is a great value but it also has a higher latency L2 cache which reduces performance a little bit, and will probably be enough to offset any additional clockspeed you will acheive.

 

[Tempered81]

i think than an e4300 at 2.7ghz would be faster than that 3600 @ 2.8. i got my 4300 and a mobo for 200$ and u can stick that supertalent ram in it too.