754 vs 939

[jkresh]

I will be building a htpc for my house soon. Was going to go with a 2800+ and nforce3 board ($260 give or take) but I could use a little more speed for my main rig, so now I am thinking go with a 3000+ 90nm and a 939 board (which one?), and move my dtr/asus k8n-e into the new rig. Price difference will probably be $70 ($40 for processor, plus I will need a new heatsink/fan), and should be able to get a couple of hundred MHz out of it (currently I am at 2.32ghz, with ram at 211 2.5-2-2-10, I can hit 2.43ghz with chip at stock voltage but with ram at 333 it is limited, especially since my memory has hit ddr580 in testing (on a different board), plus dual channel support, though I am loosing the extra 512 of cache. I can?t see waiting for nforce4 as I will be keeping the 9800aiw for now, and I don?t particularly like the options of 939 boards as I would prefer an nforce3 ultra board, but from a company I trust/respect (i.e. asus/abit/dfi). Any suggestions /comments would be appreciated.


specs so far
silverstone LCO3 (havent decided on the vfd yet)
512 corsair or mushkin ddr3200
200gig seagate sata drive
nec 16*16*4*4*4 dvd dual layer
radeon 9600 (dvi out to the plasma)
Haupauge wintv pvr 150 (for analog channels)
Dvico fusion III (for hd through cablevision, at least unencrypted channels)
ir repeater (to control cable box and use universal remote to control pvr software)
deciding between snapstream/sage/got all media (last can also use the fusion which would be nice)

still deciding on motherboard/processor and sound

 

[Peter]

Scale down, and make the thing QUIET. Speed is of little importance in an HTPC - even in 3D games, since you'll be running on TV resolution which is 640x480/30 Hz for NTSC. Anything capable of yielding 30 fps at that low resolution will do.

 

[imported_DangerMouse]

Seems only decent nforce3 939 mobo available is MSI neo platinum 2. Even so there are a lot
of complains about it on web.
Best choice i think is to wait 1 month or so for nf4 mobos and spend extra $200 on GeForce 6600 GT.

 

[jkresh]

first HDTV, and working as an HD tuner so speed is relevant, second a 2800+ can get by with little cooling and my dtr run's extremely cool, so if I go back to stock speed I can put an exceptionally quiet fan on the slk948 (even at 1.63volts and 2.43ghz it never breaks 42c under prime95 load, with fans at lowest setting in the fanbus).

 

[kamaboko]

what OS are you going to use?

 

[jkresh]

htpc will be either XP or mce 2005, main machine dualboots XP and debian, will also add open beos as it gets closer to a release (on the main machine)

 

[Goi]

My advice, get a Clawhammer, or something more L2 cache, if you're gonna be messing with ffdshow.

 

[jkresh]

well the dtr I have now is a clawhammer so if I use that it will work nicely. I have just started playing with ffdshow and I may use it but I think most of the work of the pvr will be realtime (ie watching tv with it and using software to fast forward through comercials) so will ffdshow even work with that?

 

[Goi]

I'm not sure. ffdshow is usually used on pre-recorded stuff rather than real time stuff, but it might work. You'll have to ask others or hit the avsforums, I have no experience in that regards. The general concensus is that ffdshow works a lot better on the Netburst architecture, and also works a lot better when your cache is large.

 

[AnnoyedGrunt]

Well, I think the 90nm 3000+ would be the way to go.

First, it will use less power than a 130nm 2800+ (from what I've seen anyway) at stock speeds and if you really want to you could underclock it by changing the multiplier to a lower value and modding the voltage.

As for Mobo's, I agree that it is a tough call.

The MSI seems to have the best performance and many good features, but the quality seems somewhat spotty.

There's a pretty cheap ABIT board that uses the KT800pro, so that might be a good option (haven't heard much about it though). There's also this slightly more expensive one, that looks to have a passive NB heatsink, which might be good for an HTPC.
http://www.monarchcomputer.com...mp;Category_Code=A64MB

Anyway, I think the 90nm chips would be good from a power/heat standpoint.

-D'oh!

 

[jkresh]

Actually if I go with the 90nm it will go in my main box, and the dtr in my current rig will go in the htpc (though at 40C under full load with a 20% overclock I think I can rut it with a very quiet cooling setup at stock speed). If I go 939 I will probably go with the epox board unless I can justify the move to a nforce4 system in which case my 9800 would go in the htpc and I would get a 6600gt for my main one (cant justify buying a 6800 or 6800gt at this time as even my 9800 can run doom3 and probably hl2 pretty well).

 

[Pohemi]

I would suggest if you ARE going to go the 939 route, DO RESEARCH BEFORE PICKING RAM!! The biggest problems with 939 boards have been running memory at 200(3200) in dual channel. Try your best to match the approved lists of both AMD and the mobo manufacturer. Oh yeah...and stay away from Gigabyte(939).
Go with MSI or Asus.




GA-K8NSNXP-939(F5 bios)
AMD Athlon 64 3500
Corsair TwinX1024-3200XL
BFG GeForce 6800 Ultra OC
(2)WD Raptor 74gb sata drives in RAID 0
Maxtor 250gb sata drive
Thermaltake Xaser III case
Windows XP Pro

 

[jkresh]

I will be sticking with the ocz 3700eb that I have now as it is quite capable and I dont think their is any ddr memory out their that is better. After my experience with the K8N neo platinum I woulndt consider msi for a while and I want to stick with nforce so if I go 939 it will probably be with the epox board, just wish DFI,asus,abit had a 939 nforce3 board out

 

[jkresh]

almost definitley going 939, as I will shortly be running a rather intensive peice of code which some informal testing has shown I may be able to cut 60 hours off the running time by going from my 2.3ghz 3200+ dtr to a 2.6ghz with dual channel, plust the dt will work nicely in the hptc. That 60 hours would be if i ran the entire project on my mahcine and my guess is I will split it so it may only cut 20-30 hours but still, for the $50 or so difference in price 20-30hours is a lot to gain. Now I just have to decide on a board, either the asus a8v or the epox 9NDA3+, would prefer nf3 ultra so leaning towards epox, just dont want a repeat of when i went to 754 and the trouble i had with the msi.