All of this stuff ok?

[primarypunisher]

I had a previous thread about my video card which turned into me actually upgrading my PC, and ive got a case, mobo, cpu, and i was wonderin if it will work with my HD DVDdrive and CDRW drives and work with each other.
ANTEC Black Solution Series ATX Mid-Tower Case w/ 350W Power Supply
ABIT nForce2 Ultra 400 Chipset Motherboard for AMD Socket A CPU, Model "NF7-S" -RETAIL
AMD Athlon XP 2500+ "Barton", 333 FSB, 512K Cache Processor

and i guess i will need DDR ram but i have SD now so ill need to buy a stick of that 512 i guess, and someone told me to get dual channel or something?


thanks,
Tom

 

[mechBgon]

That looks good so far, congrats on picking a high-quality case/power supply 🙂

For an nForce2 board that was equipped with the onboard GeForce4 MX video, the onboard video's performance would be greatly increased by using two or three memory modules, because then the motherboard can use both memory controllers. The board you picked doesn't have the onboard GeForce4 MX video, however, and so running a single module only knocks about 5% off your performance in typical home-user applications.

If you want that last ~5%, then get two memory modules up front. Hope that helps 🙂

 

[primarypunisher]

im also gettiing this ram too Kingston HyperX Series 184 Pin 512MB(256MBx2) Dual Pack DDR PC-3000 - Retail but whats a dual memory module and i can still use my ati 9600xt video card with that right? no problems

 

[mechBgon]

Some companies test their DDR modules in pairs, package them and sell them like that. They're not fundamentally different from the company's single modules, as far as I'm aware... it's just that they're guaranteed not only to hit their rated speed individually, but to do it together as well. I run three Corsair CMX3200C2 512MB modules on my nForce2 board, and I didn't buy all three together, and they run dual-channel just fine anyway (not like they have a choice... if nForce2 has memory on both channels, it has to run in dual-channel mode).

One word of advice: many people go and overclock their AthlonXP 2500+ to 3200+ speeds, by simply bumping the memory and CPU busses to 400MHz and maybe adding a little CPU and memory voltage. If you want to be able to do that, pick PC3200 memory modules. Corsair XMS-series 3200C2 or 3200LL (or higher) are one good bet from a good manufacturer.

 

[primarypunisher]

I dont plan on overclocking.