• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Building a New Gaming computer.....

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
If budget is $870 just for that, you have a bit of freedom. Subtract $70 for the NEC 3520a DVD burner, and your $800 could get you the following (shipping's included in most everything, to the best of my knowledge):

754: Soltek SL-K8AN2E-GR ($92), 3000+ Newcastle (retail box) ($149), 2x512MB Corsair Value Select ($139), eVGA 6800GT ($388). You have $32 left over you can put toward either a better quality PSU (if the one you have is junk) or an aftermarket CPU cooler like the Zalman 7000 AlCu.

939 (AGP): Epox EP-9NDA3+ ($129), 3000+ Winchester (retail box) ($156), 2x512MB Corsair Value Select ($139), eVGA 6800GT ($388). You go over your budget by $12, but you may be able to find some things cheaper (or even downgrade from the NEC 3520 DVD burner).

939 (PCIe): Chaintech VNF4/Ultra ($134), 3000+ Winchester (retail box) ($156), 2x512MB Corsair Value Select ($139), [PCIe x16 graphics card with $371 left in budget. One option here is to wait a little while for the X800 XL, which is supposed to provide performance near the level of the 6800GT for $300. If you can't do that, you can temporarily drop the DVD burner to accomodate whatever PCIe X800 Pro, 6800, or 6800GT you can find for the money you have left, though I'm sure even a 6600GT could run your things on high settings very well if you don't plan to do excessive AA or AF or run at those settings above 1280x1024.]
 
No. The Athlon 64 has an on-chip memory controller, and in order to implement dual channel, 185 pins had to be added to the processor/socket and Socket 939 was born. This extra bandwidth usually gives about a 5-8% performance increase over an otherwise identical Socket 754 CPU (same cache/clockspeed).
 
anyone making a 754 system now is throwing away money. first getting an agp card now is stupid unless your stuck with a motherboard you have now. AGP is dead. OEM are abadoning it, which means nvidia and ati are going to abandon it, intel has already ceased production on it. Second if you go 754, you have no hope of seeing dual core. the person who compared a hemi engine to cpu is isnane. for proof just compare an athalon xp to athlon 64, dude i'm sorry but thats the dumbest comment ive heard in a long time.
to some up
It makes no sense to built a new 754, and its beyond stupidty to build one for games, when you see the what the next gen engines are going to be like Doom3,EQ2 and UNREAl3.
This thread now makes believe how people could have thought the sun revolve around the earth after they invented math, or how that jury found O.J not guilty or how a man could have been married to another man for 23 years and not know it.
 
Originally posted by: shinotenshi
anyone making a 754 system now is throwing away money. first getting an agp card now is stupid unless your stuck with a motherboard you have now. AGP is dead. OEM are abadoning it, which means nvidia and ati are going to abandon it, intel has already ceased production on it. Second if you go 754, you have no hope of seeing dual core. the person who compared a hemi engine to cpu is isnane. for proof just compare an athalon xp to athlon 64, dude i'm sorry but thats the dumbest comment ive heard in a long time.
to some up
It makes no sense to built a new 754, and its beyond stupidty to build one for games, when you see the what the next gen engines are going to be like Doom3,EQ2 and UNREAl3.
This thread now makes believe how people could have thought the sun revolve around the earth after they invented math, or how that jury found O.J not guilty or how a man could have been married to another man for 23 years and not know it.
Click to expand...

AGP is dead? You are a moron you have no idea what you are talking about.
If we look at things from your perspective EVERYTHING including S939, SLI, PCI-e, Dual Channel RAM, DDR2, ATX, BTX will not see the light of tommorrow. Just because you read something somewhere about PCI-e does not mean the sky is falling for AGP. They said the same thing about PCI when AGP first was introduced.

There is so much technology out there and waiting to come out next week anything you buy right now will become obsolete eventually. But as of today, January 1, 2005 An AMD Athlon 64 3400 Socket 754 system with GeForce 6800 Ultra AGP and 1 Gig DDR RAM still kick ass.

the end..
 
AGP is dead. lets see the facts in support.
Intel no longer makes agp chipsets
all future ati and nvidia chipsets are pci-e
Oem's where nvidia and ati make the bulk of thier profits have moved to PCI-E.
ATI which made almost no agp cards this generation posted recorded profits
nvidia has stated that all future generations will pci-E
intel,ati,nvidia do not make most of thier money from retail, which is in fact where all of agp is, ATI which all but ignored the marked posted impressive profits.
AGP is dead, stop spouting stupid mantra and look at the evidence, for God's sake use your brain. Intel the largest supplieer of chipsets is no longer making agp parts, ATi abandons agp, makes a ton of money. No company is stupid enough to go AGP, its too risky, no new chipsets, you can't run a company the size of ati and nvidia counting on the retail market to keep you afloat (think 3dfx). AGP is a wate of resources that doesn't provide any benfit, at best its an on the side market you take care of after you do a PCI-E card.
 
Originally posted by: shinotenshi
AGP is dead. lets see the facts in support.
Intel no longer makes agp chipsets
all future ati and nvidia chipsets are pci-e
Oem's where nvidia and ati make the bulk of thier profits have moved to PCI-E.
ATI which made almost no agp cards this generation posted recorded profits
nvidia has stated that all future generations will pci-E
intel,ati,nvidia do not make most of thier money from retail, which is in fact where all of agp is, ATI which all but ignored the marked posted impressive profits.
AGP is dead, stop spouting stupid mantra and look at the evidence, for God's sake use your brain. Intel the largest supplieer of chipsets is no longer making agp parts, ATi abandons agp, makes a ton of money. No company is stupid enough to go AGP, its too risky, no new chipsets, you can't run a company the size of ati and nvidia counting on the retail market to keep you afloat (think 3dfx). AGP is a wate of resources that doesn't provide any benfit, at best its an on the side market you take care of after you do a PCI-E card.
Click to expand...

Lordy, you make a lot of assumptions here...
Clearify why record profits for ATI has anything to do with AGP being dead. (I would think Doom 3 and Half Life 2 have more to do with that)

Why do you say no company is stupid enough to make AGP while Nvidia is still producing the 6800 series AGP and selling bunches of them. And they just came out with the 6600 GT AGP where the 6600 series was PCI-e only prior...

Explain how AGP is dead when the speed diffence between current PCI-e and AGP cards is neglegible.

How can PCI-e cards be viable for current system owners when a majority of cumputer owners today do not own a PCI-e motherboard.

Like I said, you have no clue what you are talking about.

PS you're right about one thing, Future cards will be PCI-e. But there is no card currently on the market that can take advantage of PCI-e.

 
I didn't make any assumptions, those are facts. aTi made record profits, because they cornered the oem market. They were able to supply all the PCI-E add in cards to those people selling new intel pci-E only chipsets.
Speed, what are you talking about ?, this is about economics and market power, AGP being dead has nothing to do with technoligies advatages, it only has to due with intel, nvidia and ati. there is no OEM market for AGP becuase all the new chipsets are PCI-E, nivdia and ati make there money in OEM.
finally you need to learn how to read. The OP wants to build a new system now. MY arguement is that you should not build an AGP system now, becuase its a dead end. you need to expand your horizons, your view can't be so narrow. This has nothing to do with whether AGP is better than PCI-E, its just straight up economics, its actually the pefect example of market power (and why it can be bad thing or why it can good for advancing technology in any given field, dpending on your point of view). for example, if MS decided tommorow that WIN XP was dead, in favor of some other OS, it would be dead, becuase it has the power to do so, regardless of whether it was the right thing to do. The way the computer market is structured, intel has similair market power. They provide 70% of all chipsets. ATI and Nvidia make money from OEM wins. Most OEM (esp the largest one, you've heard of dell right?) use intel, intel has decided it will no longer make AGP chipsets, ATi is only making PCI-E chipsets, all future Nvidia Chipsets will be PCI-E. therefore the only market left for AGP is the retail market, which is a tiny fraction of either Nvidia and ATI profits.
SO once again the OP would be crazy to built a 754 AGP system from scratch.
 
shinotenshi:

Unless he didn't care and would ditch the system for a new one on two years without upgrading anyway.
 
Well from his post, it seemed he wanted to get the most out his system and maximum upgradility.
which suggested that he should go with a 939 which is only a few dollers more. second since its a gaming computer, both video and cpu are the mjaor components in the system. going AGP would mean he would need a new motherboard most likey more his next upgrade, while pci-E would prevent that. second, if he went 754, he cpu choices would probally be very limited the next time he wanted to upgrade. it seems a waste to not spend a couple dollers now, than have to replace your whole motherboard again in the future. whats more the best bang for the buck grpahics cards all pci-e atm the 6600pci-e and the x800xl.
So even if he was only going short term, the best bang for the buck is still a 939 pci-e system.
 
shinotenshi:

Well, I agree. If I were purchasing a new system right now, I would have no second thoughts on going 939/PCI-E. However, to say that AGP is 'dead' is a bit extreme. You can say ISA is dead, and I'll go "Yeah," but most of us here still use AGP graphics cards. AGP is being 'phased out' is a much gentler term.
 
Well I mean "dead" as in a "dead end". The fact that most people are using AGP right now, has nothing to do with anything. Becuase it does't affect the profit margin of anyone. The perfect opposite would be CD's and DVD's. It that case the Installed base of CD and DVD players does in fact make a difference because of content, so sony or anyone can't just decide to change formats(dvd-audio for example). Unfortunately, ATi raking in such huge profits, was really the death knell for AGP. It showed just how small and unimportant the retail market for add-in board is. There just is no need for either nvida or ati to cater to the AGP market. When intel summarily decided that no more AGP chipsets it went way beyond being phased out, becuase it meant no more real economic incentive for anyone to keep supporting it. It the retail market for add in video cards was more substantial it would be a different story, but given the way it is, i think we can say "dead" as opposed to phased out(IDE and Floppy drives in my opinion are closer to "phased out" in my opinion)
 
IMO, if s754 CPU doesn't support dual channel memory, it would be plain stupid to go s754. For almost the same amount of money you can get s939 with dual-channel memory support which result in better performance without question.
also, s939 is really not considered new anymore, but s754 has become the last-gen standard for A64
 
Consider this...

What if you were'nt planning to upgrade every 6 months and you wanted a nice system with good performance at the absolute lowest price.

The dual channel RAM arguement===> in one ear out the other.. NOT spending 100% more $$ on RAM that might improve my system 2%

And the MOBO CPU price comparison should be.. $89.00 + 149.00 RETAIL for S754 to $139.00 to $159.00 for S939

 
dude are you really this silly? or are you pretending? i mean this honestly? you don't need to spend more money on ram to take advatage of dual channel? just 2 sticks instead one, which is usally cheaper.
second "nice system"?
a nice system can't be a dead end.
if you meant a value system, then maybe a 754 might be the way to go, but only if you are extremely short sighted, because you probally wont ever be able to upgrade it, its just a waste, you would be better of buying an xbox.
The s754 allows no room for upgradabilty, you would be trapped with this system, there would be no upgrade just a complete replacement, for what amounts on your facts to be $10.

 
$238 S 754
$298 S 939

= $60.00

How you get $10.00?

Honestly if it was only $10.00 I might have considered it.

And why do you keep bringing up upgrading? You don't listen do you?
 
You don't spend 100% more on RAM to get dual channel... as a matter of fact, the price increase when getting 1GB of RAM is actually when you get the single stick instead of 2x512 (which is fine on either platform). If he's gaming, I'd assume he'd have at least a gig either way. That's why I just quoted the same RAM in all three of the possible setups I gave him earlier.

That said, just because it doesn't have dual channel (again, at most, a 5-8% increase) doesn't mean S754 is stupid by any means. Remember that while the S754 versions of the 3000+, 3200+, and 3400+ (754)/3500+ (939) lack dual channel, they are clocked 200MHz above the 939s.

EDIT: By the way, which CPU are you using to compare prices between different sockets?
 
The reason i mentioned upgrading, is because it makes zero sense to buy a computer you can't upgrade, if the sole purpose of that computer is to play games. you might as well buy an xbox. because you aslo end up playing alot more because you have to replace you entire system, instead of just one component. your numbers are wayyyy of. the cost of a s939 plus a64 300 with a top of the line motherboard is 260, and if you want bargain bastment you can get it down to $240.
however as i told the OP his best bet is to wait on a S939 PCI-E chipset, like a plain jane nf4 or ati, this will give him excellent bang for the buck, and maximum upgradiblty with regards to video cards and cpu's the two most important components of a gaming system.
 
Well, someone give me a good 6800GT from newegg.com....please don't let it be over 420$ and please make sure its in stock🙂 Thanks.
 
AGP or PCIe? I linked an AGP one, though it might be out of stock. Shouldn't be too hard to search for, though. PCIe you might have a little trouble getting for less than $420.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top