Building New System

[ArtemisFowl]

Building my first system and would love to get some feedback from fellow enthusiasts with more experience. Particularly on which 875 board.

What is decided is Intel, 3.0HT 800 FSB.

What is still up for grabs is which mobo? My computer usage is not exactly normal. I play online games such as AA, I do development in VBA, I photoshop, I will do some DV (time allowing), I do 3D development as well (3dml), no sound editing. So I need a multipurpose system but I want great graphics performance.

I could not care less for integrated lan or firewire. I do care for compatibility and performance (gaming) and SATA as I am going with the Raptor for the primary.

I would love to go with Corsair Twinx 400 (2 X 512's) but it is not qualified for Asus P4C800 and I have read at least one article from the Intel site links which said it did not run well with the Intel board except after tweaking. Which goes back to the question of which board? overclocking is not a must.

Other components:
audigy 2
radeon pro 9800 256 MB (coming out soon)
Lian Li PC60
Antec 430
OS - XP
primary Raptor 36
secondary WD 80 with 8MB cache (maybe 120G)
opticals?? who knows, who cares for now

Thanks for any recommendations or suggestions

 

[snidy1]

So far the best MB for the 800 FSB CPU's seems to be the Abit IC7-G

 

[ArtemisFowl]

Hi
Based on what criteria?
And what memory is best suited for that board?

 

[Kartajan]

My advice:
The current state of i875 in general is still quite... fluid. If you can wait a month or two, for the BIOS tweaks to settle in, and the minor/ not so minor issues to get ironed out, you have a better basis on which to base your new system. BTW- If you do DV, and are not planning to get one of the expensive DV cards with onboard encode/decode, I would encourage onboard 1394a.

*my personal choice would be Asus P4C800 w/ (2) 512M Corsair PC3200C2 for RAM.*

 

[snidy1]

Originally posted by: ArtemisFowl
Hi
Based on what criteria?
And what memory is best suited for that board?

Go check out the thread.

Link

 

[ArtemisFowl]

Hi
I should have specified that i already have a pci firewire card....i did not mean to say integrated 1394 was not a good idea, just that I would consider an Intel board for example (which doesn't have firewire) if it proved to be the best bet.

I agree that it is best to let the dust settle. There are some very attractive new products (the 800 FSB processor/875 mobos, the new 875 chipset itself, the sata raptor, the 256 MB radeon 9800 PRO, etc) that are largely unproven in the real world....so while i'm anxious to get the system i will show some patience....after that i will flash out the bugs and install the latest drivers.

I have a penchant for Corsair memory, particularly the TwinX but when I contacted Asus for compatibility the morons just sent me right back to the page that shows that Corsair is not on the qualified memory list. In other words they gave me information that was 100% accurate and 100% useless. When I contacted Corsair (this was 2 weeks ago) they never replied.

 

[ArtemisFowl]

As for the Abit thread, I'm also looking for some techincal reviews beyond the sharky's, tom's and anandtech stuff. Side by side comparsions would be nice as well as the best of breed components. I want to stay within a $2500 budget (exluding the monitor, i will be keeping my 21" trinitron crt).