Comments Please....

[Tired of the Bull]

I have a friend who is a pretty big time gamer and wants to update his computer. He already has a GeForce4 Ti4400 and Audigy Gamer that he wants to keep but he'll be updating basically everything else. How does this shopping list look? Any changes or advice?

Western Digital - WD8000BB @ Newegg = $93
ASUS - A7N8X @ Newegg = $124
AMD Athlon XP 2400 @ Newegg = $156
Kingston - KVR400X64C3/512 @ Newegg = $260


He's not interested in RAID and Serial ATA would only be an option if it made good economical sense.

 

[Tired of the Bull]

Anyone?

 

[Duvie]

Is he going to unlock the mulitpliers and jack the fsb up to 200??? if no then don't waste his money on the 400mhz ram...also 260 seems wacked!! Is that for 2 sticks of 512??? cauise I can get 512mb of corsair pc3200 cas 2 (not cas 3 crap) for 170 range...

 

[DaveSimmons]

The WD is a noisy drive (check out storagereview.com for rankings) A Seagate cuda IV for quiet, a Maxtor for good performance but not as quiet.

And as Duvie says that DDR price is a ripoff. If not OCing the FSB you could move up to an XP 2600+ CPU for $248 and 333 MHz DDR.

 

[Duvie]

I checked newegg and that is for 2 stick of 512mb since each 512mb is 130dollars...not in stock though

 

[ProviaFan]

Might want to make that a special edition if you're going with WD for the drives, otherwise check out the other suggestions by various members here. The processor and motherboard are fine (also consider the Epox 8RDA+, it has some nice features), but unless you're going to overclock, get cheaper DDR 333 (PC/2700) SDRAM.

 

[Tired of the Bull]

Thanks all for the responses,

No I don't think there is any chance he'll overclock.

Corsair sells match sets would this be the best choice?

If so would the PC2700 matched pair be a good match for a XP2600 on the ASUS motherboard?

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: Tired of the Bull
Thanks all for the responses,

No I don't think there is any chance he'll overclock.

Ok, then there's no need to buy memory that will run at any speed faster than the speed of the FSB of the processor.

Corsair sells match sets would this be the best choice?

If so would the PC2700 matched pair be a good match for a XP2600 on the ASUS motherboard?

It would probably be best, though I'm not sure it's really necessary.

 

[Tired of the Bull]

Is there any benefit to using two sticks of DDR on the nForce2 boards with the two controllers? (In gaming)

 

[paralazarguer]

Is there any benefit to using two sticks of DDR on the nForce2 boards with the two controllers? (In gaming)

Yes, most definitely.

 

[Brian48]

I've bought both the 8RDA and A7N8X newegg. The Epox is a much better board in my opinion. No need to apply the "wire trick" to unlock my 2400XP like I had to do with the Asus. It's also the more stable of the two in my short experience.

By the way, my A7N8X died two days ago and will be RMA'd back to newegg tomorrow. I'm back to using my old 8KHA+ in the interim for this particular machine. Needless to say, I'd lean towards the Epox if one was asking me for an opinion.