Looking for a new A64 system

[MrEgo]

Sorry, I have been away the past year or so.. occupied with other things like sports, my job *ahem..final fantasy XI* - so I haven't been very up to date on how the A64's are doing performance-wise. Anyway, I was looking through the topic list and it seems like half of them are questions about Athlon 64 CPUs. I was already considering an upgrade, but I think seeing all this discussion about the A64 has pushed me over the edge.

Price is an issue, but so is performance. The best ratio is probably going to be my choice. I AM going to overclock, so take that into consideration as well. I have an SLK-900 heatsink, with a very good Kingwin case, so my cooling is optimal (and hopefully my current heatsink fits on an A64).

My questions:

1. I would like to hear suggestions about which brand / model motherboard I should choose? I really like Epox boards - they have always been a personal favorite. I don't HAVE to have one, but I would take Epox in a tie-breaker. I was VERY impressed with nvidia's nforce 2 chipset, so I would feel more comfortable with an nvidia chipset. But - it will probably all boil down to which overclocks the most.

2. Which CPU(s) should I pay close attention to? It's looking like clock speed is winning out over extra cache. I would like a CPU that does overclock fairly well, at least compared to other A64's.

3. I have PC3200 DDR. Should I invest in some PC3700+ if I would like to keep a 1:1 ratio?


Thanks in advance.

 

[MrGrim257]

I just bought an A64 3000+ and a Chaintech VNF3-250 motherboard, and am very pleased with it. People will recommend more feature rich motherboards based on the NFORCE3 chipset, but if you dont need them, theres no sense in paying for them in my opinion. Anandtech recently did a very good motherboard roundup on the socket 754 boards, so be sure to give that a look. As for memory, I found a deal for 2x512 Kingston HyperX PC4000 at Bestbuy for $260, so I've got plenty of overclocking headroom. I've only had the machine together for a few days, so I havent really overclocked it much yet, but I'm sure it will do well.

 

[Illissius]

1. There are three chipsets worthy of consideration, the nForce3 250(Gb), K8T800 Pro, and SiS 755 (or 775? dunno). Of these, only the nForce3 passes the consideration phase, as the other two have issues with the AGP/PCI lock not working correctly or not always being implemented by the motherboard makers. That leaves you with the Chaintech VNF3-250, Epox 8KDA3J and 8KDA3+, and MSI K8N Neo Platinum as available choices. I don't know much about the Chaintech except that there've been various issues with it (again, haven't bothered to find out what exactly they are). The Epoxes have only recently become available so no information on those, other than that reviews have been excellent, but they don't have support for mobile processors. The MSI also recieved excellent reviews, and it's *mostly* lived up to them for the people that've got it, with various quirks - it's probably your safest choice until more is known about the Epoxes.

2. If you feel like messing around with mobiles (mb compatibility isn't exactly perfect, but I'd imagine this'll improve over time), then a 2800+ 35W (1.8GHz, 512K, 1.2V) for $234 would be your best bet, oralpain had one at 2.25GHz 1.3V limited by a 250 max FSB on his motherboard. I would classify that as 'fairly insane', considering the stock voltage of A64s is 1.5V. If you want to be safe and go with a desktop version, then it depends on how much you want to spend. The most important thing is that you get a processor with a CG stepping, as they overclock *considerably* better, and memory compatibility is improved as well. Options are the 2800+, 3000+, 3200+ 2GHz 1MB, and 3200+ 2.2GHz 512K. The 3000+ is probably worth the extra over the 2800+, as the higher multiplier will help overclocking, but you could go either way. It's probably not worth paying another $70 for a 3200+, but if you do, while at stock speeds an extra 200MHz will outperform an extra 512K cache, I don't think the 512K version will overclock much farther, and at close to equivalent speeds the 1MB cache version will be faster. From what I've read, you can overclock to 2.4-2.5GHz fairly reliably from 2GHz chips with a CG stepping. Haven't seen many results with 2800+s, oddly, so no real idea about those.

3. There's currently 512MB sticks of Kingmax TSOP PC4000 at Newegg for $101, which is an excellent deal (they have a rating of '3', though, so I'd look into it a bit first to be safe), and cheaper than many brands' PC3200 "value" lines. Otherwise, the extra bandwidth is nice to have, but doesn't have a very large effect on performance - consider that socket 939 processors have dual channel and thus double the bandwidth, and are barely faster - so you'll be fine enough with PC3200 (Crucial, Corsair, Kingston, Mushkin, OCZ, or you could go with something generic like Samsung, Hynix, Infineon, etc.).

As for cooling, I'm not so sure your SLK-900 is socket 754 compatible (without mods, at any rate), so you probably want to check. The SLK-948U is the only HS proven to work with A64 mobiles (which present the additional complication of lacking a heatspreader). If you get a desktop processor, then the Zalman CNPS7000A-(Al)Cu is another excellent choice.

EDIT - If I were buying right now, I would get:

Athlon 64 2800+ 35W Mobile
Thermalright SLK-948U
MSI K8N Neo Platinum
2x512MB Kingmax TSOP PC4000

This reflects my preferences, and not yours, but thought I'd post it for reference (rhyme unintended).