Looking to build mid-level gaming/authoring system

[mdchesne]

I'm in college and am looking to build a new system incorperating the A64 939 platform. Now, after a little research, i decided not to get an SLI mobo for the reason that dual gpus don't seem to increase performance that much (dual 6600GT vs 6800gt). However, I would like to go PCI-E becasue that seems to be the future of things (and better power distribution through the 16x port compared to AGP8x), but lack of funds (~$1500), i can't afford the mobo and vid card on PCIE)

Here is what I have so far:

lian-li pc-60 aluminum
MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum mobo
NEC 16x doublelayer dvd+- RW (ND-3520a)
NEC 1.44 Internal Floppy (because we still haven't given up floppys....WHY?!!!!!)
Seagate 80GB sata with NCQ (have another from last PC so they'll be in raid)
Corsair Value Select 512x2 (dual pack) pc-3200
Samsung SyncMaster 997DF-T/T 19" Dynaflat
Seasonic SuperSilencer 460Watt
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ winchester core
EVGA Nvidea geforce 6800GT
logitech mx510 corded mouse
logitech elite keyboard
Gainward sound explosion 5.1 headphones


would the hardware seem to work pretty well together or are there driver issues (I hate driver and bios issues...darn unforseen problems)? I'm looks to do serious gaming (doom3, HL2, etc) and some hardcore authoring over long periods of time (thinking the pc-60 will dissipate heat better than others of the same dB). Looking to run linux suse 9.2 in one 80gig HDD, and windows in the other. maybe get a 250GB later for more windows storage...

but because I have a budget under $1500, i have to balance power for , well, money issues. that's why I couldn't get PCI-E motherboard cause the 6800GTs are $100 more for pci-e on the 800s for some reason (vice versa on the 6600gts....go figure).

So what do y'all think?

 

[ribbon13]

2x x16 PCIe is still a good route for Devs. No one ever said you had to use it for gaming. I have several friends that run 2x XFX 6600GT for 4-LCD workstations. And I would take ATi of nVidia for high-end single card action.

Looks alright to me cept the headphones, but that's because I'm a Sennheiser type of person. Sennheiser > *

 

[mdchesne]

well, i would like to go SLI, but maybe in the future after they fix the bugs and get better drivers. Then the performance increase would be better than a mere 40% (not the theoretical boost of 85%. and why ATI? various benchmarks on stresstests show the nvidea 6-series pulling even with ATI's new pe line ($100more) but at lower clock speeds. again, wish there was no such thing as currency

 

[aatf510]

Originally posted by: mdchesne
well, i would like to go SLI, but maybe in the future after they fix the bugs and get better drivers. Then the performance increase would be better than a mere 40% (not the theoretical boost of 85%. and why ATI? various benchmarks on stresstests show the nvidea 6-series pulling even with ATI's new pe line ($100more) but at lower clock speeds. again, wish there was no such thing as currency

x800pro is the worst card that ATI make because it's price the same as 6800GT for the same amount of price. However, you are lucky now because there is the x800xl (PCI-E) only.
You can probably get that for cheaper than 6800GT (x800xl is faster than the GT) and then use those extra cash to get an nf4 ultra board.

 

[mdchesne]

ah yes, tom'shardware and a variety of other sites confirm this. thanks for pointing this out. didn't even bother to look at the lastest benchmarks (probally why i bought a chaintech zenith socket A motherboard before... that motherboard = total crap). Well now, i'm beginning to bend to the wind it appears. X800xl seems to be exactly what I'm looking for... power of the lastest graphics cards, pci-e, staggering piplines and rendering possibilities....

one thing I don't like about ATI is that it sucks with Linux which I've begun to invest a lot fo time dealing with at the university. plus, i need a linux system to recognize my Mac on the network (believe me, i tried with windows, it's impossible). anyone know of possible drivers from ATI that are more unix/linux friendly?

thanks toattett and ribbon13



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oh, since i'm probally moving back ot pci-e now, would this be an ok alteration to my system:
K8N Neo4 Platinum mobo (is it true nforce4 is more linux-/overclocker-friendly than the k8t equvilent?)
Seasonic S12 Series 500watt pci express ready psu
x800xl

also, i hate getting incompatible memory --> thing the value series of corsair will work with this mobo?

 

[aatf510]

so you are going to run all your games in a linux environment? that might be difficult?
if you aren't runing games with your linux OS, I guess it wouldn't be too bad since the linux systems @ my school use ATI x300.

 

[mdchesne]

no, the only games I know of that run on linux are the linux version of UT2004 and call of duty & quake 3 in the emulator (WINE), so I'd be makign dual boot partitions. maybe linux on one 80gb hdd, and win on the other. just gotta wait til a non-buggy win64 OS comes out. that win64 beta sucks so much (even for a beta....for that matter, even for windows). but yea, I'm doing rendering and authoring on linux because of the 64-bit support and then for gaming I'll use the win partition. dunno exactly how and what I'm going to do just yet. plan to do it over spring break