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Need help building a computer for my brother

M

mazeroth

Golden Member
Right now my brother is running an Athlon 1700+ with a Radeon 9800 Pro. He wants to spend around $300 for an upgrade and I pretty much laughed at him. He thinks upgrading his mobo+cpu and ram is going to do a lot for him, but I know better. I think I can get him to spend $500 so I need a little help figuring out what he should get.

Right now I think he should go with the Athlon64 3000+ Venice for $127:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103537

I'm sure we could get that chip to overclock to 2.2 to 2.4 ghz on the stock cooler but don't know which budget motherboard will do the trick. He's also going to need to get a gig of RAM, a new video card, and for the power supply I'm thinking the FSP 450w for $50:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817104954

I'm running Corsair Value Select 2x512 in my Opty 165 and have it running at 2.4ghz no prob. Is this the memory to get for him, or should I look somewhere else?

Lastly, I know a lot about the higher end video cards but the ones that are $150-$200 I'm not so keen on. I was looking at the 7600GTs but we both prefer ATI so any suggestions there? I see some of the X800s going for cheap, but that may be going a little too cheap.

Oh yeah. He has a 10 year old Sony 17" CRT with 1280 max res and will NOT get a new monitor. With that, 1280 will be his max res until I can convince him to purchase a better monitor.

Thanks for any help you guys can provide. I really appreciate it!
 
Originally posted by: furballi
http://shop3.outpost.com/product/4705559

Add $70 for Corsair VS RAM. Easy 2.25GHz with +1.7% bump in Vcore. Still have $150 for the video processor.
Click to expand...

How would this combo at 2.25GHz compare to an Athlon64 running at the same frequency? Also, this doesn't have PCI-E, but if he really wants to try out a new mobo+processor first this might be the way to go. Oh yeah, I have a Barton 2800+ collecting dust. Would it be better than the 3100+ Sempron?

Thanks!
 
Read my review on 3/30/2006 11:38 PM

Summary...it's about 8% slower than an A64 3000 Venice dual channel 939 at the same CPU clock speed. There is NO performance advantage with PCI-E at this time. Don't need the 2800. This is a combo...$80 delivers the MB and CPU. Currently running my 3100 at 2.44GHz. Also no problem at 2.5GHz with 1.6Vcore.

Cheapest A64 3000 Venice with 939 MB combo will cost $160. Is the 8% speed bump worth the 100% price hike?

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...adid=1783861&STARTPAGE=2&enterthread=y
 
furballi, I searched through all your old posts and couldn't find your review. Any chance you could shoot me a link to it? Also, will that ECS board allow for the overclocking you're talking about? Lastly, the thing that I'm still unsure of is if it's worth it to get a board that doesn't have PCI-E. I know there's no performance increase but buying a video card that's AGP almost always costs more, and in a year or two when he'll want a new video card he'll probably have to scrap the motherboard and processor and get a new one.

Thanks.
 
Originally posted by: mazeroth
Thanks for the input.

Wouldn't the X1600XT be a better choice due to having Shader 3.0 support?
Click to expand...


The X1600 wouldn't touch an X850XT in terms of performance. Shader 3.0 support is pretty meaningless right now, as not many games use it and when they do, an X1600 probably wouldn't be powerful enough anyway. Also, the X850 is highly OCable to stock 7800GT speeds.

 
Repost....

Just couldn't resist the $80 price tag...so I picked up four more combos at Fry's. The gal gave me four printouts cause there was a limit of one per customer. I saw at least 100 boxes on the top shelf!

I was quite happy to discover that these boards have Matsushita capacitors at the main power section. ALL caps on this board have 105C rating.

The coils and transformers were solidly built and assembled, unlike some that I've seen on other ECS boards. Did a quick check to make sure that these boards are working properly. Vcore = 1.7%. 250MHz FSB. 5:6 memory speed at 2.5-3-3-6-1T (Corsair VS 2 x 512). They all passed Memtest #5 and #8 (10 passes) and 30 minutes of Prime95 max heat mode.

I also compared the speed of this rig with my A64 3000/939 computer. Both systems were set to 2.25GHz core speed with DDR333 2.5-3-3-6-1T timing. The Sempron setup was 7.7 to 9.9% slower with Super Pi 1M and 8M. Boot time was identical at 25 seconds (power activation to 1st display of desktop).

Without benchmark software, there is no way that I could differentiate between the two with most PC operations. Until the price of an A64 3000/939 combo drops below $100, this Sempron/ECS rig is still the KING of value.


I've assembled nine of these combos. There was a learning curve with the 1st build. Once I have a good MASTER image file of the OS, I simply restore the image file to a blank HDD, enter a new windows registration key (no warez software), confirm the PC is stable with Prime95 n Memtest86, and ship out the PC.

So far, all units are stable at 2.25GHz. Unless you have a bad chip, I suspect that you should also be able to achieve stability at 2.25GHz. I use Clockgen to overclock my CPU beyond the 250MHz limit in the BIOS. Currently set at 2.44GHz.

Folks spend way too much $ on Opteron 144/939 combo ($180 minimum) with little return on their investments. I doubt that the transcode time for an average 2 hr movie will drop by more than 30 seconds. Gaming should not be a factor if you have a high quality AGP card. Most add-on devices are still PCI based.

If you want to see a huge boost in performance, then put the $100 saved in the bank, and use it to build another value rig in 2008. The most expensive rig today will still be much slower than a $100 2008 VALUE RIG.



The best AGP or PCI-E video card still costs an arm and a leg. I doubt that he will part with $300 for the latest PCI-E card in the next two years. Therefore, a 1 to 2 years old high-end AGP card is still the best value.
 
furballi, thanks for the info! Can you recommend a good HSF from Newegg that's inexpensive that will get us up to 2.25+? Thanks!
 
The Cooler Master CK8-8JD2B-0L...find cheapest retailer that will ship to your door.

http://www.case-mod.com/store/cooler-ma...-cpu-cooler-socket-754-940-p-1092.html

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835103167

http://www.directron.com/ck88jd2b0l.html

http://www.svc.com/ck8-8jd2b-0l-19.html (these guys will rape you with shipping)

http://www.electronicsoutfitter.com/store/CK8-8JD2B-0L.html

******/app/productdetails.asp?submit=property&item=35-103-167

Fair value is around $8. Not super quiet at full speed. Be prepare to pay $30 if you need a powerful and quiet CPU cooler.
 
Thanks again for all your help. The only thing I need now is an AGP video card that will be a very noticable upgrade from a 9800 Pro. If the mobo+cpu+HSF+memory are going to run $160 I'm sure he won't mind spending $150 to $200 on a new AGP video card. Which would be the best?

Thanks!
 
I'd assemble the rig and test it with the old video card. No need to buy a new AGP card at this time. Wait for the high-end AGP card to drop in price.
 
I think your brother's $300ish budget is totally doable.

Get a socket 939 ULi AGP and PCIe combo motherboard. The one by AsRock would be the best choice. Then throw in a 3000+ or single core opteron and double your current ram. Should be a nice boost and allow you to continue using the R9800.

R9800 is about as fast as a 6600GT, and is currently being bottlenecked by his 1700+.
 
Hmmm. How much faster do you think his setup will be going from a 1700+ to a 3100+ OCed? I think his computer is running around 1.2 or 1.3 ghz now, so I wonder how much the extra ghz will do? You gotta figure, it's going to run him about $170 to do this upgrade. If it gets him 30% more performance, that's roughly $6 per %. If he were to spend $450 on a PCI-E solution, and grab a $160 X850XT that should run about 300% faster in games (my buddy has an X800XT so the X850XT has to be faster). That's only going to run him $1.50 per % of increase.

Any input? 🙂

EDIT:

I know 3DMark05 is no true indicator of performance but right now his scores 2000 on the dot. My buddy has an A64 754 3200+ with an X800XT and he pulled off a 5800 with no overclocking.
 
It depends on the game. The Athlon XP is a bottleneck, and you could spend $1000 on a video card and not see much performance improvements in some games, e.g. WoW.
 
for 500-600 budget I'd get the following for myself:
Opty 144 - $140 (Oc to 2.4+)
Budget OCable board $70-80
budget RAM DDR400 - $70
vid card - X800/850 series - $less than $200

A real kickass game setup.
 
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