Need help with upgrading

[QuantumPion]

The last computer I built was over 2 years ago when I built a P4 system. It was very top-of-the-line then and has last me well until now, with only upgrading the video card from a 5900 to a 6800 gt. I think it's about time I upgrade though. I think I want to get an AMD 4000+ (San Diego), 4 gigs of ram, geforce 7000 series once they release a 512 mb version, water cooled case, etc. I have about $2500 to blow on it.

First I want to upgrade hard drive and ram, since I can use them on my current computer, so here is my first two questions:

1) How do ram speeds and timing work with AMD systems? e.g. do they use dual channel ram (2x2 gig) or can I just get 4x1 gig chips?

2) Do AMD chipsets only use DDR 400? If so what is the point of getting ram faster then DDR 400? I don't understand how the AMD integrated memory controller works. If I get some DDR 500 ram, can the memory controller run at 250 mhz without overclocking? Or if I don't want to overclock, should I just stick to DDR 400?

3) Is the WD Raptor hard drive the cat's meow, or is there a higher performing drive on the market now? e.g. should I wait a bit for a SATA II drive? Right now I have two lower-end maxtor drives with RAID 0 but from what I have seen RAID 0 offers almost no real performance gain, so I want to get just one of the fastest type drives. I've had these drives for over 3 years and am worried they might die at any time now.

Thanks 🙂

 

[QuantumPion]

bump?

 

[DaveSimmons]

Why 4GB? Games are just starting to benefit from having over 1GB, so 2GB should be perfect for the next couple of years.

Click the CPU/chipsets tab at the top of the page for articles on A64 socket939 memory issues, or use Advanced Search "memory" or "RAM" for a bunch of threads here.

Click the Storage tab and look back a bit for the "Raptors in RAID" article, or Advanced Search again with "Raptor" for a lot of threads here

(Also scroll through or use Advanced Search for threads on power supplies, SLI, motherboards, etc.)

 

[QuantumPion]

I did search but couldn't really find the answer to my questions.

As for the ram, I wanted to get 4 gigs so that I could go without a pagefile. Besides, ram is cheap right now.

 

[leegroves86]

As far as HDD go it just depends on your needs. If you are gonna store lots of videos/pictures then your gonna need a bigger HDD. I would go for the Maxtor 10, 7200 SATA and not 8 but 16 mb cache WITH NCQ. If you don't use much space go for the expensive raptor. Or do both, get a raptor for the OS and games w/ big HDD for media. Anandtech just did a review on SATA II HDDs and basically there are only 2 "true" SATA II drives on the market that have NCQ. The review did NOT find much if Any increased performance. Current hardware and software can't begin to really push SATA's 150mb cap.

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Omg don't buy a 512MB video card. That's a complete waste of money. You'll only notice a slight, if any, performance increase while gaming, but it'll cost you a LOT more...

 

[QuantumPion]

If I'm going to buy a $600 video card it better damn well be able to play Doom 3 and Battlefield 2 with the highest video settings...

 

[imported_Kensai]

A64 4800+
DFI SLI-DR
2GB OCZ PC3200 EL Platinum
2 X 7800GTX
A 74GB Raptor for OS + Programs
A 250-400GB Seagate 7200.8 for mass storage

Lian Li v1200 with a Koolance Exos 2 or something of the likes.

 

[QuantumPion]

I was trying to decide between the koolance pre-built case using the lian li 1200 or the zalman reserator.

 

[SlitheryDee]

Originally posted by: QuantumPion
I did search but couldn't really find the answer to my questions.

As for the ram, I wanted to get 4 gigs so that I could go without a pagefile. Besides, ram is cheap right now.

I hear that disabling the pagefile screws your performance no matter how much memory you have.

Originally posted by: QuantumPion
If I'm going to buy a $600 video card it better damn well be able to play Doom 3 and Battlefield 2 with the highest video settings...

If you really must spend that much on a video card then the 7800GTX 256mb will chew through both of those games at max settings.

 

[QuantumPion]

Originally posted by: SlitheryDee

Originally posted by: QuantumPion
I did search but couldn't really find the answer to my questions.

As for the ram, I wanted to get 4 gigs so that I could go without a pagefile. Besides, ram is cheap right now.

I hear that disabling the pagefile screws your performance no matter how much memory you have.

Care to elaborate? I've always had significantly better performance when disabling the page file. It's just that newer games eventually come out which require more ram.

Anyway, can someone answer my original question about AMD's and ram speeds? I havn't been able to get a definitive answer anywhere.

 

[SlitheryDee]

Originally posted by: QuantumPion

Care to elaborate? I've always had significantly better performance when disabling the page file. It's just that newer games eventually come out which require more ram.

Anyway, can someone answer my original question about AMD's and ram speeds? I havn't been able to get a definitive answer anywhere.

Actually I read a thread about disabling the page file in this forum a while back, i'll try to find it.

Most newer AMD boards support dual channel, although that doesn't seem to give nearly the boost in performance that it does an intel system.

This , one of many very useful threads by Zebo, may give you an idea about how latencies and bandwidth affect an A64 system.

If you don't want to read through the whole thing the synopsis is "not very much". The conclusion Zebo reaches is that value RAM is the better choice relative to more expensive low latency or high speed RAM.

Edit: Also, pc3200 is pretty much standard with A64s, faster RAM is only useful for overclocking although the A64 doesn't seem to suffer a huge penalty from using dividers and running pc3200 RAM asynchronous to the FSB.

 

[QuantumPion]

The only problem I'm facing as far as ram is concerned is that there aren't very many choices in the 2x1 gig packages. I guess I will probably get the pqi ram on newegg for $167 although it has slow timings. The next best choice would be the corsair xms but they are $230 each. I'm not sure if it's worth it to get the more expensive ram or not. I don't overclock so wouldn't that make better timings more important?