new computer specs

[qwex]

hi, I plan on building this computer in the next few days, so I figured I'd get a few last minute recommendations...any tips or suggestions you have would be great!

(I'll be running win98SE + win2k. less than $1700 system total, preferably)

specs:
Asus A7V
Athlon tbird 900
128mb Crucial PC133 ram
30gb maxtor hard drive, only ATA66 but I can get it for about $100
Optiquest Q95, any better monitors at the same price?
Plextor 8x4x32x CDRW
Pioneer 16x DVD
Altec ACS54 speakers
SB Live! value or x-gamer
100meg zip drive
Inwin Q500N case
32meg DDR Radeon

thanks for any help!

 

[Syborg1211]

Go for intel!

... hey, I see amd people doing it all the time, why can't an Intel fan do it?

 

[toph99]

well if you get a Plextor CD-ROM, you can use it with the burner and make *perfect* copies of cd's(even copy protected ones)
also, if you aren't gonna overclock the bus, i don't see any need to get pc-133 ram, when the t'bird memory bus is 100mhz(right?)
and what about boosing the Zip to a zip250?
got a floppy drive? still need one
mouse?

besides that, the system looks great wish i had $1000american to spend on my system instead of $1000 cnd, lol

 

[Howard]

You may want skip out on the PC133 ram, as the FSB is 100MHz.

The Samsung 955DF is pretty good..

 

[qwex]

I thought the KT133 chipset had PC133 support, so I assumed it would use it w/o oc'ing (I don't want to overclock anytime soon anyway). no zip250, it's not worth the extra money since everyone I know has a zip100 and if I have to backup a lot of files, I've got the CDRW. oh, I'll get a top of the line floppy

 

[RayEarth]

if you're happy with what you came up with, then stick to your plan & don't change anything. at this point, if i didn't upgrade my computer yet, i would wait, ddr motherboard is going to be released soon.

 

[qwex]

I read that the samsung's don't have win2k drivers, I guess I'll have to look into this a lot more

 

[qwex]

DDR boards are getting to be a problem...now that I'm ready to go, the DDR boards will be out in just a month or two, and it doesn't seem as though the price difference will be that big. once I realize that SCSI's too expensive for me and I have no use for SMP for the same reason, I'll get over it and just buy what I've got...I'm on a P166 with 48 megs of ram, I've been longing to play a 3d game less than 2 years old for way too long...

 

[RagingGuardian]

The KT133 supports 133Mhz memory. Where'd you think the 133 in the KT133 comes from? If the memory and front side bus were running synchronous the memory would be running at 200Mhz thanks to the double pumped EV6 bus.

To get bit by bit data extraction you'll need a Plextor burner and CDROM. Since your going IDE I suggest you leave this alone since the Plextor CDROM is SCSI. If you can afford it get the 12/4/32S and 40XTSI Plextor units for some SCSI loving bit by bit action. This setup just can't be beat.

 

[NaughtyusMaximus]

Remember though, you can still always use the Plextor writer to extract from if you have a CD that wont read with a regular CD-ROM.

 

[Zeeliv]

I've seen you post this in many threads involving athlons and memory Yucky, and every time I have to come in and reitterate that both the KX133 and the KT133 chipsets were made with PC133 memory in mind.

 

[AL77]

<< I thought the KT133 chipset had PC133 support >>


You are correct. The system bus (i.e., in the Athlon's case: the EV6 100MHz DDR, 200MHz effective) is different from the memory bus. Some chipsets like the original Athlon AMD 750, and other chipsets like Intel BX, LX, HX, etc are synchronous chipsets. The system bus speed = memory bus speed.

The Via MVP3 (<--I believe), Via Apollo Pro 133a, Via KX133, Via KT133, and Intel i815 are asynchronous (not a complete list). The memory bus can be different from the FSB. So you can run your memory at 133MHz on the KT133 chipset while your FSB is set at 100MHz DDR.

As far as memory width, AFAIK, it's been stagnant at 64 bits (not including Rambus which is a different story altogether) since the Pentium days...from the cpu to the system controller/north bridge to the memory modules.

Al

 

[qwex]

I've only posted on these message boards in this particular thread...

 

[qwex]

nevermind, you were talking to someone else