old AMD guy...trying to build Intel system... (for a friend ;) )

[LS20]

well my roomate wants a system of his own (thank goodness) and wants me to build one for him

his budget is around 700$ w/o monitor and with that money i can hook him up with a nice MSI/Epox + XP2000+ combo

however, I'm intrigued by the Intel overclock happy chips but I have no background on them..especially with so many chipsets to choose from

I heard the 1.6A is discontinued?


What would you recommend for a modest MOBO/CPU/RAM combo... the first priority would probably be stability. for RAM is PC2100 okay or would I need PC2700 to go with the faster FSB?

im pretty much settled on getting Philips Seismic Edge and Radeon8500LE and other peripherals for his sytsem


just need help on Mobo/Cpu/Ram

 

[Vette73]

There was a SiS648 board that does well. I think it may have a review on the main page here at Anandtech.

As for CPU I think the 1.8Ghz (with 512kb L2) is cheaper than a 1.6. Just make sure what ever chip you get it has 512 L2 cache.

And yes make sure you get some good pc-2700 ram, 2100 is ok, but get the 2700 if you plan on doing ANY overclocking

 

[CrazySaint]

Originally posted by: LS20
well my roomate wants a system of his own (thank goodness) and wants me to build one for him

his budget is around 700$ w/o monitor and with that money i can hook him up with a nice MSI/Epox + XP2000+ combo

however, I'm intrigued by the Intel overclock happy chips but I have no background on them..especially with so many chipsets to choose from

I heard the 1.6A is discontinued?

Yes, the 1.6A is discontinued, but as Marlin said, you can get the 1.8A for less money ($139 @ newegg). The 1.8A is a great chip, and should hit 2.4-2.5GHz on default voltage (and ~2.6-2.8GHz @ 1.7vcore actual).

What would you recommend for a modest MOBO/CPU/RAM combo... the first priority would probably be stability.

I would recommend the Abit BG7 which you can get for ~$100 at newegg or googlegear (think its a few dollars cheapter at googlegear).

for RAM is PC2100 okay or would I need PC2700 to go with the faster FSB?

If you're gonna OC this thing, then I would suggest that you get Corsair XMS PC3000 RAM (~$88/$155 for 256/512MB sticks @ googlegear). This RAM can easily handle DDR400+, in fact THUGSROOK over in the CPU/OC forum tested his at up to DDR440.

So my recommendations would be:

P4 1.8A
Abit BG7
Corsair XMS PC3000C2

Total cost (W/512MB RAM) should be $400 or about $330 if you go with 256MB of RAM. If you plan on overclocking, that's about as cheap as it gets with Intel systems and is actually quite a good deal considering that you can easily do 2.6GHz with extra voltage and a 2.6GHz CPU by itself will cost that much, not to mention that with the high FSB and RAM it will actually be faster!

 

[LS20]

thanks for the great tips CrazySaint. the 1.8A looks like the way to go.

on the moterhboard, since ive had good luck with SiS products, I was looking at some Gigabyte/Asus/MSI boards with the SiS648 chipset. They arent substantially more than the Abit, but have alot more features... btw the Abit w/ 845G does not support PC2700 or PC3200??!?!

the SiS648 models have ATA133 , 8X AGP, DDR333, etc... how easy/supportive are they in terms of overclocking?


MSI MS-6585 - 110$
Gigabyte GA-8SG677 - 103$
ABIT Model SR7-8X - 100$

 

[CrazySaint]

Originally posted by: LS20
thanks for the great tips CrazySaint. the 1.8A looks like the way to go.

on the moterhboard, since ive had good luck with SiS products, I was looking at some Gigabyte/Asus/MSI boards with the SiS648 chipset. They arent substantially more than the Abit, but have alot more features... btw the Abit w/ 845G does not support PC2700 or PC3200??!?!

The Abit BG7 supports PC2700 at 133FSB, but you'll be going way out beyond mere PC2700

the SiS648 models have ATA133 , 8X AGP, DDR333, etc... how easy/supportive are they in terms of overclocking?

ATA133 and 8X AGP mean approximately nothing in terms of actual performance gained because we haven't even tapped out ATA100 (we're somewhere around ATA66) and 4X AGP yet. All i845G boards support PC2700 (just not "officially"). I've also heard that SiS boards aren't the best for overclocking, especially since many of them lack PCI/AGP lock (an extremely important feature for overclocking). I'd really