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Opinion on skt 754 rig?

M

MiranoPoncho

Golden Member
Should i make myself a skt 754 rig, ie nc 2.8, 512 mem, and such, and then wait until the sli and such comes out and get it for a bit cheaper than it would be sooner avalable? or should i just get a 939/ 478m for i wish to o/c the hell outta my proc before i upgrade. nearly 4 years on an oced 1.33 celly(1.0a) and i need an upgrade. doom 3 is slightly playable, but at 640x480, 18.0fps is a bit astonishing. anywho. Main objective and yes it may be an oxy moron, but ocability ie the max out of the least, and hoping for a rig, minus, video, monitor, os, hdd, for 400. thanks for the help
 
It really just depends on how much you are looking to spend and if upgrade path is important to you. The 939 prices are definitely becoming quite affordable, but a 754 2800+ w/ either of the boards listed in my sig will still be quite a bit cheaper.

On the other hand, the 939 90 nm setups, while a little more expensive, seem to be oc'ing very well. Another thing to think about is most of the 939 board options pretty much suck right now. The Epox and Chaintech boards in my sig are rock solid and both are around $70. You won't find a good 939 board anywhere near that price just yet.

I will tell you this though. If you are serious about oc'ing every little bit out of your chip, I would go with the 754 3000+ or the 939 3200+ simply because of the 10x multi. Most boards won't do a whole lot more than 280 HTT which is just a hair over 2.5 ghz with the 9x multi. The higher multi just makes life a whole lot easier IMO.
 
Well for 400 you are going to be a bit tight. I would do the following:

this 3000 processor:

http://www.newegg.com/app/View...=19-103-499&depa=0

This mobo:

http://www.newegg.com/app/View...=13-127-181&depa=0

this memory:

http://www.newegg.com/app/View...=20-220-004&depa=0

(I got a gig of this stuff running now. GREAT memory for the $$$)

And finally this HSF:

http://www.newegg.com/app/view...=35-109-119&DEPA=0

When it is available or somewhere else...

This is a definite oc set up and will keep you in the game a few years...
 
Exactly $400 has plenty of breathing room.

Go to Mwave.com and get the Chaintech vnf3-250 & 2800+ bundle (203 + shipping)
add 512MB of decent RAM for under $100
There's still leftover for a cheapo case keyboard and mouse.
Use the retail HSF.

This is exactly what I did and I'm at 8x300 with 2:3 memory (2400 MHz CPU / 200 MHz memory)
I bought a gig of memory, but I got it on Fry's special for Mushkin PC3200 $120 after rebate.
Inlcuding tax and shipping was under $370 for MOBO/RAM/CPU/HSF.

For someone living outside of CA and only needing 512MB RAM, it would be even cheaper.

I would definitely NOT get 2x256. That leaves NO expandability on most Socket 754 boards. I tried to run 2x256 + 1x512MB, the board was insanely unstable at anything even close to 200 MHz, even with memory that otherwise would run 233 MHz. No get 1x512 and you can later expand to another 512MB stick.

This way you essentially get an A64 3400+ for way cheap. 2400-2500 MHz is definitely a sweet spot, the cheapest A64 will get there, and most games will be limited by the video card at that point.
 
Thanks for the feedback. i'm thinking, getting a half gig of good me an msi neo2 nf3, and an a64 3000+.
180+120/30=310/300 plus mem(80) yay yay yay! i could bumpt it to 500,get a case, dvd drive, and the coolmaster cooler. (the huge kind). mabey in the future, a gig more would be sufficent? However, i'm probally going to get cruddy framerates because of 3 things:
1)15" monitor
2) ata disk drive(133)
3)Geforce 4 mx440(cough)

I could my other , pic flavor from the rig i'm using and give my parents a 1.0 cely with integrated trident(8mb) but that would be a bit too evil.
 
Originally posted by: cyberknight
The DFI Lanparty has gotten lots of praise from overclockers. and is highly recommended in recent Anandtech reviews.
http://www.newegg.com/app/View...=13-136-147&depa=0

If you're not looking to overclock and would just like to stay budget, I think the Soltek SL-K8AN2E-GR is excellent price😛erformance
http://www.newegg.com/app/View...=13-180-061&depa=0
Click to expand...


The Soltek is still very good for overclocking. See my sig. Running all of this at 1.55 volts on a SL-K8AN2E-GR
 
Originally posted by: MiranoPoncho
Thanks for the feedback. i'm thinking, getting a half gig of good me an msi neo2 nf3, and an a64 3000+.
180+120/30=310/300 plus mem(80) yay yay yay! i could bumpt it to 500,get a case, dvd drive, and the coolmaster cooler. (the huge kind). mabey in the future, a gig more would be sufficent? However, i'm probally going to get cruddy framerates because of 3 things:
1)15" monitor
2) ata disk drive(133)
3)Geforce 4 mx440(cough)
Click to expand...

Dude, I agree you will get cruddy framerates for 3 reasons, however, I believe your three reasons are:
1)Geforce 4 mx440
2)Geforce 4 mx440
3)Geforce 4 mx440

Seriously consider dropping down to a cheaper mobo + CPU For the $100 you save, buy a used Radeon 9700 from ebay. I've gotten two of these, one for $101 and one for $103. You will end up with a MUCH more balanced machine. Or save some more money and get a Radeon 9500 or a Ti 4200.

I have the Chaintech vnf-250 and it doesn't really give much up in terms of useful options over something like the MSI board you mention. You can overclock just as well. Voltage ranges are the same. The chaintech doesn't have gigabit or as much RAID, but who actually uses RAID? I use gigabit, but had a card lying around.

Your hard drive won't enter into any FPS at all. And your monitor only limits your resolution, which you won't be playing at high res anyway.

I dunno, I just think you need to shave off where you can to add a halfway decent video card in there. An A64 with an MX 440 that will be used for gaming? 😕
 
nah, but as i got a bump in price, i suppose i'll put in my 'rents box. web borwsin and such. But hdd has very little to do with prefromence? ie miniscule diffrence between ata 133, sata and scsi or the raptors, and plain ide or sata? i might get the 2800, oc it, and give it to parents so i can get me beefy nf4, but the 100 dolar diffrence dose seem temptin. 310 for skt 939, 210 for the 754. origonaly, i wanted to get the chaintech mobo, 2800, and a gig of pc 4k. could mix it up, but a question i must tack on:
What would be the most dramatic and noticble component to pump money into? ie cpu/ mem/ vga? 2ndly,I'd most likley notice a diffrence in responsiveness sience i'm using a 1.0 celly? and 3, what would result in better preformence, raptor, mid- high end graphics card or a bigger monitor?
 
HDDs don't improve your framerates at all. When you're playing the game, all dynamic data will already have been in the memory hierarchy. The only thing you will notice with a faster HDD is faster load times. Once you're actually in the game playing, there is very little difference, unless you have so little memory that you're swapping to memory.

The monitor has nothing to do with performance. All it does is limit the max resolution you get.
 
Anything will be a huge increase over what you have now. Even an A64 at 1.7GHz will be like 2.5-3x faster than your Celly, so I wouldn't worry about 200 MHz going to a 3000+. IF you're overclocking there is no difference, they will both top out about the same. Almost all the newcastles top out in the 2400-2500 range

There is ZERO difference between SATA and PATA for the same base drive. The Raptors and 15k SCSI drives are a little faster, but not enough to warrant the price difference in my opinion.

If you're playing games, your biggest problem is your video card. Period.

512MB is okay for now, though you will probably want to move up to a gig eventually. An overclocked 2800+ is enough to make even an x800XT or 6800 Ultra the primary bottleneck of the system in most games.

Check this chart from the recent P4EE review:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuch...c.aspx?i=2261&p=13

And see that the only thing that the A64 2800+ is under 50FPS average in is the Sims2. In most games it's over 80FPS. This means that the CPU is capable of at least those framerates 60FPS in almost any game and much below that will be entirely the cause of the video card. overclock to 2400MHz and compare the 3400+ to the highest end CPUs... You're within This says that the video card is the primary bottleneck even in this case where they are using an x800XT.

Try not to get caught up in CPU MHz. At this point even the mid to bottom end CPUs are capable of delivering all the performance you could want in games. Games have become so dependent on the video card, that the CPU is actually not all that important.

So if you keep this in mind when buying a new system, you can save money on the CPU side and spend it on the video card side.
 
Tock. The pendulum sings the other way. good gfx card + decent cpu/ram= aok gaming setup? other than future upgradibility, but wouldnt that warrant a simple upgrade ie about february, an athlon 3200 wc, nf4, and use the saved money to sli something? Although I will be gaming, other than gfx what should be my primary concern to invest upon? Or would it be wise to get the asrock combo? skt 754 ad 939 on the same board. lol 160 gb is a heck of a lot to fill, and if i raid the thing, the 1 increases preformence, right? anwyho. by saturday i should be going to a comp expo so i should see if ther's anything i should look for. hehe, i bet that if i got a 2.26 b and oced the crud outta it with a 875 it might hold it's own, but i'm really itchin to try out my free copy of win xp 64 bit.
 
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