PLEASE help me choose between these two systems

[getbush]

I'm facing a decision of waiting to sell my laptop and building a mobile barton system or trading it plus a little cash now for an A64, which system would be better?

Mobile Barton System:

mobile barton 2600+ - will OC to 2.4 hopefully
shuttle an35n
1024MB pc3200
120GB eide
dvd-rom
9800pro

A64:

GA-K8VT800
- AMD 64 3200+ no overclocking
- 1024mb DDR333 PC2700? - i guess he's not sure
- 120GB SATA
- 20GB EIDE
- DVR-A06 FW 1.07
- 16x DVD
- GFX5900 128mb

Please post any thoughts or comments, all will be appreciated

 

[Connoisseur]

firstly, you definitely do not want to buy PC2700 ram for an A64 system. A64's use DDR400 and they definitely use the extra bandwidth provided by PC3200. Other than that, both systems are pretty decent. Personally I suggest you stick with the 9800 pro but others will tell you FX5900. You'll probably get the best performance out of the A64 system (assuming you use PC3200 ram and 9800pro). Otherwise the overclocked barton will be a very good contender.

 

[getbush]

the a64 system is already built, as is, and would be traded for with the owner, the mobile barton system is what i would build right now if i went that route.

how much of a performance hit would ddr333 cause over ddr400? i could always sell the gig of ddr333 and get ddr400.

any more thoughts?

 

[Tostada]

I don't think many people would be dumb enough to build an Athlon 64 3200+ and then put PC2700 in it. He's probably just confused.

Can you give us some numbers as to what he'd be charging you for the Athlon 64? I mean, a 3200+ must be pretty new and all... but if it's going to cost you much more than the one you're thinking of building, I don't think someone else's used stuff is worth that much.

What makes the Mobile Barton 2600+ better than the Mobile Barton 2400+? I thought they were all the same core and all unlocked.

That Shuttle board is nice and cheap, but the big "non-refundable" warning at Newegg scares me. I would be inclined to pay $85 for the ABIT NF7-S for an OC system, especially since it has SATA and better sound.

You might want to look at 160GB drives -- that's where the best bang for the buck is. The 160GB drives are only $8 more than the 120GB versions. I would probably get the $93 Samsung 160G.

 

[getbush]

Tostada,

Thank you for replying. I may ask him to look at the RAM modules to confirm their speed. He is asking $875 for the athlon system, which i think is pretty fair when you price it out the parts new. I am asking 700 for my laptop so I would pay the difference there.

As for the mobiles, I guess from what I've read I came to the conclusion that a 2600+ would have a higher probability of reaching 2.4GHz stable. I think they may be binned higher to run at thoise higher speeds. Not all 2400+ can reach 2.4Ghz stable with reasonable voltage.

I guess not refundable is a bad thing, I wonder if they would still exchange for the same item if you got a bad one? Seems like they would I dunno. If I were to pay more for the ABIT I might just say screw it and get the chaintech nf3 board for roughly the same price and put a 2800+ A64 on it.

I already have a recent 120GB seagate eide 8MB cache that i have in an external enclosure for my laptop, so i would just format that and use it in the new system.

I would rather build my own, it's just that I don't know how long it will take to sell my laptop, and could trade it now. Maybe I just need more patince. blah

Thanks again for your input.

 

[Nickel020]

I would definetly get the Abit NF7-S mobo. It is known to be good overclocker an you will probably reach a higher speed using it. You will also need to get a good cooler for your CPU. The Thermalright SLK 947 is currently on sale at svc.com for $19.99. If you are ion a tight budget, that's as good a deal as you are gonna get.
Personally, I think the Athlon XP system will be slightly faster in games now (also due to the 9800 Pro), but that is probably gonna change when Win XP 64-bit is released but no one knows by how much.

 

[Zebo]

Surprisingly, even a 2.0 GHz AMD 64 3200+ no overclocking can convincingly beat 2.4 GHz Athlon-XP-M. However, all bechmarks are within 20% of one another in games and the Athlon XP-M is faster in LAME, compling and FPU apps. So this 20% performance victory, in the best case, simply does'nt justify 200% more money making the AMD 64 3200+ is a very poor value in comparison. The most intelligent choice is obviously a XP-M.

http://techreport.com/reviews/2004q1/athlonxp-m-2500/index.x?pg=9

 

[Zebo]

The shuttle is a fine choice. Has all the overlcoking options as ABIT with none of thier recent problems and only costs $54.