Son of a B!*** Via get on the Damn BALL

[kijikadal]

So I am shopping for a new vid card looking to replace my 9600 pro and was thinking of just going for a modest upgrade in the 9800 pro 256 or the 9800 XT.

After checking out some the latest benchmarking results and compairing stats on the cards I bump into the
X700 pro

Hmmm... whats this ? I check out the reviews and my mouth drops a notch, this card was outperforming both the 9800 Pro and the 9800 XT. I think to myself "I thought I just seen this thing for a couple hundred bucks on pricewatch", that cant be right because their radeon prices are always screwed up.

So I double check, yep sure enough under $200 and its putting the wooping on a card thats still going for over $300

Damn, then I notice these other cards

X300 LE/SE

X600 Pro
X600 XT

X700
X700 Pro
X700 XT (o my this borderlines on how you can define "mid end" card)

Now I knew about the X800 series but knew nuthing of these little gems until just last week.
I checked into the cards and read a handful of great reviews on them for the price range their in.
The X700 Pro seems to be great bang for the buck in the mid end but it easily beats out last generation top end cards.

So I thought why am I going to spend $300 on a card when I can get the same brand with newer technology for over a hundred dollars less and it outperforms the more expensive card by a pretty descent margin.

So I get ready to order up but I notice one thing....

Not one of these new cards are available in AGP.

OK ok no big deal, I already decided last week that its time to upgrade the old cpu (Athlon 2700+ 333 bus), and I came to the conclusion that the Athlon xp 3200+ wasnt much of an upgrade. So I decided on the new 939 pin 3200, although slightly more expensive then the 754 pin ($182 compaired to $190) the boards I noticed where about $40-$75 more.

Again no biggie, with all the added benefits and future benefits the 939 pin will carry over the 754 pin it will be well worth the extra money on the mobo, plus I will save on ram.

So as I was looking around I found the Via (my favorite chip maker) still doesnt have PCI express.... WTF ???

So I was trying to hunt down anything AMD with pci express, I came up with absolutely nuthing.
Socket A, 754 pin, 939 pin, 940 pin, you name it.
I even looked for an Nforce board with Pci express and only came up with articles on the Nforce 4 I believe it was with some stuff they plan on, but not yet avail ?

Got me ,
(side note)
I wont buy until via has done it anyway, I bought an Nforce 2 ultra board last year and it was the most unstable boards I ever owned, then went Via Kt333a on the same exact setup and everything was AOK, I since then have upgraded to Via kt400 and everything is still AOK.
( for those of you that are shouting out that it was most likely the brand name my Nforce 2 ultra board was an Asus A7n8x which I have used only Asus boards for years and the kt333a was an Abit and my current board is a kt400 Gigabyte GA-7vt600)
(for those of you shouting it was the ram, the ram was matched sticks costing double what i would have paid for 2 sticks normally, I tried running with them in dual mode and also with just a single stick)
It seems the Nforce 2 ultra just couldnt handle the 333 bus because by buddy said it worked ok with his 1700+ but even he sold it because you couldnt overclock or it would crash.


So........ What do the Mid End AMD fans do now

Im just sitting on my hands with money to burn waiting for a 939 pin board that can handle Pci Express personally.

Anyone else ?

 

[baumerz]

I feel your pain. I did the same thing. I'll wait.

 

[Sideswipe001]

All you can do is wait, like the rest of us. PCI-E isn't available for AMD until the nForce4 comes out, and if you're waiting for VIA, good luck. They were the first to announce a chipset, but still haven't sent out even a review sample to show off.

Give it a month, and you'll see boards.

 

[pelikan]

ATI's pci express is looking good so far.

 

[kijikadal]

Man I hope so, until then Ive went a little mad with this setup.
I dont know how long it will last.

Still waiting on some misc parts so no benchmarks yet but heres what i have recently bought out of frustration and what i have on the way.

Swiftech Mcw6002 socket A water block with 226 watt pelt
Danger Den Maze 4-1 GPU block with 80 watt tech
3 Dual 120mm radiators
6 120mm Tt fans
Custom 3 chamber resavoir
3 Via Aqua 1300 pumps
Tubing , bunches of it and various sizes

Still need
a nice power supply for the pelts
northbridge water cooler
need to finsh my vid card ram sinks and decide if its worth water cooling the ram on the vid card (ram doesnt even get hot as it is, even with one hell of an overclock)
need to finish my custom waterblocks for my power supply (I dont believe thats ben done yet)


Basically Im building 3 systems, I want to keep them seperate peltiers, if it wasnt for them I wouldnt care.
Right now the CPU and GPU systems are done and the CPU water is a hell of alot hotter then the GPU water, so I want to keep them seperate.
The third system will cool the Northbridge, then go up to the power supply and cool it so I can run it fanless, then possibly down to the harddrives and maybe even the ramsinks on the vid card, but it depends on how hot the water gets after the northbridge and the power supply.

So far out of all the systems I have every owned/built/ or even seen, this kt400 northbridge is like stright out of hell because it runs so damn hot. I would pay you if you can hold the back of you finger (where its more sensitive, like by the knuckle) on it for more then 6 seconds, its that hot seriously.
And thats with the system all default no overclocks.

So far vid card is 525/375 , no ramsinks , will go higher once I get ramsinks and have time to test for stability. Right now its 100% stable, no artifacts and never locks up no mater how intesive (24+hrs of FFXI ?) the gamming is.
Proc is default at the moment, waiting on the northbridge cooling.

 

[LTC8K6]

There's really nothing wrong with a Prescott, you know.

Posted only because this is about where the obligatory "AMD" post would have been if the op were talking about Intel.

 

[biostud]

Wait for the 6600GT

Inq

Anandtech

 

[kijikadal]

Originally posted by: LTC8K6
There's really nothing wrong with a Prescott, you know.

Posted only because this is about where the obligatory "AMD" post would have been if the op were talking about Intel.

Yeah I cant even argue price vs. performance on that one.

But I do have one argument and that given Intel's history I think the 939 will be around and supported alot longer then the 775.

Isnt Intel already trying to work up something to replace the 775 ?

Amd did sorta did do the same thing with the 940 pin combo but the 940 pin was a server setup that was already out and fit the bill for the time it was released.
They werent trying to offer the 940 pin socket setup to the masses like Intel did with the 423, and whats the deal with the 478 ? is that dead now already ?

Some may think that the 754 is already dead but acording to most sites AMD still plans to release low end chips based on the 754 pin platform i.e. Sempron.


If it wasnt for PCI express I wouldnt even be looking for a CPU & Mobo upgrade just yet.

DAMN U PCI EXPRESS.

Ah well, were moving forward with pci express so i totally support it, I told my g/f last year that the next couple years are going to be very exciting in the pc world and so far they have been.

Just think what we have got in the past years and whats still to come in the next couple years, Pci Express, BTX, 64 bit computing gone mainstream, serial ATA becomming the standard, and a new windows os to look forward too in the near future.

So the funs not over just yet.

20 more years (?) and we should have some crappy form of AI, r u excited ? I am.

 

[kijikadal]

Originally posted by: biostud666
Wait for the 6600GT

Inq

Anandtech

Well if you read my first post and see how I prefer Via over Nforce the same applies with ATI and Nvidia.
Now Im not saying one is better then the other, it always seems like one always has a faster card then the other, then short time later the other has the faster card. Mostly Nvidia with the faster card then ATI comes out with something faster, then Nvidia kicks in with the next gen card, then ati makes a faster one again.


But my reason for choosing ATI over Nvidia is because Nvidia company wise I think is total crap.
The way they outsource all of their work with no regulations makes it very very difficult to just buy an nvidia card.
Let me go further into detail, Nvidia allows the manufacturer of their cards to build the cards virtually anyway they want as long as it works.
So you may have a 5900 and I may have a 5900 but you may get litterally thousands of points higher on a benchmark program because I didnt know that Nvidia allowed 3rd parties to slap on Defunct ram that clocks 200mhz lower then the specs on the Nvidia site

ATI is not 100% innocent in this matter either but they have a special line for those cards and thats the Sapphire line.
If the card is deliberatly underclocked then its most likely an SE card.
Just stay away from those cards or if you really want to be 100% sure your getting a card that performs like it should or you can just buy the ATI brand card.

Until Nvidia enforces some sort of regulations on what can be put on their cards and what the clock speeds can be for a specific model I will have to pass.

Although I have only owned 4 Nvidia cards, I have never been happy with any of them. When I thought I got a deal I actually just got an underclocked version of the same card.

 

[CraigRT]

Maybe the 9800 pro option is loooking more viable right now

I went S754 because I really don't care about that right now... when all that stuff is out, and becomes mainstream, I'll buy then.

If you wait for what you really want, you'll be waiting forever. If you finally find you can get what you want, something else new will be out.... wait for it? NO, just buy and be happy with what you have currently. I'll get PCI-E when all cards are readily available in it, as are motherboards. The whole waiting game thing sucks IMO.

 

[kijikadal]

Definetly, Im hoping this water/pelt cooling does the trick for a nice performance boost.

I went this route instead of buying stuff that I think will soon be replaced because I can transfer 90% of the water and pelt cooling stuff to my next rig.

Only time will tell

 

[LTC8K6]

Isnt Intel already trying to work up something to replace the 775 ?

Sure, but AMD is also working on a replacement for the 939/940. Both of them have to be.

Actually, I think I read somewhere that Intel was going to keep making S478 chips for a while yet.

The idea of buying for longevity sounds good, but it never really seems to work out. You always end up getting a new board anyway, it seems. There are always new features that you want, even if you stick with the same socket.

It's just like waiting for the next new thing. You'd end up waiting forever if you didn't just break down and decide to buy something, and there's always something new and better out just after you drop your money into a rig.

 

[batmanuel]

Oddly enough, my experience with my A7N8X-DX was the opposite.

I first used it with a 2000+ and PC2100 RAM and had all sorts of memory-related gremlins pop up. Some days it would run Prime95 for hours, other days it would kick out with an error after a few minutes. I had a lot of sudden reboots and BSDs.

Later, I upgraded to a 2500+ Barton and some new PC2700 RAM and suddenly the system was rock-solid stable. I used the same processor and RAM in a Shuttle SK41G system and it was also rock solid as well. For some reason, my particular mobo didn't like running at 266MHz.

I even recently grabbed some PC3200 ValueRAM and now i've got the 2500+ up to 2.2GHz with zero issues, despite the fact I've got an old rev 1.04 board that doesn't have the Ultra 400 northbridge that officially supports 400MHz FSB operation.

I'm not sure if I would blame nVidia, though. A lot of issues have to do with how closely the mobo manufacturer follows the specs. I just recently got to experience the joys of the ECS K7VTA3, a KT333-based board that generally ran quite stable overall, but had issues with running certain 8X AGP graphics cards (it's not an 8X board, yes, but it still ought to be able to run the card in 4X mode). I just saw one post in here a few weeks ago where someone had the same issue with his K7VTA3, except in his case a BBA Radeon 9800 would run while a non-ATi brand 9800 would not. So even a Via board can have issues if it isn't designed quite right.

And then there is always the chance that you may have just got a bum board. Asus makes a LOT of boards. If even a small percent are bad apples, that is still a rather large number of people afflicted.

 

[gobucks]

The X700 pro is substantially slower than the 6600GT. ATI decided to release 2 $199 cards, the X700 Pro and the XT. The Pro is slower, but has 256MB memory, while the XT is faster but has to make due with 128MB. The X700XT is closer to the 6600GT, but isn't available yet. Unless you want to wait for the XT, I'd recommend going with the 6600GT, it's just a better card. Look at just about any review of the X700XT or Pro, and they'll tell you the same. On another note, steer clear of the X600 or below. The X600 is just a rebadged 9600, while the X300 is just basically a 9200. Pretty much a waste of time and money.

 

[nitromullet]

Odd experiences with nForce2. The only issues I ever had were with running the RAM/CPU asynchronous. My A7N8X Deluxe did not like that at all.