Time for a refresh - p45 and which?

[AuroraMike]

CPU - Q9650
Memory - 2x 2GB of either Corsair, OCZ or G.Skill (leaning towards OCZ, DDR2 1066 but I'm not against DDR3)
Video - debating between a 4870x2 (drivers still scare me) or a 280
Probably doing a RAID 0 on game drive, RAID 1 on the OS drive

So I'm getting old. I haven't bought a pre-build machine since '92 but after my current rig, I'm just thinking I'm not into it as much as a once was. Looking at parts and compared to something from CyberPower PC (puts on flame shield), I'm not saving that much money but then again, I'm still enjoy my own custom rig. That being said...

I'm still a gamer but I'm not nearly as hardcore as I once was. I still enjoy FPS, MMOs and RTS but at the same time I'm a bit of a classics nerd, not that they affect the hardware. Point being I'm not needing a massive rig that I can OC to the max. In fact, I doubt I'll do any serious OC'ing. My last/current setup, a FX-59 and a Gigabyte NForce board (model eludes me at the moment) was a disaster and it's finally giving up the ghost.

I know about the P5Q Pro/Deluxe from Asus but browsing ASUS forums, I'm scared. Obviously people that have good experiences are less likely to talk about it (marketing fact) where those with problems are happy to share their woes with the world. My last 2 Gigabyte boards have been crap-tastic so I'm scared of them from experience. It's not that I'm against a nForce 700 series board but it's just looking like they don't match up well w/ the Intel family across the board.

The big thing for me will be support of the non-extreme 9650 (why not a 94xx and OC it? I'm lazy and not going to really do any aggressive OC'ing, I'm just not into the heavy tweaking anymore), good, stable RAID support and the ability to support 4GB of RAM (2x2 is what I prefer so I can go to 4x later if I need to) and not force me to slow things down as I've had to do w/ my Gigabyte - AMD combo.

Any suggestions?

 

[sonnygdude]

If you're not looking at heavy OC'ing, look into the P5Q Pro.

What resoluton will you be gaming at? The cards you mentioned will be worth it only if you're at 1920x1200 or above

Stay away from DDR3, It's just not worth the money right now. Especially if you're not doing heavy OC'ing, DDR2-800 would be just fine. That CPU has what, a 9 multiplier? You could get it up to 3.6 GHz and still run DDR2-800 at 1:1. DDR2-1000 would give you a little overhead and the ability to run at higher dividers

From what I can tell, RAID 0 is a bad idea for your game drive. You're essentially doubling your chance of data loss wihtout getting much performance in return. Get a good single drive instead, like the WD 6400AAKS, that's a very sporty drive

 

[AuroraMike]

I have a 22" Samsung panel I just picked up so yes, 19x12 will be what I'm playing at. Believe it or not, I'm finally dumping a 21" Viewsonic CRT I've had forever and a year. I just never had a reason to replace it. It's going to be weird not having that 75 lb behemoth on my desk anymore but man was it sharp.

I was thinking about playing w/ the FSB a small bit, maybe doing a 9x356 since that should work without having to dork with stock voltages too much. I'm just long past my days of worrying about the temp of the NB, vCore voltages and the like. Having 2 small children will do that to you. I wanted the DDR2-1066 for the headroom, like you mentioned, in case I got ambitious one day and got a wild hair up my backside.

As for the RAID, losing my game drive isn't that bad. Games can be reinstalled. Losing the OS is another story (although imaging a stable build post-patch isn't a bad idea). I've been striping my game drives for about 12 years now, long before mobos came with "free" controllers and it does make a slight difference. Not huge, mostly related to load times and anything with intensive disk I/O (provided the controller isn't a huge bottleneck).



I guess the concern I have regarding memory comes from my un-fun days w/ my 2 FX chips. My FX-53 I had to run the memory at 166Mhz instead of 200 regardless of the brand or chipset. The stupid IMC on the pre San Diego FX cores was so badly borked. Even the SD cores (I lied, I have a FX-57, not a 59) I still couldn't get aggressive with the memory timers much less run a stable 1:1. The problems got worse with larger sticks (forget 4 x 1GB or 2 x 2GB) so I'm hoping that I'm not going to run into that again with this new rig.

 

[sonnygdude]

1066 might be nice for the headroom, but I think 1000 might be better bang for your buck.. With the 1066 it seems like you're paying 20% more for 5% more performance.

 

[o1die]

I use 2 asrock boards, the p45 ts-r and g43 fullhd. Both run pretty well. They come with ddr2 and ddr3 slots, and overclocking jumpers. The p43 twins 1600 is similar, and only $70 plus shipping at newegg.

 

[jacc1234]

I have had nothing but problems with my ASRock p43 twins1600 and am getting a new board but honestly if you go online you will mostly hear about the problems of various boards. Most people with working hardware do rant about it.

 

[AuroraMike]

If one were to go strictly by reviews on newegg, not a single mobo out is good, they all suck be it reliability, drivers, performance under vista and all sorts of other issues. I'm still thinking of sticking w/ XP not because I'm anti-Vista but because I'm really not sold on DX10 and that would be my selling point. That and I have XP tuned to use under 80MB of RAM after boot. Let's face it, Vista is more memory hungry no matter how you slice it and driver support, while much better these days, is still spotty for certain products (ahem..creative and their great hardware but crappy bloated drivers).

That being said, I really like the layout of some of the P5Q boards and I really like the deluxe. The premium for the 16-phase power honestly isn't worth it, especially since I'll maybe do a 10-12% OC only. The dual raid controllers is nice however and the second 16x slots (yes I know the 2nd is at 8x when in x mode) would be interesting if I ever decided to go dual 4780x2s (provided I don't choose a single NV 280).

Ugh, this is what I get for not paying much attention to things over the past 18 months...

 

[theAnimal]

Originally posted by: AuroraMike
I have a 22" Samsung panel I just picked up so yes, 19x12 will be what I'm playing at.

Samsung 22" LCD = 1680 x 1050