whats the best RAM/board/cpu ?

[drednox]

i will be putting together a new system next weekend and i am still undecided on what to get.

it will definetly be intel 3.06 gig or AMD 3000+, not sure which board or ram to go with eitehr of them. i am not into overclocking, i like my systems to be stock and headache free. i really like compatibility and stability.

system will also have audigy2 sound card, radeon 9800 pro when it comes out.

so far i have been leaning towards MSI boards, simply because i used to be a total asus / aopen fanboy, and frankly put i have had some problems with those. then my last time the vendor i went to ran out of asus'es, so i bought an MSI just to give it a try. amazingly, i have found it to be a blessing in disguise as it turned out to be far more stable and compatible with everything then the asus aopen boards i used to use. so i will most likely stay with MSI brand. now what i cant decide is which board/chipset to go with.

granite bay or 850 for the intel or via or nforce2 for the AMD ? hell i still dont know if i will go with AMD or intel for that matter. so i have some questions. and i still dont know which ram to go with as well, corsair or crucial ? to my knowledge corsair is far best performer if you dont overclock, but it can be hard to install and get up and runing. any tips, tricks advice should i know ? crucial on the otehr hand is most flexible but not that great speedwise.

then there is a whole lotta stuff i dont understand about ram, and dont know if i should or should not get. for example what is ECC how does it work, do i need it ? what is parity how does that work, do i need it ? why ?

last but not least, since i will be using an ATI video card, and since nvidia is their major competitor, will my 9800 pro work flawlessly with a nforce 2 based board ? or will it have glitches and is there something more suitable for me to try ?


so here is what i have been thinking:

http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/mbd/pro_mbd_detail.php?UID=421&MODEL=MS-6711 this board if i go with intel based system. with 2 gigs of ram, which ram is best suited for this board ? the one thing that stands out here is that the 8x AGP does not support 3.3v . what will the voltage be on the 9800 pro vid card ? will it work ?

then here http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/mbd/pro_mbd_list.php?kind=1&CHIP=4&NAME=Socket A are 2 nforce2 boards and 2 KT400 boards, i think the nforce boards look a little better then the KT400 ones, but those still look good. likewise, which is best RAM and what type of ram for them ? ECC, parity, etc. what should i get ?


i will also be buying a new monitor. looking forward to obtaining around a 19" TFT display. some of them i have seen are kinda weird and seem to leave "trails" when gaming as best as i could describe it. what are the best , most stable and reliable TFT monitors for playing games ? prolly something with ultra high rez and refresh rates i would think, so it wouldnt ever choke when runing on a lower setting.



any info or advice appreciated, thanks.

 

[DannyBoy]

Welcome to the forums for a start !

AMD Wise:
The nForce 2 mobos are highly rated, due to the incredible reliability and speed they perform at, and im not sure of many people who dont choose them for upgrading or new builds these days.

CPU Wise for AMD, nothing beats an Athlon XP T-Bred B revision. They are highly overclockable and run cooler then their pre-decessors (The T-Bred A's and palamino's).
Also keep an eye out for the new Barton Athlon XP's, these are basically AXP T-Bred B's with double the L2 cache

RAM Wise, im fond of Samsung myself, but i dont know much information about ram quality etc, so therefore ill leave that to someone more advanced for you

Dan

 

[DX2Player]

Id go with an Intel since your aiming at the high end and AMD looses its price performance advantage there. I would recomend either the Intel 850E or SiS 655 chipsets. Good motherboards with those chipset include Asus P4T533-C (Intel 850E), Asus P4T533* (Intel i850E), Gigabyte GA-8SQ800 (SiS 655), Asus P4SDX Deluxe (SiS 655). All about equal in speed (just about fastest things avalible). If you want the cheapest but still fast the stripped down GA-8SQ800 is about $110. Both of these chipsets outperform Granite Bay, but it would come in third. But rest is really up to you, read around to make ultimate choice but hope this helps lead you in the right direction.

Sory I just read your blurb about not wanting Asus board, ill keep it there anyways incase you change mind. MSI also makes a SiS 655 board which is superfast the MSI 655 Max (SiS 655) and you can read an Anandtech review of it here if you havent already.

*Indicates best used by the slightly more adventerous since its uses the less widly used 32bit RDRAM (RIMM4200) vs the traditional 16bit PC1066, although is bit faster than 16bit. Its what I use

As for ram I would also say Samsung, very reliable, high quality, and good price. Corsair and Crucial are also very good but if you dont plan to overclock there is no reason to pay a premium for them. Never herd about one being easier to instal than another you basically just pop it in.

And welcome to Anandtech

You dont need ECC ram, if you have any specific questions about ram Ill and see if I can help.
If you get the Nforce2 board an ATI graphics card wont bother it at all.
Audigy2 card is great choice, Got mine a few weeks ago and paired with a Klipsch 4.1 system I can get my pad juming.

Also what will you be doing with this system 2 gigs or ram is major overkill for 99.9% of people.

 

[Markfw]

I just returned a MSI nforce2 board. It wouldn't work well at all. I got an ASUS A7N8X deluxe, and I am VERY happy with it. I got a Radeon 9700, and they work wonderful together. I got a XP2700 OC'ed to XP3000 levels without even trying (182x13) Thats my vote.

 

[human2k]

Those with the new VID C1's on here are achieving very good overclocks, 3.2GHZ+. I hear outpost.com(fry's online store) is selling them. Worth to check out.

 

[DX2Player]

My 2.53 can oc to 3GHz too without trying and thats with a RDRAM, but since hes not gonna oc at all i dont think he cares. He obvioulsy has a bunch of cash so for the fastest avalible chip on the market at stock speed intel wins (actually XP 3000 costs more and doesnt even perform as well in general). The P4 3.06 will beat the AMD 3000 in 2/3 of applications. I have never had an MSI board but I believe that the quality of a board varies more between individual models than by company as long as the company is reputable.

 

[drednox]

ok, cool, thanks for the reply.

the reason why i would choose granite bay over 850 for intel is that i havent seen any of the 850 based boards with 8x AGP and they support mostly only up to 2 gigs of ram.

i'm geting my system together for several uses.

1. play MMO games, the upcoming ones such as planetside and SWG, which will have HUGE reqs to run with all options on etc. as we all know. SWG has already stated that the engine will be upgraded and adapted for the brand new upcoming technologies relatively soon, so hopefully I will be able to get an extra edge out of that

2. I want the board and system to have some room for upgrade, in about year and a half for example, I wont have to buy a whole new system, but maybe just max out RAM and new vid card and get some more life out of it.

3. I will be using some cad/cam applications, specifically CNC machining stuff. The added relaibility, memory, security are an issue for me that also counts, although not as much as top gaming performance.


As far as corsair RAM being unfriendly to overclocking and some boards, I have actually read that somewhere either on this site, or Toms Hardware, or some other reputable Hardware site (I ignore the questionable ones). I do not have a link however and forgot teh name of article. But basically it was ram comparisons, benchmarks etc. and the conclusion came out as crucial was best for highly overclocked systems, whereas corsair was best for stock systems and it had some sort of voltage limitation or something that didnt make it usable with overclocking and in fact they couldnt even get their test systems started up while overclocking with corsair.

Another good RAM which I saw on it was OCZ (or OZC, forgot spelling), it basically came out at the upper edge in almost every category and didnt have any weak scores, so was very nicely rounded up to everything. Didnt see Samsung on it though.


So I dont need ECC ? Which RAM should I get for the boards I'm looking at ? Dual DDR PC2001 Dimms (or is that supposed to be 2100 and they wrote it wrong on their site) ? I gotta make sure I get it right.

Also, when I look at these boards here http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/mbd/pro_mbd_list.php some of them say "HT READY". What is HT ?

Also wanted to ask more about the SiS chipsets, specifically 655 and peoples experiences with them. When Via 1st came out way back when I bougth one of their boards and it was plagued with problems, especially the AGP slot on it and I dont care to repeat the experience of that along with the headaches, frustratons and problems it caused. I preferr things which are on or near the top and are proven to work well so I'm looking for input on the SiS.


BTW would anyone have any info, scheduled release dates for the Radeon 9800 Pro cards ?


Thanks.

 

[DX2Player]

HT is hyper-threading and you will want to get it. The Intel 3.06 is the first chip to have HT enabled and it allows the cpu to work more effeciently by tackling 2 strings of info at the same time. More info about it here.

For some user feedback of the MSI you can read them here under read reviews.

Actually if I were you I would hold off till april when Intel releases Caterwood with 800MHz FSB instead of the current 533MHz fsb. Also would be goot to wait till them because the ATI 9800 Pro should be avalible by then. So if you want the best of the best hold off for another couple weeks youll be glad you did. I wouldnt buy anymobo or chip right now.

BTW: If your gonna get DDR ram get DDR 400 (PC3200)

 

[Gage8]

my ASUS A7N8X deluxe is VERY reliable. I would highly recommend it. Especially with the Corsair memory that works really well with the dual channel Nforce 2.

I'm happy as a clam

 

[Research]

I you want all reliability, stability, brand name and support then you can go all intel with a P4 and the BT2 mobo. RAM: Kingston HyperX 512MB DDR333 PC2700/PC3000 seems to be pretty hot these days.

 

[drednox]

heh, so i'm still unclear which RAM to look for. hehe, i got about 4 hoours til i go shopping and need to know, should i get the PC 3200 or PC 3000 or PC 2700, whats the best RAM the MSI 7205 chipset based boards support ?

i have read the links you guys posted, very helpful and cleared things up for me when it comes to the SiS chipset and the nforce 2 boards got all my questions answered. but i'm still somewhat hazy when it comes to Granite Bay.