AM2 Build for Review

fruscai

fruscai

New Member
I'm upgrading from my 7 year old dinosaur of a computer this summer, and I've finally worked everything out. I have a budget of $1600, and thats pushing it, and I've decided to go AM2 as its the clearly future oriented choice at the moment (K8L quad core next year!). Anyway, tell me what you think, give me advice, whatever, just review my setup, thnx ^^

AM2 Build

Newegg

NZXT LEXA-NP Black/Silver Aluminum Construction Plastic Front Panel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
- $129.99

ASUS M2N-E Socket AM2 NVIDIA nForce 570 Ultra MCP ATX AMD Motherboard
- $94.99

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Windsor 2000MHz HT Socket AM2
- $358.99

SAPPHIRE 100134SR Radeon X1800XT 512MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card
- $319.00

Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic 7.1 Channels PCI Interface Sound Card
- $109.99

OCZ Gold 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory
- $201.99

Maxtor MaxLine III 7V250F0 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
- $94.99

Pioneer 16X DVD±R DVD Burner With 5X DVD-RAM Read Black ATAPI
- $37.99

ASUS Black ATAPI/E-IDE DVD-ROM Drive with DVD-RAM Read support
- $26.99

VANTEC NXP-205-BK Black Fan Controller Panel
- $19.99

SAMSUNG Black 1.44MB 3.5" Internal Floppy Drive Windows 98SE/ ME/ 2000/ XP OEM
- $7.99

ZALMAN CNPS9500 LED 92mm 2 Ball Blue LED Light Cooling Fan with Heatsink
- $58.99

ARCTIC COOLING Accelero X2 Fluid Dynamic Bearing VGA Cooling Fan with Heatsink
- $22.99

XCLIO X14S4P3 500W ATX 500W Power Supply
- $94.99

ARCTIC COOLING MX-1 Thermal Compound
- $5.99

Total: $1585.86

do i really need that sound card? I'm not planning to get speakers, just some nice high fidelity headphones (probably the beyerdynamic DT 880's) and a mini amp to run them through, so I'm not sure if the $110 is worthit.
 
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wait for the new conroe core cpu's to come out for a huge price drop on X2 core cpu's (about 50% on july 24th).
 
im not in the states at that point, i live in south africa, and im only going to be in the states this summer from the 26th of june to the 17th of july
 
conroe comes out aroun july 27th. your best bet would be to wait for conroe, but there is no places that will ship to africa? if you cant and must get it, then amd is good, but pentium d is also good, and very cheap. and ddr 800 is a waste of money. there is not much, if any, gain over ddr 667 or the next speed from that. i heard of a case where it performed worse. for $319, you can get a 7900GT.are you playing any games? if not, or non intensive, you can get a 7600GS or GT and cut about 150 from that price
 
i'm definetly looking to play games (new stuff along the lines of fear, CS, BF2, UT and upcoming games) and also be able to multitask well. I'm looking to overclock, which is the reason for the ddr800 which will become much more effective when quad-core amd comes out (from what i've been reading, the K8L series wil utilize ddr 800 ram to the max). And unfortunately, shipping to africa is a definite no; if it doesnt get broken then it will definetly get stolen.

About the GPU, i've wondered if you could explain to me, what is the difference in performance from memory size to pixel pipelines? I was very confused about that. The x1800xt seemed like an amazing deal because of the 512mb memory size, while the 7900 gt has half that at 256mb. But the 7900 has 24 pixel pipelines compared with the 16 of the x1800xt. What is the difference exactly, how will these values realistically affect my pc?
 
And getting faster RAM then the mobo supports isn't necessarily stupid, cause you can run it at better latencies even though it's working at slower clock speeds.
 
Isn't it true right now though that the am2 runs slower then the regualar pc3200 ram? That amd needs to fix some of it's problems?
 
well that was one of the problems originally, cuz the ram had such crap latencies and timings, but with nicer ddr2 ram out am2 is in position to really take advantage of the new era of sdram, as well, ddr2 is insane for overclockability
 
DDR2 800 is the AM2 standard, from what I know.

That setup looks nice to me. Are you going to be buying while your in the USA? (just wondering because newegg only ships in the USA).
 
34erd said:
DDR2 800 is the AM2 standard, from what I know.

That setup looks nice to me. Are you going to be buying while your in the USA? (just wondering because newegg only ships in the USA).
Click to expand...

ya, i have from the 1st of july to the 17th, great timing, i wish i could wate for conroe, then i could get a better cpu for much cheaper, oh well

Decadence said:
I've always wanted to visit South Africa to go hunting. Were you born there?
Click to expand...

No, I was born in Algeria, the capital actually, but i lived in VA for the past eight years, I've only been here sophmore and junior year of highschool, and i hate the country. I've been mugged at gun point, jumped, etc etc etc, its a piece of s**t country i cant wate to go to europe or the states for uni
 
34erd said:
DDR2 800 is the AM2 standard, from what I know.

That setup looks nice to me. Are you going to be buying while your in the USA? (just wondering because newegg only ships in the USA).
Click to expand...

there are also a few DDR2 667 standard boards
 
fruscai said:
No, I was born in Algeria, the capital actually, but i lived in VA for the past eight years, I've only been here sophmore and junior year of highschool, and i hate the country. I've been mugged at gun point, jumped, etc etc etc, its a piece of s**t country i cant wate to go to europe or the states for uni
Click to expand...
I'm sorry to hear that. Is it a primarily English speaking country? and what city are you living in? My grandpa actually recently got mugged at gunpoint in Carracas, Venezuela. Not sure why i said that. Just throwin that out there haha
 
yea decadence ur kind of a random dude with the whole "lets go hunting in South Africa deal" but i guess, it isnt harming anybody, so keep on keepin' on.
 
sorry to hear about your grandpa decadence, and ya its mostly english speaking. you should hear the accents on some of these people though, jesus, neway...i had a question but i forgot what it was...oh and i switched the x1800xt to an evga 7900GT and got a zalman cooler to go with it so i can overclock the hell out of it
 
ReturnToEmpire said:
yea decadence ur kind of a random dude with the whole "lets go hunting in South Africa deal" but i guess, it isnt harming anybody, so keep on keepin' on.
Click to expand...
thanks man...
 
so i changed the ram to OCZ platinum ddr2 800 2 x 1G and the GPU to 7900 EVGA GT, any other suggestions or advice, will my system run sweet?
 
alright peoples, im in the states now, vienna va to be exact, and im ordering as soon as all the parts are available, so any last minute comments?
 
it'll be great. me and my friend did a test (can't remember what..something in windows..) to test ram speeds, and mine came out higher. his is 939 so pc3200. also, his computer is better overall (x2 4200+, 2gb ram, 7900gt, etc)

:D
 
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