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Computer Upgrade, Finally.


LostInSpace
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I finally got the hang of it and ordered the upgrade hardware for my rig; here what the next week will bring me:

    [*]ASUS P5LD2 i945P Fsb1066 DDR2Ch SATA Raid PCI-E

    [*]Intel PENTIUM 4 3,4 GHz 650 Socket 775 cache L2 2048KB FSB 800MHz 64bit

    [*]2GB DIMM DDR2 667Mhz

    [*]Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic

    [*]ASUS Nvidia G70 GF7800GTX 256Mb VIVO HD-TV PCI-E

    [*]Western Digital WD2000JS 200GB SATA2 8MB

I hope to be able to to run problem free for a couple of years with this.

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I'm shooting for a system that I can expand/upgrade for (hopefully) three years without a motherboard swapout.

So far, that means my specs are set at:

    [*]SLI-enabled PCI-e motherboard, capable of supporting AMD 64 X2s & 4 GB RAM

    [*]AMD 64-bit ~ 2-2.5 MHz

    [*]1-2 GB RAM

    [*]nVidia 6800 w/ 256 MB

    [*]UCAWA Yeah, I know this isn't hardware but it is a REQUIREMENT ;-)

That might get tweaked a little bit for price purposes, but I figure this gives me two CPU upgrade paths (faster and/or switch to X2 dual-core), a RAM upgrade path (get more), and at least two graphics upgrade paths (buy 2nd 6800 or buy 1 or 2 7800's). Not to mention, all those upgrade paths will be cheaper in a year or two now than today.

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Yeah, I probably should have gone for the dual core also. But I'm sure the prices will be even lower for them in a few months and with my new motherboard, which has been working like a charm with a ton of hours on it already, I don't need to upgrade that along with the CPU. Didn't think I would need the dual core but I've been doing a lot of stuff on this computer lately that it would come in handy.

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My system is expandable too if the need will arise. It will only take one or two pieces to boost performance furter.

I can add SLI, dual core and RAM any moment.

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  • 2 months later...

quote:

Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr:

I've been thinking of getting one of these for the heck of it, but
and the boards, have been a tad nervous.

I read them also before I bought it. I don't know why the ones that are having problems are having the problems. My hardware installation couldn't have been easier. I could see if it was an earlier bios version board but the boards out now have the verson 1.5 or higher. I have bios 1.5. Can't comment on the SATA2 issue since I have just the SATA1 drive.

I see one guy, a few reviews down, gave it two eggs.

quote:

Pros: Loaded with features and sounds very promossing with all the reviews other then below it runs great but a few problems

Cons: doesn't always post boot all the way during windows boot...and doesn't always find the raid/0 drives that i got set up...it worked alright when i first set it up other then the boot problem....the games played well and no problems other then the boot but now my games wont load the visial but i can hear the sounds of the game and hear my mouse go over the menus but didn't load the graphics

Other Thoughts: i know this motherboard sounded way 2 good 2 be true when i bought thie MB, i guess im a little Optimistic next time i'm going 2 buy a name i know and don't go with a small brand....stupid me!

I don't know. Mine boots everytime. I mean everytime real fast too mind you. All I can add is that I'm very very very happy with it. I didn't think I would be because I was an MSI fanboy. But this one really surprised me. If you only knew how many hours I've put on this board already and it's still kicking strong. I bought the artic silver but haven't gotten around to pulling out the cpu and cleaning off the original stuff so I can do a little overclocking so I can't comment yet on the overclocking aspect of the board yet either.

People were also complaining about this particular maxtor SATA hard drive I bought with the ASrock about the noise from it. It's been quiet. In fact too quiet for my tastes. I like to hear something going on so I know it's still going.

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quote:

Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr:

1: Yeah, that too.

2: Anyway, boot problems are usually related to PSU issues. That person having boot up problems may have an underpowered PSU.

1: Hmmm, I've been reading quite a few articles and forums concerning thit Nvidia and ULI issue. At first some didn't seem concerned and this was back in december:

Pure overclock: Though a worrying message for ATI, the takeover date of 2007 should not cause ATI's current chip sourcing strategy any worries, and I doubt Nvidia would be crazy enough to limit supply after 2007 to ATI. Money is money, after all.

But now it seems things are a bit different: Pure Overclock: NVIDA seems to have buried the Voodoo brand after its acquisition of 3DFX and looks set to be doing the same to the ULI brand. At least that's what HEXUS has been told by two of NVIDIA's 'nForce chipset' customers.

We'll have to wait and see. However the concensus is that ATI really hasn't anything to worry about in the long run because of it's SB600 South Bridge shortly.

2: Yeah, I never did give that a thought. It's hard to tell what these guys have in terms of hardware and one would assume they would be properly powered. I looked at the overal review score for this board and it far out weighed the bad. So, I came to two conclusions about the bad reviews:

1 - They just happened to get a bad board

2 - They just don't know what the heck they are doing

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quote:

Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr:

I don't see why nVida wants the ULi chipset when they have their own nForce which does just fine. So, I wouldn't be surprised if their intent is to in fact bury the brand and cause ATI problems.

I'v read a few good reasons why'd they want the company and that a zing to ATI is just icing on the cake. Don't know concretely about the killing off ULI but if past moves are any indication they could just very well do that. Silly when companies do that just to spite the competition. In the end, they are only hurting the consumer.

They need to tread lightly though when they do this because I'm seeing more and more anti-Nvidia attitudes cropping up. Seems to be spreading too.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I ended up doing a temporary upgrade myself:

Biostar TForce4 U

AMD Athlon 64 3200+

2G Mushking DRAM

(Got a pretty good deal all for c. $200)

Replaces my old 1G T-Bird w/256M DRAM(PC133 )

And I can say a few things, runs much faster, MUCH cooler(max temp I've seen from hw monitors are 35C which is around what the T-Bird IDLED at! Usual idle temp is around 27C which is also a few degrees above the ambient room temp so far this summer.)

I've also got to figure out what to do about a GPU & PSU as I'm back to using my cheezy Geforce 6200 AGP in the XGP slot for now, and my old Antec 350W PSU. The good thing about these 2 items is that they will end up in a new machine, so I was to go at least mid-range on the GPU and 550-650W on the PSU, in case I end up going SLI. (I really wish that they'd do dual cores on the GPUs, although the 7950X2 might work, but too expensive ATM, and I am leaning towards ATI cards as well...)

But, all good things aren't meant to last as I am thinking about buying an Intel 975 board and a Conroe, and memory again(grr!) but I'll probably hold off and see how things shake out with the K8L and Intel prices stabilize, plus hopefully some non-Intel mbs.

ULI: I'm not sure why nVidia bought them either, unlless they not only wanted to trouble ATI, but also make sure that AGP is dead. (ULI was the only chipset used for the only board that I know of that supported both AGP & PCIe completely, the Asrock board mentioned in this thread.)

The new Radeon chipset that support the AM2 socket seem to be holding pretty close the new nForce 500 series chipset based boards though. They also, obviously, perform much better than their two earlier(AMD) attempts.

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  • 7 months later...

Another update. Everything is still going quite well with this rig however the memory stick hasn't kept its part of the bargain. About two months ago I started getting random BSODs in XP. Thought nothhing of it at first then started thinking something got messed up with XP install. It seemed to only do it when I went to certain sites that had some flash content. Not all sites either which was kind of odd. So, last night I broke down and reinstalled the XP after low level formating the hard drive. After all that it still was doing it with nothing else installed. So I redid the whole process all over again this time taking out all the cards except for the video. Nope, was still doing it. Found out about this free memory test program memtest86+ (latest version 1.70) and ran that. Didn't give the full time for the test this morning but after 30 minutes I already had 965 errors. Now I have to contact PQI since it did come with a lifetime warranty. Just thought I'd let you all know.

Also, I've had no problems playing the games either in the past two months. Very strange that.

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i just bought rainbow six vegas and my pc can't play it, boy was I shocked. I know its 2 years old, and the video card 2 and a half, but everything has worked with my x800xt

just some stupid new technology piece that it doesn't support, some floating point thing, in the requirements tool with the game its marked red.

2 gb ram recommended, 3.5 ghz speed, only FPS games do this crap to me, bleeding edge graphics, but way behind in gameplay.

im wondering if to get a cheap x1600 card, put another year into this system, or go for a new one, i didnt want a new one till dual core settled etc...

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