Well, it’s that time of year again. New gaming computer time. I want to build a high end Athlon gaming machine. I’ve only ever built pentium computers and am kinda out of touch with the Athlon chipsets. Any suggestions? Thx in advance.
P.S. I’ve already decided on dual sata 10krpm 75gb raid 0 drives, an x800, and a soundblaster cough 16…
Chipset-wise, the nVidia nForce3 250 is probably your best bet. The chipset world has changed rapidly in the past few years; VIA is no longer the only choice for gamers, and they’ve actually lost the top spot to nVidia, imho. Lose the Soundblaster, also–the built-in sound in any motherboard is better than the 16, and the nForce boards have sound chips that are nearly as good as a mid-range modern add-in soundcard.
Are you sure you want those 10k rpm hard drives though? The speed difference over 7200 is not that much, and they probably sound like jet engines. And if one of them dies, you’ll lose all your data… I’d stay away from RAID 0.
Have you bought the video card yet? Right now, PCI-Express is beginning to replace the PCI/AGP bus system. If you can wait a month or so, an Nforce 4 motherboards, with PCI-E support will be available. I think Via’s PCI-E motherboards are starting to ship right now, and they are pretty good too. If you have bought the card, and it is AGP, there won’t be a speed hit, but then I would suggest going with the nForce 3 250 Gb chipset as well. It has a built in hardware firewall, if you use the onboard net-port, that works quite nicely.
There isn’t too much performance differences between various Athlon 64 chipsets; this is because the Athlon 64 has the memory controller integrated directly into the proccessor, rather than on the northbridge chip on the motherboard. This is one of the reason’s why Athlon 64’s are so fast, especially at gaming, though it does come at the cost of reduced flexibility for RAM types.
As for the motherboard manufactorer, I have had very good luck with both Abit & Asus.
I agree, that the onboard sound on current motherboards is at least as good as a Soundblaster 16 - the onboard on my Asus K8N sound perfectly fine to me.
The x800, IRRC comes in both AGP & PCI-E varieties, so that won’t be problem. Also, what flavour of x800 are you going with (Pro, regular, XT, ect)? I would also suggest taking a look at the Geforce 6600 GT’s performance - it is pretty good for a $200 card.
One last note - AMD is switching from a 130nm manufacturing process to a 90nm one right now; unlike Intel’s Prescott & Northwood core P4’s, their 90 nm versions of the Athlon 64 use less power than the 130 nm version, and are noted to be good overclockers.
I already have an AGP x800 Pro. Fortunately, I paid the 30 bucks for a replacement/upgrade plan from CompUsa. So I can bring it in and exchange it for a higher price card (the PCI-E) provided I pay the difference.
I want raid 0 10k disks for the uber fast disk writing/seeking. I play EQ2 atm and it’s a tremendous resource hog. There is the potential for disaster when using Raid 0, but I should be backing up my drives like every good boy should be doing anyways.
Heh, I’m mentioned in a thread title! And not just a PIT thread title, either! I’m honored…
Actually, I just know where to find advice. A lot of my suggestions for building a computer rig come from www.anandtech.com . They have excellent builder’s guides for Do-It-Yourselfers. In fact, Anandtech just published their Gaming System Buyer’s Guide, which goes through several different system setups for various levels of budget.
How high-end is high-end? You can either get, say, an A64 3700+ for $460, or an A64 FX-55 (pretty much the King Processor for gaming rigs) for just shy of $900.
As for the motherboard, Anandtech recommends the MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum a lot, though the Asus A8V has gotten some good reviews, as well as the Abit AV8. Both companies have other boards (like ones that use the aforementioned nForce 3 250 chipset) that you can take a look at, too.
As for RAM, the Anandtech link cites several good RAM selections. Look for Kingston, Corsair, OCZ, Crucial, or Mushkin brands (there are more RAM manufacturers than you think, those are certainly a minority!).
I understand the desire to move from the Pentium platform to Athlon. I was a big shill for the Pentium 4-C chips, but the recent Prescotts really fell short, I feel.
Oh, shitespunky, I really moiderized that coding. I meant to say that the Asus A8V has gotten some good reviews, as well as the Abit AV8.
Oh, and another site for good hardware info is www.hardocp.com .
Appreciate the help alls. I am looking into the links Spoofe, thanks.
By High end, I mean, price is of little significance. I want SPEED. I’m not concerned about running apps, just games at max resolution with all options on kinda thing. I was looking at Alienware ALX machines, but decided against it. I like building my own computers.
There are great things coming up and am a little concerned with upgrading at a later date. Specifically Nvidia’s SLI technology. SLI want me to drop my pants and touch myself. But all the articles I read made no mention of it being avaiable for ATI or even if ATI is going to come up with their own bridges for using 2 x800s. Regardless, I probably will be overclocking this badboy. Any recommendations for a good heatsink/fan? What do you guys use? I am a little timid of a water-cooled systems (water…inside my computer?!) but it’s not outside the realm of possibility.
The AMD website also has motherboard and memory recommendations.
If speed is really your top concern, and noise, power consumption, and waste heat are all secondary issues, consider adding a water-cooled radiator to your setup, or even a small air conditioner. Also consider adding ducting, PVC pipe, or dryer hose to bring your cool external air straight to your heat sink fan’s intake. A dirt cheap air conditioner will be noisy as all hell, but will blow frosty cool air right onto your CPU. Putting it in your window and designing a simple ducting system is probably a good idea, since otherwise all of the waste heat (and some more, courtesy of the laws of Thermodynamics) is just going right back into your room. As a side bonus, the air conditioner’s blower fan will probably be adequate for getting air into your case – all you have to do is balance it with a few fans to get the “hot” air out of your case. At that point, a big, fanless copper flower style sink should be just fine. A dryer sheet somewhere in your vent system would remove large particulate that made it through the A/C, and also make the air in your case smell spring-time fresh.
I’m mostly kidding, but at the same time I can see this system really staying quite cool… YMMV.
If price is little concern then look into the nForce 4 SLI chipset motherboards.