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| Building t3h c0mp |
| Gallstaff - Jul 5, 2003 |
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IceDigger | Jul 6, 2003 | ||
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:agree Also what brand/model motherboard is it? The motherboard is one of the most important peices you can buy. | ||||
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gameboy900 | Jul 6, 2003 | ||
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Honestly I would scrap the SB Live and the mobo and get the ASUS A7N8X deluxe mobo. It will do all the stuff you want and is currently the best board you can get for an athlon system. It may be a few extra dollars but it's WELL worth it trust me. Also I would recommend going with pc3200 ram. It shouldn't be more than a few dollars more and will give you room to breathe and possible overclocking if you want it. As for the video card read this... first. Now from the benchmarks there it looks like the Radeon 9500Pro is only 1 or 2 fps faster than the geforce you want BUT there is a VERY simple way of modifying the 9500pro so that in essence it becomes a full blown 9700 (not the pro). This alone give you an average 15-20 fps more and blows the card you want out of the water. Now that the new 9800 series are out finding a cheap 9500pro should be very easy. I will also STRONGLY agree with Ex on the powersupply. NEVER NEVER NEVER get some no name brand power supply. They cause more problems then they're worth and these problems are hard as fuck to track down. Go for a certified one if you can (ie. certified for athlon systems). | ||||
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antime | Jul 6, 2003 | ||
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AFAIK, the Radeon 9500 Pro was never moddable. Early 9500 cards, built using 9700 boards could be modded but they are now off the market. Additionally some of the GPUs used in the 9500 np (non-pro) cards don't have eight fully-working pixel pipelines leading to ugly artifacts. Anyway, the 9500 cards have been discontinued by ATi in favour of the 9600 so it might be able to pick one up cheaply. I do agree with dropping the SBLive. Creative have never built a quality product during their whole existence. | ||||
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Gallstaff | Jul 6, 2003 | ||
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really but then what am I gonna do for 5.1 support? Ice what mobo do you reccomend to house all that? And I will get you the power supply hold on just gotta find it then i'll edit my post. EDIT: I found out that the power supply I wanted wouldn't work with a 2400+ so I found this one. http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?...prope... What do you guys think? | ||||
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ExCyber | Jul 6, 2003 | |||||||||
Good catch; I forgot about the SB after seeing the $40 "420-watt" PSU, and really any opportunity to remove Creative Labs drivers from a system should probably be pounced on. :devil
It's integrated... on the mainboard gb mentioned. Yeah, the rule of thumb has traditionally been to stay away from integrated hardware, but NForce2 has some serious sound hardware (or at least as serious as sound hardware gets without spending $300+ on an amateur studio recording card plus more for a separate synthesis card).
A 420-watt PSU that wouldn't work with a 2400+? It probably wasn't worth running with anything else then. I strongly suggest taking a look at Antec, Thermaltake, and Vantec supplies. | |||||||||||
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Gallstaff | Jul 6, 2003 | ||
| what about the one i showed you | ||||
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ExCyber | Jul 6, 2003 | ||
| The link's broken. | ||||
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Gallstaff | Jul 6, 2003 | ||
| http://www.thermaltake.com/products/purepo...ower/... that's a different link to the same product | ||||
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ExCyber | Jul 6, 2003 | ||
| Looks good to me. | ||||
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Gallstaff | Jul 6, 2003 | ||
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Good... Can u give me a link to that motherboard you were talking about I dont really know what makes a good mobo. | ||||
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ExCyber | Jul 6, 2003 | ||
| The mainboard gb900 was talking about is this one.... Newegg sells it for $131, or the standard (non-Deluxe) version for $117. The extra $14 buys you Serial ATA, a second Ethernet interface, Firewire, and some bundled software. | ||||
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MasterAkumaMatata | Jul 6, 2003 | |||
I have the W0011 model: the silver... one. It was US $2 cheaper than the black one at newegg....  | |||||
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IceDigger | Jul 6, 2003 | ||
| It all depends on how much you can spend for a motherboard. | ||||
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Alexvrb | Jul 8, 2003 | ||
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Fortran also makes excellent but affordable power supplies. You can get those on Newegg as well, I recently purchased a 350 watt model, that has a peak above 400 watts. As for nForce 2 onboard sound, remember that very few nForce 2-based boards actually use the Nvidia APU. Most of them opted (stupidely) for a much crappier, slower chip that is what they use in all their other boards. The difference in performance is actually very large, more than most people realize. Anyway, the Asus board he mentioned DOES have the Nvidia APU, but only that model. The non-Deluxe versions use crappy cheap onboard. | ||||
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mal | Jul 8, 2003 | |||
Just out of interest, what sort sound cards would you recommend if Creative ones (or at least their drivers) are so bad? | |||||
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IceDigger | Jul 8, 2003 | ||
| Turtle beach santa cruz is a VERY good card and it's not that expensive. Also the hercules fortisimo 3. Very good cards that I think are better then the sblives. | ||||
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Alexvrb | Jul 8, 2003 | ||
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I use a Fortissimo II. It's very similar, but the Fortissimo III supports 7.1 sound. If only I had a place for all the speakers, hah. Seriously, I'd really like such a setup, but I'd need room for speaker stands! Anyway, I like the drivers a whole ton better than Creative, their web site is better too. However, if you do opt for the A7N8X Deluxe version, just use the onboard Nvidia Soundstorm APU. It's an excellent performer. So even though the board costs $131 as Ex said, you'd get superior audio to a SB Live!, so really the board doesn't cost all that much. | ||||
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gameboy900 | Jul 8, 2003 | ||
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Just so you know the Asus a7n8x deluxe board has so many ports and connections on it it's fucking ridiculous. For the audio you have analog 5.1 connections, line in, mic. In digital mode it comes with a connector you can use to let you output and INPUT digital signals over coax or fiber. Additionally a really nice feature (especially for the digital output) is that the sound chip can ENCODE dolby digital (that's the 5.1 stuff) on the fly. So any sounds (games, movies, music) will be fully 5.1 encoded. Other ports are 2 10/100 ethernet, 2 firewire, 6 USB 2.0 and the usual assortment of paraller, serial (2 of em) mouse and keyboard ports. Internally it's also one of the first boards to have serialATA (the new hard drive connection standard), regular EIDE connections and all the other goodies you're used to. The board layout is very nice, the only problem I have is the placement of the analog CD audio plugs between two pci slots. Nothing major. Seriously if you are even remotely considering getting an athlon based system you MUST get this board. (Little hint: make sure you get the newer revision 2.0 board). | ||||
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