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[LAMBO]

A few questions:

I'm getting an athlon 64. Do i get a 939 or stick with the 754 socket?

Which motherboard chipset should i go for(nvidia or VIA)?

Which graphics card should i get, ATI or nvidia?

Right now i'm just trying to figure out which mobo and vid card will match well. The AV8 looks good if i go VIA, or if i want nforce the MSI board looks good. I don't know anything about what graphics card to get. I want to spend less than $1000 on the mobo, ram, cpu and vid card.

 

[truesayian]

yup help me

 

[ArcadeStickMonk]

I'm done worring about mobos for a some months, but I can recommend the vid card.

Get the 6800 GT. GT all the way.

 

[LAMBO]

Damn that's an expensive vid card

 

[ArcadeStickMonk]

Not as expensive as the 6800 Ultra or the X800 XT

I got mine for about $400 a month ago.

Now that I think about it, I paid $300 for my 9800 Pro before this, and $200 for my GeForce 3 before that.

Disturbing trend.

 

[Biff Hardbody]

I went from using a pentium 1.7/Radeon 9800 to a Athlon 64 3800/6800GT. Its not even comparable. Its what I always dreamed of, something that can run all the games I have without breaking a sweat. I can't recommend either product enough.

Here is a problem I ran into early that you should be aware of when choosing your motherboard/graphics card. I have an asus mb with a via chipset. When I put my radeon in and loaded the radeon drivers, I got graphics errors that made my pc reboot time and time again. I downloaded the new hyperion drivers for via which supposedly fixed it, but it did not. No matter what I did, I got these graphics card errors from the radeon drivers/via chipset conflict. Not until I installed the GT and gave it the nvidia drivers did everything remain stable.

Maybe I just had a bad board, but I heard about this kind of stuff. Although I had great performance with my 9800 while I used it with my old pc, the experience has left me hesitant to use a radeon card as long as I have this via chipset motherboard.

BTW, Toms hardware just released a bunch of new benchmarks on all the cards out there in various games. I recall the 6800 series coming out the best.

 

[LAMBO]

Yes i don't think Via and ATI go well together, i think i'm going with an Athlon 64, a MSI socket 939 mobo, that 6800 is the question mark for me, kind of pricey.

 

[AntoneM]

A few questions:

I'm getting an athlon 64. Do i get a 939 or stick with the 754 socket?

Which motherboard chipset should i go for(nvidia or VIA)?

Which graphics card should i get, ATI or nvidia?

Right now i'm just trying to figure out which mobo and vid card will match well. The AV8 looks good if i go VIA, or if i want nforce the MSI board looks good. I don't know anything about what graphics card to get. I want to spend less than $1000 on the mobo, ram, cpu and vid card.

socket 939 has potentially better performance due to the way it handles RAM. Also if you are the type to upgrade socket 939 wins again. However socket 754 still currently holds it's own and is a very good choice if you're the type of person that waits until their PC is a complete pile of shit and then just gets all brand new stuff (this would be me).

 

[Chony]

http://www.sharkyextreme.com/guides/MVGSBG/article.php/3419571

Nice little guide there, and recent, for PC gamer on a budget.

 

[Culex]

Best 939 board right now is the Athlon 64 3500+. You can pick one up for around 330 dollars right now. Or you can wait for the price drops AMD is instilling later this month.

 

[NohWun]

I'd recommend the 939 over the 754 (for the memory bandwidth).

We just built a couple of systems with Abit AV8's, one with a 6800 and one with a x800
(at work for systems testing).

Both work well without any problems.

 

[LAMBO]

In case you were wondering i'm looking at these:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=19-103-463&depa=1
$340
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-130-468&depa=1
$140

How much ram? I was thinking just 2 512mb dimms from crucial =$200

So that's $680 before shipping. So i could get that 6800 GT but i gotta think about it, i might be able to squeeze by with something less.

 

[Sjoerd]

Best 939 board right now is the Athlon 64 3500+. You can pick one up for around 330 dollars right now. Or you can wait for the price drops AMD is instilling later this month.

I agree, make sure you don't buy a faster processor than the 3500+. Every processor above that one is just a tiny bit faster and costs a lot more. Make sure you get a fast gfx card.

 

[LAMBO]

.

 

[LAMBO]

What's a good budget vid card for Halflife 2(with athlon 64 3500+, 1 gig ram)? Don't think i want to/need to spend $350-400 for a vid card.

 

[teh_pwn]

X700 XT, whenever the AGP version comes out. I don't know when.

But with a 3500+ would not balance well with that video card. Meaning that you're video card would never keep up with your processor in most games.

 

[Blatz]

I'm in the same boat.
But I'm looking at the

Soltek nForce 3 250 Board
A64 3200+
GeForce 6800 GT

As far as lower cost vid cards go, nVidia is releasing a Geforce 6600 soon. It may be for PCI-E though.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2238

http://teknews.net/

 

[LAMBO]

yes the 6600 is PCI-E only for now, i'll probably just say f it and get the 6800GT, that way i won't have to look for another card for a long time. I used to think differently but i guess it's better to buy the $350 card now than a $200 card now and another one in a year or 2.