Please be kind (help w/ system specs)

[Leonard]

Hello,

I've been lurking in these forums since the beginning, and now I come to you for help with system specs. I know these threads pop up a lot, but since everyone mixes and matches hardware it is hard to research the things that will work properly together.

Please be kind!

I'm looking at about $2000 to spend here, this is what I have found so far (I am trying to get as much as I can off of one site to save on shipping):

Motherboard
The Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-SLI nForce 4 SLI looks appealing to me, even though, as you will see further down, I am going with an ATI video card. I'm tired of waiting for ATI's AMR to come out, so I will stick with one ATI card. If anyone knows of any other boards with the same specs, minus the SLI please let me know.

Processor
I am considering the AMD Athlon 64 3800+ it has the 130 nm core, but I am not interested in overclocking. If I ever had to, how much of a speed increase could you get with the 90nm over the 130nm?

Cooler
I have heard good things about Zalman coolers and the Arctic Cooling brand from others on this site. If you have any suggestions to give, please do.

RAM
I amm looking at the PC-3200 Corsair w/LED Display because as far as I can tell it is the fastest ram available (sans DDR2) to work with AMD XP64 processors. I will take any comments you might have.

Video Card
I have been looking at theRadeon X800 XL or the Radeon X850 XT

The X850 is $100 more and I heard that there is not a visual performance increase from the X800 XL. What do you guys think about this?

Hard Drive
The Western Digital Raptor, 10,000 RPM was recommended somwhere else on this site. I do recall that my 60 GB hard drive is getting rather small, and I don't know if I have the money for two of these straight away.

Also, I have heard about SATA-300, which my motherboard should support, has already come out. Will I need a special hard drive to take advantage of this? Will the 10,000 RPM drive equal a SATA drive? I'm a newb when it comes to hard drives.

Case
The Antec Sonata Piano Black Quiet Mid Tower 380Watt ATX12V seems to be a decent case. I'm going for quietness over cooling in a case, and Antec has not failed me yet. Will 380W be enough for the rest of my hardware?

Monitor
This one is very iffy. I have a CRT monitor at home, but now that I'm at college the 19" CRT WILL not fit in my dorm room. Period.

The ViewSonic VP171B-2 17" LCD Monitor, 8ms seems to be decent with games, especially with an 8ms response time. It also has DVI, which I have always wanted to try out.

I have found in reviews on other sites that the response time on this monitor is actually 16ms, while viewsonic.com maintains that it is 8ms. I'm not sure what to believe here. Do any of you play HL2/CS:S on LCD displays, and if so how is the quality.

I have a DVD Player, Sound Card, TV Card and Floppy Drive that I will be transferring over from my old computer.

If you have made it this far, I thank you. I have tried to do all the work for you and made this as easy to read as I can. Please share your thoughts with me!

 

[blahblahblah]

Okay, my hardware knowledge is a tad bit dated (especially on motherboards and the most recent releases of video cards). However, couple of suggestions.

1) If you aren't overclocking, stock heatsink fan combo will be fine

2) You are paying extra money for those LEDs on your RAM. You can save a fair bit of money by buying the same exact RAM without the LEDs.

3) SATA-300 is the next jump in the SATA specification and will use some nifty new features. If you are tight on money, I would suggest just a general 7200 SATA drive with a nice capacity. I say that because I'm not sure when the new SATA drives are coming out and they may not natively support the cooler features of the next specification of SATA. Though I will say I love Western Digital hard drives.

4) Excellent case, your powersupply should be more than enough for your computer. I've heard a lot of positive things about it.

5) Monitors. I've had several iffy experiences with viewsonic monitors now (granted they were CRT). This has made me not recommend them to anyone. Additionally 8ms LCD monitors still have not cleared up the ghosting problems that continue to haunt LCDs. In fact, like you have pointed, a given ms time is not going to accuratly reflect if it will be good for gaming. Ideally, you need to experience the monitor in person and get a feel for it (experiencing the monitor in a store is a bad ideal as well because the splice the signal image usually).

 

[Leonard]

Thanks for the info Blah!

I think I'll wait on the monitor.

 

[firemachine69]

NF4 Ultra = NF4 SLI - SLI

 

[WaryWolf]

about the processor: most of the 90nm cores can reach 2.5-2.7 ghz easily, but the 3800+ already comes at 2.4 ghz. i'd just stick with the 3800 if you don't know your way around computers, you might be able to overclock a little but you're guaranteed a higher speed anyway.

also, i'm not sure if you want to go with gigabyte for motherboards, i've heard some bad stories there. look at asus or abit, or even DFI Lanparty's new nf4 boards if you're interested in an alternative.

 

[Leonard]

Well, I ordered everything and I should be getting it all before Spring Break!

I ended up going with the AMX XP64 3500+ 90nm because the price to performance ratio seems to be better than the 3800+. I got the Zalman heatsink and fan to go with it.

Thanks wolf for the reply!

I was a bit weary of the Gigabyte motherboard at first, but it seemed to do well in reviews... I guess I'm taking a chance on that one. Right now I have an old kt333 Soyo Dragon board which has been dependable for me. I would have gotten a newer version but I couldn't find any of them with even a 939 socket.

Thanks for the help guys, hopefully it will all work when it gets here!