Recommended Manufacturers

[Mavol]

Originally posted by Smurfette@17 October 2003 - 19:31
Reputation unfortunately does not guarantee performance.

just what i was thinking

[InverseKinetix]

Originally posted by Mavol@17 October 2003 - 04:59
now if you had to suggest a good mainboard for a computer and is cheap which type would you chose? not like the manufactures name but a type.

I have a intel serverboard which was a bit pricey,

I also have this too which has never given me any probs and their update site is pretty good too http://www.msi.com.tw/

[Mavol]

thx InverseKinetix, ive heard about msi. good to know that their boards are good.

[Smurfette]

Originally posted by Mavol@30 October 2003 - 11:16
thx InverseKinetix, ive heard about msi. good to know that there boards are good.

You can get very decent nVidia nForce2 boards for a decent price now - I've got Soltek's SL-75FRN2-L (it's a cracker) and Komplett have the Asus A7N8X-X at a good price too.

[Mavol]

k, good to know that there are ones with decent prives out there. ill keep those 2 boards in mind when i go looking for one.

[**GASHA**]

I just bought an Abit NF7S board for £85.00, and an Athlon 2800MHz BARTON cpu for £107.00. I was so pleased with the first Abit board I bought I had to get another So far so good, excellent board (with SATA) and fast chip for the money. Only (slight) problem I had was with the NFORCE chipset IDE drivers, they fool windows into thinking you have SCSI devices attached for better performance. Nero wont burn anything using these drivers, you have to roll back to the default windows IDE drivers. Can't say I noticed any difference in system performance after rolling back the drivers.

[Triadcool]

I just bought an Abit NF7S board for £85.00, and an Athlon 2800MHz BARTON cpu for £107.00. I was so pleased with the first Abit board I bought I had to get another  So far so good, excellent board (with SATA) and fast chip for the money. Only (slight) problem I had was with the NFORCE chipset IDE drivers, they fool windows into thinking you have SCSI devices attached for better performance. Nero wont burn anything using these drivers, you have to roll back to the default windows IDE drivers. Can't say I noticed any difference in system performance.

Good for you!

[_John_Lennon_]

One word for any LCD purchases: Samsung

Okay, and maybe the viewsonic, the company with the 3 birds on the branch, as both seem to dominate the offices around here.

[Mad old tory]

K, heres my take on this -

CPU - AMD win on VFM hands down. Get a 2500+ Barton and you should be able to clock it to 3200+ speeds without too much problem, but adequate cooling both on the CPU and in the way of case fans is a must.

Intel - bit pricier but a lot of their 2.4GHZ processors will clock to 3GHz easily. Just dont be fooled into thinking that clockspeed is everything as a AMD at 2500mhz will completely wipe the floor with a 3GHz p4.

Motherboards - Especially if you are looking to overclock, Abit and Asus lead the way. For AMD the only board of choice is teh NF7 or NF7-s, they are both very good vfm and will overclock well. For Intel either the Abit IC7 or Asus P4c800

RAM - Geil, Corsair, Twinmos are all good brands for overclocking, Crucial are good for stock speed ram.

Video Cards - Geforce FX was a big flop, ATI is the way to go. Rad9800 is the best top end card, in pro or newly launched XT format, the 9600 series represents great vfm and dominates the middle range. Check out the 9800SE allinwonder for about £160, some can be softmodded into 9800pros and they also have the tv tuner.

Cases- Coolermaster are phasing out their range so be quick, other than that try Lian li or antec they have a good range.

PSU- Antec or Enermax are the best choices.

[GCNaddict]

Originally posted by Mad old tory@11 November 2003 - 16:37
Video Cards - Geforce FX was a big flop, ATI is the way to go.  Rad9800 is the best top end card, in pro or newly launched XT format, the 9600 series represents great vfm and dominates the middle range.  Check out the 9800SE allinwonder for about £160, some can be softmodded into 9800pros and they also have the tv tuner.

i had a huge pain-in-the-ass problem with the ATI cards (all of them)

and it was a very simple issue: the Catalyst drivers (specifically the SmartGart)

the smartgart apparently begins sending a signal after its first run to the mobo, telling the mobo to drop the AGP speed (if necessary, which is what my SmartGart thought). My mobo refused to accept the SmartGart signal, and thus, would not boot at all after successfully booting once.

if i removed the card and removed the drivers for it, and reinstalled the card, the whole issue would start from scratch (boot once, not boot at all afterwards)

My NVidia card/drivers never had this issue.

i also overclocked my 5600u to get slightly better performance than the 9600xt, so...

My conclusion: ATI's "supersafe" drivers work on 99.9% of all PCs, but fail on the other 0.1%

I LOOOOOOVE ATI, as they made the gpu for the gamecube, and it is absolutely flawless!

but of course, i cant use something which doesnt work, and i feel that the
fx 5(6/7)00u does a better job, and their newly released drivers are superb.

final take:
-------------------nVidia / ATI
--------------------------------
top-end-------------5950u / 9800xt
almost-top------5(8/9)00u / 9800p
top/mid----------5(8/9)00 / 9800
hiMid/topMid:----5700u-oc / 9700(p)
vHi/mid-------------5700u / 9500p
hi/mid-------------5700oc / 9600xt
mid ------------5(6u/7)00 / 9600p
low/mid--------------5600 / 9600
low-----------------5200u / 9200p
dont consider--------5200 / 9(2/0p)00

if u see a (x/y) it means that the 5x00 and the 5y00 are both good
if u see a (Xu/y) it means that the 5X00u and the 5y00 are both good
if u see a 5(x/y)00u, it means that the 5x00u and the 5y00u are both good
if u see a 5950(u) it means that the 5950u and the 5950 are both good
u means ultra
p means pro
XT means XT
oc means overclocked

sidenote: why did i even consider the 5800? cuz it, to be truthful, does a hell-of-a-better job than the 5900. in fact, if the 5800 was done on a smaller chip process, then the fan could have been smaller, and it would have completely laid the other FXs and Radeons to shame.

example: the 5800u can pull better graphics than All of the other cards, including the 5950s and the 9800XTs, in games such as Doom3, HL2(beta), and ut2004, along with every other graphix-intensive game out there!!!!!

so, why isnt it ranked with the 5950? one word: noise

there you go: a complete take on which cards are better, driverwise, and a comparison chart. (for anyone looking for a 5800, they were discontinued by nVidia, but some companies are still making them. look hard, my friend)