PCI or AGP?

[Skiz]

AMD Athlon 64 4000 (939 pin)
2 GB memory - Not sure the type yet.
Two Western Digital 160 HD's - I don't want to pay double for the 10,000 RPM drives. 7200 is just fine.
ATI X850 (maybe)
A good combo drive and
16X DVD+RW burner (Sony, NEC, etc.)
SB Audigy 2 ZS
Win XP Pro

-----------------------------------

I'm going to begin piecing together the above computer soon and wanted some opinions on mobo's.

I was thinking of getting an ASUS or Abit, but since I'm going for sheer performance, I was considering a PCI Express mobo and video card.

Your thoughts on mobo's that will fit well with this hardware combination?
suggestions?
recommendations?

[S!X]

PCI-E is the way to go. I might be getting an X850 myself :D Go with corsair ram or that patriot stuff clocker bought. Theres a NEC dvd burner on newegg for 46 or 49$ That im gonna get it can do everything :D Go with seagate harddrive there supposed to be really quiet and have a 5 year warranty, good priceing too :D Im getting an ABIT mobo (FATAL1TY) clocker says your just paying for all the fancy stuff on it but me likes it. Gigabytes or DFI Lanparties are good ;)

[Adster]

PCI is teh future but AGP is now

do you think games know what a PCI E is right now???

AGP test says there faster yes

depends if you wanna spend a lot of cash now on PCI E or wait til next year when there a standard

[Skiz]

any other recommendations?

[S!X]

any other recommendations?

DVD Drive http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827152035

Harddrive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148069

[Skiz]

any other recommendations?

DVD Drive http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827152035

Harddrive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148069

I'll prolly get that NEC drive, but my post is just inquiring about motherboard suggestions really. I guess I could have been more specific. I'll edit that original post. :)

[S!X]

Mobos:


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813136152

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813128283

The one i plan to get which has been out of stock for awhile now :(

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813127196

[Skiz]

I think they both have their pros and cons:


=Linkin Park]Mobos:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813136152


While this one is very spacious and offers a more open apparently more accessable spaces, the multiple reviews about the x800 and x850 video cards being directly over the heatsink makes me think a tad.



http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813128283

While this one has a bit of an odd layout imo, it still seem to be the better choice. Both are nice cards though. :)

[S!X]

That DFI does have a kinda odd layout.... lol I never really looked at it. Its got 2 pci-e slots I think thats why. Im wanthing to get a Saffire X800PRO I might be able to get an high end X850XTPE for cheap :D Not sure yet.

[Skiz]

I might be able to get an high end X850XTPE for cheap

where? :shifty:

[Storm]

performance wise it wont differ to much if its a AGP or PCI-E board (+card)

the only reason you should get a PCI-E board is if you plan to upgrade in the future......

[muchspl3]

http://store1.yimg.com/I/extremepcgear_1845_34600031
I just going to get 2 of these in SLI. they are only $865 a piece.

Memory 512MB GDDR3
Core Clock 425MHz (vs. 400MHz standard)
Memory Clock 1100MHz
RAMDAC Dual 400MHz
Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 and lower, OpenGL 1.5 and lower for Microsoft® Windows®
Connectors Dual DVI-I, S-Video
638 million vertices/sec.
35.2GB/second memory bandwidth
http://www.xpcgear.com/bfg68u512pcie.html

[lynx]

PCI is teh future but AGP is nowPCI-E is now, AGP is yesterday. Things change very rapidly in the computer business.


do you think games know what a PCI E is right now??? Do you think games know what AGP is? They don't know and don't care, they just call DirectX.

AGP test says there faster yes PCI-E may be marginally slower atm, but that's almost certainly down to driver and firmware development. You can't expect all the tweaks that have taken place over several years of AGP tuning to be available in the first few months of a new technology. They were still finding more tweaks for 8xAGP a few months ago.

depends if you wanna spend a lot of cash now on PCI E or wait til next year when there a standardPCI-E motherboards are slightly more expensive than their AGP equivalent, but not much (except maybe in Aus, but the rest of the world can't help your f*cked up prices) but PCI-E graphics cards are slightly cheaper. Of course, that doesn't apply if you are talking about SLI boards, but then you aren't comparing like for like.

[clocker]

An interesting approach to you quest would be to explore the support available from the manufacturer.

If you have never seen the BIOS from a a64 board you're in for a rude awakening...the options are myriad and very confusing.

Some boards have a rabid enthusiast following and thus, quite a knowlege base about how to set them up.
Other boards ( and I'm afraid my Gigabytes fall into this catagory) leave you pretty much on your own.

DFI has an amazing website/forum with DFI engineers and coders paid to deal with your questions.
You can even question Oskar Wu who is the chief designer and writes the bleeding edge BIOS revisions, too.
The support alone might sway you into getting their board.

[RPerry]

If you have never seen the BIOS from a a64 board you're in for a rude awakening...the options are myriad and very confusing.
into getting their board.

You know, you could have posted that back in january :dry:





:P

[clocker]

What fun would that have been?