4x0n

My final exams are finally over so now I have some time to put together a gaming rig, the games I'll be playing are FEAR, HL2, Heroes V and also some older games such as Fallout 1&2 and BG 1&2 along with some Photoshop work. My budget is also pretty flexible.

The only things I'm sure of getting is the sound card and the motherboard. The motherboard I picked is the DFI Lanparty UT CFX3200. With the cpu I'm not sure if I should go with Opteron(180 or 165) or Athlon(4800+). And with memory I have no clue what to get that goes with that mobo and those cpu's, although I've heard that Corsair or OCZ is the way to go. I'll probably go with 2 gigs.

I've been thinking about dual graphics but am not sure if the PSU I've taking a liking to is up to the crossfire challenge, the Hiper 580W. but I'm also willing to put the dual graphics on hold until the Master cards are more readily available.

I'll also be trying to mod my first case which I hope will turn out good, the case I bought was the AeroCool AeroEngineII. I'm going to go with a black and red color theme, but if any of you have some neat ideas I'm all "ears."

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Aselus

disclamer: all following advice is (imho)

Quote: Originally Posted by 4x0n My final exams are finally over so now I have some time to put together a gaming rig, the games I'll be playing are FEAR, HL2, Heroes V and also some older games such as Fallout 1&2 and BG 1&2 along with some Photoshop work. My budget is also pretty flexible.

HOMM5 p0wnZ we should paly sometime once your rig is setup ;-)

Quote: Originally Posted by 4x0n The only things I'm sure of getting is the sound card and the motherboard. The motherboard I picked is the DFI Lanparty UT CFX3200. With the cpu I'm not sure if I should go with Opteron(180 or 165) or Athlon(4800+). And with memory I have no clue what to get that goes with that mobo and those cpu's, although I've heard that Corsair or OCZ is the way to go. I'll probably go with 2 gigs.

Well this depends on your budget and what sort of cooling you're planning for the system (OC potential), if you're nto going to overclock at all then get a good rathed Athalon, I recomend avoiding opterons (since they're the server end chips, and tend to not fare as well in games, except for some extreme overclockable ones that are good for some benching). SOme peopel mgiht argue that they 'are' cherry picked athalons..but i still dont't hink its' worth it ~_~. Tho some do oc well..again

Quote: Originally Posted by 4x0n I've been thinking about dual graphics but am not sure if the PSU I've taking a liking to is up to the crossfire challenge, the Hiper 580W. but I'm also willing to put the dual graphics on hold until the Master cards are more readily available.

580watt PSU is enough to run an SLI/Crossfire system. "Master Cards"? you mean XTX / 7900GTX oprice points?...sorry maybee i'm confused can i ask for clerification?

Quote: Originally Posted by 4x0n I'll also be trying to mod my first case which I hope will turn out good, the case I bought was the AeroCool AeroEngineII. I'm going to go with a black and red color theme, but if any of you have some neat ideas I'm all "ears."

AeroEngine is a cool case, frankly i've been surprised with aerocools offering considering they're still a rpetty new company. Their PSUPs are superb! and their cases arent' half bad either (especialy the Mastige[sp?]). ;-) you sohuld post pics of your worklog once you get it would be nice to see someone working in one of their cases, never actualy seen them being worked in. With that case, if you want to go for a wierd effect you can take some red lazer LEDs and point them toward the intake (sort of a fan shadow effect..always cool.. :-)

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4x0n

Well, from what I've read about the mobo I'm going to have to tweak most of the memory and cpu settings so I guess I'll do some light overclocking but at first only on air.

The "master" thing is that the ATi Crossfire needs one designated "master" card which is sold as such.

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Ator

The "master" card in ATI's CrossFire setup is what controls the dual card mode on their high-end cards.

For a power supply, CrossFire seems to work a LOT better with a power supply running a beefy single 12v rail.

For light overclocking, I would say you should be good with an Opteron 180...however, the best steppings for overclocking seem to be coming with the 170's.

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Dex

To confirm what Ator said about the dual core Opterons, here is a short summary of the different models, their steppings, and OC performance you can expect from them.

• 165 CCBWE 0546MPMW - Most reach between 2.3Ghz - 2.7GHz
• 170 CCBWE 0530TPMW - Excellent overclockers, as high as 2.9Ghz - 3.1GHz
• 175 CCBWE 0544XMPW - Good overclockers, especially on air 2.7 - 2.8GHz (also known to have -10c coldbug)
• 180 CCBWE 0541RMPW - Fair overclocker, usually hitting 2.7GHz with low volts, unfortunately doesn't scale well with voltage.

The 170s really are the best of the bunch

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4x0n

Thanks a bunch for the info on the cpu's, I guess I'll go with the 170 since it's a whole lot cheaper than the 180.

But concerning the memory, am I right that DDR2 is wasted on AMD's or are they wholly incompatible?

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Dex

Only the new AM2 motherboards will take DDR2, socket 939 can only use DDR.

Have you had any more thoughts on RAM?

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Ator

I'm thinking that the DDR2-based dual core AM2's might have more benefit from the extra bandwidth than a single core since it's both cores sharing the same RAM.

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4x0n

Quote: Originally Posted by Dex Only the new AM2 motherboards will take DDR2, socket 939 can only use DDR. Have you had any more thoughts on RAM?

Not really, was thinking of going with OCZ (and 2 sticks of 1 gig) but other than that I'm stumped

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Ator

You would be good with anything from OCZ, Corsair, Crucial, Kingston, G.Skill, or Mushkin. I, personally, would recommend OCZ and G.Skill over everything else.

This is the OCZ RAM that I have...overclocks great and is rock stable:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820227066

Dex, thanks for the summary. All X2's with the BW, B1, or B2 memory controller steppings have cold-bugs. The BH would be the best one to go with (as in LDBHE) if you are doing extreme cooling, but those only have 512k of L2 cache. Those come with some of the X2 3800's.

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4x0n

Just out of curiosity, on the mobo I specified would it work to have 2 pairs of matched memory, for example having 2 pairs of 1 gig sticks or would it be better to have just one pair? The mobo supports 4 gigs and has 4 slots, but I have no clue if it would pay off.

And also, is there any articles that you know of that explain the timings, latency, speed etc. of memory, can't seem to find any good stuff about this. I've tried googling various words but the most I find is outdated or from the manufacturers.

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Dex

Yes, two kits would work, but 4Gb is overkill and Windows XP wouldn't be able to use it anyway. a 1024Mb x 2 kit is fine.

Heres an article that may help you understand RAM timings and latencies.

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Ator

Not to mention filling all four slots will reduce your RAM command timing to 2T (command every other clock), causing a significant hit in performance and over 1000MB/sec in memory bandwidth lost.

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jofultner

Use 2 sticks of 1 gig in order to take advantage of dual channel DDR...Jo

Quote: Originally Posted by 4x0n Just out of curiosity, on the mobo I specified would it work to have 2 pairs of matched memory, for example having 2 pairs of 1 gig sticks or would it be better to have just one pair? The mobo supports 4 gigs and has 4 slots, but I have no clue if it would pay off. And also, is there any articles that you know of that explain the timings, latency, speed etc. of memory, can't seem to find any good stuff about this. I've tried googling various words but the most I find is outdated or from the manufacturers.

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