wurd to ya mutha on this bright sunday morning!

i frequent this site quite often due to the creativity & imagination of the folks posting here...for this i thank you!

for the past two years i've been running a supermicro X5DA8 mobo w/ a couple 2.4s @ 533 fsb. couple this with 4 sticks of pc 2100 512 and you have yourself some decent dual channel ddr memory. On the storage front, I have four fujitsu MAN series 36GB U160 drives (C:\ = 1drive & Z:\ =3 drive stripe set), 2 ATA100 120GB drives, TDK420 burner, logitech wireless keyboard/mouse & 802.11b connectivity. all this crammed in a black rack mounted 2U supermicro case. i ended up settling for a 64mb nvidia quardro xgl 580 card & an osprey200 due to height constraints after getting harassed! because the 9800pro would only run with the top of the case off (2loud!).

as of this weekend, i have decommisioned my intel and have since started checking out the amds FX-51 on a SK8N running XP64. i robbed my xeons of their memory last night after finally giving up on the 2 sticks of junk 256mb pc2100 i found. after upgrading to dual channel, i relaxed about the memory performance. i'm running this is a silver, metal fry's electronic case (50 bucks) with a cheesy 300w ps. i think the cd rom (needed something for the install) is probably an 8X cd rom (yikes!). i broke down and bought a 160GB SATA drive, but i can't get it working (drivers, another post...)...so i'm using a WD 20gb 7200 ata100 ide drive.

my dilemma is that i only have 1 pc working right now w/ 2 other mobos wasting away (the x5da8 and an epia-m1000 (going in my truck, top secret project...say tuned!)). i'm having a problem with certain applications running on xp64 which is going to require me to have an instance of xp32, whether being a dual boot or running the intels (unless i can get vmware to run on the xp64 platform)... should i sell the supermicro and pimp the asus out? the x5da8 is very loud due to it having 7 fans and 6 drives. drivers are obviously going to be a problem for running xp64 with my osprey capture card which i use(ed) snapstream to record off DSS.

what do i want? the fastest pc for gaming(#1 priority), recording tv, answering my calls, listening to music and anything else i wish to do with it.

im going outside for a while to try and figure this throttle activated nos switch i need to hook up.


thanks again for the suggestions...

http://kirkmears.com

I imagine you will continue to have some problems due to the lack of driver support thusfar for XP 64 bit. Even the drivers I linked you to last night were still only beta drivers. If it were me, I would dual (or tri if you wanna get your feet wet in Linux too but you seem to be having enough problems currently so maybe later on that one) boot on the SK8N and then you SHOULD be able to tackle want you want.
As for the fastest for gaming, you will definately need to upgrade that video card and you may (or may not, depends how picky you are with your rigs) also want to look into upgrading to PC3200 or better RAM. From what I have seen (which admittedly isn't much because I have been researching water and not 64-bit processing), you will get much better gaming performance with upgraded vid card and RAM.

Well, I know what you want. You want to give me that Quadro. Don't even act like you don't, you want me to have it, for like 5 bucks, with a free dual-Xeon Supermicro X5DA8 rig on the side.

I would try to find another case for that dually and lose the Quadro unless you are doing CAD. The Quadro suxx0rz for gaming and if you are doing CAD on dual monitors the only way to go is 3DLabs, they are the only cards that will do OpenGL on two monitors.

by upgrading the video card, you mean the 9800pro w/ 256mb of 256bit memory that im currently running with the sk8n?

wanna buy a 2U case? lol

km

Quote: Originally Posted by kirkmears wanna buy a 2U case? lol km

Ill take the 2U case, what do ya want for it.

Quote: Originally Posted by kirkmears by upgrading the video card, you mean the 9800pro w/ 256mb of 256bit memory that im currently running with the sk8n?

My mistake, I overlooked the 9800 after seeing the Quadro apparently, but better RAM would definately help your gaming.

So you're going to frag on the SK8N and do all your other crap on the dually? I suppose Quadro is ok if that's ALL your doing

another option would be to give the sk8n w/ the fx-51 to a co-worker and score a couple 2.5 xeons w/ 1MB. not sure whether they're 400 or 533 fsb. only thing that sux is the x5da8 wont overclock and only benefits from pc2100, nothing faster. pawn the quardo off on whomever gets the 2u case and use the 9800 pro on the refreshed dually with a new, more quiet case. yeah?

does anyone know if you can use the same processor in either a E7505 or E7501 chipset?

i found my solution...

get the 2.5s w/ 1MB and the following...

http://www.baber.com/cases/1u_2u_risercards.htm

...to run my 9800 pro in my 2u case