AMD and FSB questions

[veeneedefeesh]

Having always been an Intel fan I have not bothered to keep up with AMD's products, but I am gonna have to rebuild my system, (for the reason of that it is old, slow, and recently hit by lightning) and I just can't ignore the AMD's price and advertised FSB speeds.

So I gotta get a motherboard and I can't decide between the socket 754 and 939. Is there that much difference between the FSB speeds, will I see an appreciable difference between the 800MHz of a Intel based socket 775 and the 1600MHz of the 754 or the 2000MHz of the 939?

Along those same lines do AMD CPU's really outperform the intels with the appropriate cooling (this is what always scared me about AMD in the past was all I ever heard about the old AMD's was people having cooling issues)

[mofish]

Yeah older Athlons had some cooling problems. But things are different now. AMD chips are faster, and run cooler, than their P4 counterparts. AMD makes a great chip now. I just ordered parts for a new system yesterday, and went with an AMD X2/nf4 939 mobo.

If youre trying to do it on the cheap, Im sure a 754 AMD would still be blazing fast and probably cost less.

[veeneedefeesh]

ya the socket 939 Mobo's are ex-fugging-spensive and I just don't have the bank to go that far.

At this point I am planning on getting a low-end processor to tide me over for a while until I can afford to upgrade to the max CPU that the mobo can handle.

[mofish]

Yeah I paid an arm and a leg for this system. But it should last me 5 years. Have a little disposable income, a rare occurrance, so decided to go all out. Dual core athlon, 2 gigs of crucial ballistix, 2 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB cache sata2 drives for RAID 0, Geforce 7800GTX

[10sun]

My computer is faster except for the processor.

And it is in a micro case that looks good ^_^

Go for the 939. Otherwise you will have to replace your mobo when you want to make a big upgrade.

[mofish]

How can your comp be faster? Not waving dicks, just curious. Have SCSI RAID or something?

[10sun]

2x 10k rpm raptors, 74gb apiece running raid-0.

Vid card might be better as well, I don't pay much attention anymore though.

I should have gone for an SLI system for the amount I paid for my current layout though... that would be slick.

[Tikker]

I can't believe people use SLI

that just seems so insane to me, jeje

[mofish]

Yeah I thought about it for like 5 seconds, then decided it would be overkill. Even the x2 4400+ I ordered is gonna have trouble making even 1 7800gtx break a sweat, much less two of them~

[vonkaar]

System...it should last me 5 years.

[mofish]

*with a CPU and maybe vid card upgrade in 3 years. Has room for 2 more Gigs RAM also, mobo supports 4 gigs. Ok maybe 5 years is opitmistic, 4 years though for sure.

Thats how I rationalized it to myself anyway when I threw down the $$$

[Harrison]

Holy fuck man, how much did that all cost?

$2-3k?

[Tossica]

My Athlon 900 owns all your sorry asses.

[Tikker]

System...it should last me 5 years.

my current main system is pushing 5 years old now


It was smoking fast when I bought it, and all I've upgraded is adding more ram, and a new vid card (and overclocked the cpu)


original specs:
p4 1.7 ghz 400mhz fsb
512mb 400mhz rdram (rambus was gonna be the new kick ass ram, jeje)
p4t-e mobo
60gb 7200rpm maxtor drive
geforce 4 4200ti (actually i can't remember if that was the original card, or if it was a geforce 2 that I upgraded to a geforce 4)


Now I've got the 1.7 overclocked to 2.8 ghz (no thanks to vonkaar!)
added another 512 ram
added geforce 6600gt


so, i've spent like 400ish on upgrades in the last 4+ years, not too shabby(it'd be a lot less but rambus is expensive, jeje)

[Gidan]

If your going AMD go 939, they 754 is being phased out. The future processors are going to be 939.

[Harrison]

939

[mofish]

For now yeah 939. But I think AMD is planning on integrating the PCI-E controller into their chips. Which I guess would mean yet another socket change.

[veeneedefeesh]

ya the socket 939 Mobo's are ex-fugging-spensive and I just don't have the bank to go that far.

I am gonna have trouble scraping together the $$$ to get the 754 with acoutriments, no way I can afford a 939 aty least not this year

[Gidan]

my 939 MB + Processor cost me about $20 more then it would have to go 754.

[veeneedefeesh]

Think a 350W power supply is enough to power a 939 and accessories? I was looking at 400 420 and 450's, but I just bought this 350 so I hate to buy another so soon

[Gidan]

depends on the video card. I used a 350 until I got my GeForce 6800, then I upgraded to 450.

[veeneedefeesh]

Just got a NVidia FX 5500

[Harrison]

a 350w PS should be fine for it...5500's aren't whores in that sense (none of the 5000 series really)

[veeneedefeesh]

ok here is what I come up with. no matter how I shake it I can't get much less $$$ for the bang of this config....and after shopping around I find that this is about the best price I can get and I can get it all from one vendor thus eradicating the frustrating experience of having some of the parts and having to wait on the rest.

Mobo=http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1192075&sku=C460-1105
Proc=http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1170066&sku=CP1-A64-30009
Fan=http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=636205&sku=S457-1017
Mammory=http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=723375&sku=M56-4901
I can't afford to spend this much really, so I am only getting a little bit of mammory, that is easy to upgrade later. Eventually I may move up to a faster proc as well, but that is a long ways down the road.

Like I mentioned earlier I already bought a XFX GeForce FX 5500 and a 350W powersupply and of course I already have a FDD, 3 IDE HDD, and a CDRW. Anything else I might be forgetting?

BTW with shipping this comes out to $302.60

[mofish]

Didnt read the descriptions, but if that is a retail athlon it will come with a heat sink and a fan.