Athlon 64 Kit

[MrBlack]

I find myself in the enviable poition of having a bit of cash to spend on an upgrade. I was about to go for an XP 3000 ish spec machine, but seeing as the A64 3000+ is coming down in price a lot, I thought I'd stretch to that instead. I've got a nice new 9800 Pro to go in it and plenty of ATA-100 HD to move across, so I'm after the Mobo/CPU/RAM combo.

I'll probably plump for a GB of PC3200 (£100ish from Crucial), but I'm at a loss as to which motherboard to get. I'm wary of just plumping for the most recent Asus/MSI/Abit one because this is a new chipset we're dealing with here, and I remember the hassle people had with the early Athlon Irongate (751?) chipsets.

So can any one who has gone down this route recommend any particular socket 754 board above the others? Are there any dual channel ones? The nforce3 is out, but that only appears to be for the FX51, and I'm not that loaded

Oh, and what the hell is the difference between the Opteron 100 series and the A64?

Cheers.

 

[smurkin]

I was in MD the other day & they had a really nice looking nforce 3 shuttle paired with a 64 3200 for, under 400 quid iirc (can't remember with or without VAT)...it certainly turned my head ..dont know if its any good tho ...?

 

[Xavier]

nForce3 is for the Athlon64

nForce3 Pro is for the Athlon64 FX

Let us know your budget for CPU+ Motherboard and we'll come up with some suggestions.

Xav

 

[inactionman]

Oh, and what the hell is the difference between the Opteron 100 series and the A64?Cheers.

Memory bandwidth (opteron/fx are dual channel), multi processing, the number of pins, and oh yeah... the price! That's about it!

Been looking into this recently, as I'm selling my house for a tidy profit, which will allow me to upgrade my computer, and buy a nice 19" illyama flat panel.

None of the chipsets for AMD64 seem to have any problems, they all have similar performance, but are all slightly better at different things.

The mobo I'm looking at is the Asus K8V Deluxe, it's got:

DDR400 support
On board 6 channel audio + SPDIF
Firewire
SATA (RAID) + PATA
8 USB2 ports
On board Gig ethernet
WIFI Slot for add-on card

Link here: http://uk.asus.com/products/mb/socket754/k8v-d/overview.htm#

It seems to have done fairly well in the reviews I've seen, and for just over £100 on Scan, it seems a steal, particularly as I've never had any problems with Asus motherboards before!

Anyhow if you do any research, and come up with anything better, tell me about it!

 

[lovedaddy]

http://www.hardwareseeker.com/resourcelink.html?rlid=71173

Have a quick read. I seem to recall the MSI finished top.

I'm soooo tempted to put something like that together, MSI, AMD64 3200 etc

 

[lovedaddy]

Also worth reading http://www20.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20040112/index.html for potential memory issues.

Good place to read about peoples experience with the msi board http://msihq.designlab.info/board.php?boardid=24&sid=0b667d218c65f550b08328cbc8b22e0al

 

[MrBlack]

Cheers for that lot.

I reckon I've got around £450 for Mobo/RAM/CPU/Heatsink+Fan. I'll probbaly be getting a new case/psu, but those are seperate extra costs.

The HD/CD and video I've already got. 60MB/s out of two software striped 100GB IBMs, with a 9800 Pro. Should make for a tasty machine when it's done.

Overclocking-wise, I wouldn't mind the option. I'd be happy with the basics, but the A64 is, apparently, nice and cool compared to the old XPs, plus Tom's HW says it's multiplier unlocked, so I should factor in a beefy cooler with some arctic silver.

I've been with Asus and Abit since the BH6, so I'm more comfortable with those two.

 

[SawTooTH]

Anyone seen any performance figures of the A64 for games. I did read that with the beta longhorn games were running slower but thats probably just bad driver compatability. But what about in a 32bit system?

 

[old.user4556]

Anyone seen any performance figures of the A64 for games. I did read that with the beta longhorn games were running slower but thats probably just bad driver compatability. But what about in a 32bit system?

Xavier's smashing review of the A64, Prescott and FX51 can be read on Tecnation here - http://www.tecnation.co.uk/article.php?id=66&page=1

UT2003 performance here - http://www.tecnation.co.uk/article.php?id=66&page=18

Cheers

G

 

[Xavier]

Anyone seen any performance figures of the A64 for games. I did read that with the beta longhorn games were running slower but thats probably just bad driver compatability. But what about in a 32bit system?

Don't confuse Longhorn with WindowsXP-64. XP-64 will be out later this year, Longhorn isn't due until 2006. All the current Longhorn betas are from a 32-bit codebase.

64-bit should result in an overall performance improvement, as long as you have true 64-bit drivers for your kit and don't rely on any DOS-based or 16-bit applications.

Xav

 

[MrBlack]

Then main reason I'm looking at A64, is that the 3200+ is roughly the same price as the equivalent Barton XP cpu, but with better 32-bit results across the board.

Any suggestion tham I'm entertaining ideas of hacking my own 64-bit support into Q3, and my video drivers (and XP) purely to remove some of the Z-fighting I get in the larger terrain maps in Urban Terror, is pure speculation.

The rumour that I plan to do this with a hot needle directly onto the drive platters is completely unfounded.

 

[MrBlack]

Found some very useful comparison info on Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_microprocessors

I was very surprised to note the clock speed differences between the Thoroughbred and Barton XP cores at the 2600-3000+ range.

 

[Damon_D]

Memory bandwidth (opteron/fx are dual channel), multi processing, the number of pins, and oh yeah... the price! That's about it!

Been looking into this recently, as I'm selling my house for a tidy profit, which will allow me to upgrade my computer, and buy a nice 19" illyama flat panel.

None of the chipsets for AMD64 seem to have any problems, they all have similar performance, but are all slightly better at different things.

The mobo I'm looking at is the Asus K8V Deluxe, it's got:

DDR400 support
On board 6 channel audio + SPDIF
Firewire
SATA (RAID) + PATA
8 USB2 ports
On board Gig ethernet
WIFI Slot for add-on card

Link here: http://uk.asus.com/products/mb/socket754/k8v-d/overview.htm#

It seems to have done fairly well in the reviews I've seen, and for just over £100 on Scan, it seems a steal, particularly as I've never had any problems with Asus motherboards before!

Anyhow if you do any research, and come up with anything better, tell me about it!

Aye I'm actualy setting up a very similar system atm , was told the ASUS K8V Deluxe kick's the ass of the NForce3 cards