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Thread ID: 62567	2005-10-12 01:40:00	Computer upgrade assistance for me.	ojibwa (8968)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
395424	2005-10-12 19:21:00	It sounds like you have some knowledge of parts, first thing what is this socket M2 you speak of? What motherboard do you reccomend for price? and then what cpu, gpu, and whatever else match it? Is the 3000+ not duel core (All socket 939 processors are from what I know)? I'm guessing you're saying it's not worth it because it's only .2Ghz faster than my current one, and wouldn't justify the performance->price point. If a mobo that supports DDR-2 RAM is going to be significantly better than one that supports DDR400 (and by which their effect will be useful in conjunction of the other parts. [cpu, gpu]) then I would gladely wait until I can get that. The price of the parts I was going to get originally are as follows: AMD 64-bit processor (3000+) = $146 USD Motherboard = the one I referenced with sold for about $110 USD A computer case so the mobo would fit = $35 USD And now it sounds like I would need a new card = $200+ ? Totalling around $500. When we see the next price drop, what will the parts you suggest me buying cost? (I'm guessing buying any parts that will improve my current AGP setup is not going to be worth it in any way) M2 is next years socket. For all the AMD CPUs. No all socket 939 CPUs are NOT dual core, only the ones that specifically say so. Or say x2. Well yes DDR2 is better. I don't know what the new prices will be.....I can't predict it. I'm going by A) There always is when new stuff comes out B) Suppliers have told me to expect it. It all depends on whether you want to wait - it is another big change but then again you can never catch up - there will always be the next best thing. On the other hand you may have saved more money by then... As for your case, don't skimp on the power supply - often the ones bundled with the cases are cheap and nasty. Oh and as for that board mentioned with the options for everything - don't know that I would - bit gimmicky.	pctek (84)
395425	2005-10-13 07:36:00	I gotta wonder if you checked out any of the many reviews for that motherboard. They were comparing it with that Fatality board (Nforce 4) and one other one, it seemed like there was very little difference considering what it was designed for. I haven't posted every little thing I've come across cause I woulda ended up with about 30 posts rather than the 10 or so I've done so far. I've got everything that I need to know for an upgrade I believe (was looking into PSU's about 1/2 a month ago when mine started going clunky, just oiled the bearings in the fan and it started working like new). (Processor) AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Venice Socket 939 Processor (Motherboard) ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 (RAM) GeIL 1GB PC3200 DDR400 Memory (Tower) Black ATX Computer Case (Was going to look into just finding a good standalone Tower because I found a great deal on a high quality PSU) - - [This tower is one of the first things I came across in my endeavor to find the perfect setup for me] - - (PSU) COOLER MASTER RS-430-PMSR 430W EXTREME POWER SUPPLY Just in case you know better, I was referred to this PSU because of it's cheap price ($20) and excellent quality, let me know what you think. www.svc.com I've compiled all of these things, plus what follows into a Notepad document, it's my wishlist: (Virus/Spyware/Adware/Trogan Security) Ewido security suite plus I'm not sure how great this is, but when someone told me to run it to help get rid of a spy (which still isn't gone) I grew attatched to the interface. Not sure if there is a better alternative, but I'm thinking it's about time to buy some security rather than rely on the free programs I've atm. (Game) F.E.A.R. One of the main reasons I need to upgrade :p (Keyboard) Logitech G15 I've only the standard keyboard that came with the PC, this will be an enormous improvement (just silent keys would be blessed) (Disk Defragmenter) Diskeeper 9 Professional Currently using DIRMS and BUZZSAW, will Diskeeper have much benefit over those two programs? (Mouse) Logitech G7 Laser Cordless Mouse I've an MX510 atm, but this mouse looks very, very sweet. (The wire on the MX 510 restricts some movement, pulling the cord out from the abyss below the desk where it sort of snag's on the corner of the desk as you let the cord sink in and out. Anyhow, it's not likely I'm gonna get ALL of these things, but the mobo, RAM, CPU, tower, and PSU sound like they are all required. As in, if I'm going to update the CPU, I'll need all four of the other parts. One last thing, for some reason people seem to have a hard time telling other people what they would do given the same situation. I'm not going to be able to buy another GPU for probably at least a year, and even then I will not be able to get any of the other parts until then, If I get a mobo that only supports PCI-E; can you feel me brotha? I just switched from a GeForce4 MX440 (served me very well) recently, to my 6600GT. "If there was one area where we weren’t impressed with, it would be overclocking. We barely managed to get this board to run stably at 220MHz FSB which is quite a bit lower to 240-260MHz we reach on almost any nForce4 boards. But then again, this is not targeted as an enthusiast product." I forget exactly where I saw it, but deep within one of the reviews I was reading before I passed out I came across this bit of information saying that once they release a BIOS update that it's likely the overclocking issue could be resolved. Just thought I'd mention that since it came back to me at random.	ojibwa (8968)
395426	2005-10-14 04:12:00	bump in case ya'll didn't notice (Could someone tell me when are the best times to bump [my time seems to be very different from the site's time - Location?]) Live in Canada B.C. North of Seattle. -08:00 PST	ojibwa (8968)
395427	2005-10-14 06:26:00	I gotta wonder if you checked out any of the many reviews for that motherboard . (Game) F . E . A . R . One of the main reasons I need to upgrade :p Anyhow, it's not likely I'm gonna get ALL of these things, but the mobo, RAM, CPU, tower, and PSU sound like they are all required . One last thing, for some reason people seem to have a hard time telling other people what they would do given the same situation . I'm not going to be able to buy another GPU for probably at least a year, and even then I will not be able to get any of the other parts until then, If I get a mobo that only supports PCI-E; can you feel me brotha? I just switched from a GeForce4 MX440 (served me very well) recently, to my 6600GT . Nope didn't read review . Don't care - uits still gimmicky . If you want to play F . E . A . R on medium settings fine, keep the 6600GT . If you want it maxed, all the textures etc then get a better one . I would . I did . I have: ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe 2 x 1Gb DDR400 X850XT PCI-E which I considered the most important . I was going to swap the CPU out for a Dual-core but seeing as Socket M2 is out next year I'll wait and do it them and change the board, CPU and ram again .	pctek (84)
395428	2005-10-14 12:36:00	ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail www.newegg.com *****/***** 5/5 stars[47 reviews] *****/***** Average Rating out of 302 voters $69.00 USD I believe. newegg.com $3.99 Three Day Shipping Reviews: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #1 5/5* snor, 10/13/2005 9:33:09 AM Is a great board! Was able to overclock a lot after the bio updates. No instability except for the sata2 driver not working properly with the sata 150 ncq. The AGP is relatively fast and the pci-e is as fast as NF boards. Very good Bios options for general tweaking. check OCWORKBENCH.com for more bios updates and forum news about this board. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #2 5/5* borzwazie, 10/12/2005 10:05:54 PM works great I bought this, a Vantec ION 400W powersupply, and a Venice core A64 3000+. The cpu runs so cool I'm not sure I even need a fan on it. the Vantec runs very quietly, I can't hear it at all over the cpu fan, which is itself not very loud. Asrock didn't include any motherboard standoffs which was annoying, and if you don't have a long IDE cable you might have trouble using two cd/dvdrom drives on the secondary or primary channel. still, it fired right up and I'm happily halflife2'ing away. Good buy! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #3 5/5* N/A, 10/12/2005 6:21:19 PM The only problem I had with this was with the sound. My 2.1 picked up some static. But the new sound drivers from ASRock seems to fix that. Someone else had this problem, he had 2.1 also. Most everyone says that the surround sound works great. This wouldn't stop my from buying it again. I have a PCI-X ATI X800GT and it runs great. Bought this for new computer. Worked out of the box. I have a AMD 64 3000+ Venice, PQI DDR400 1GB, and SATA HD. Great buy. Escpecially for the price. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #4 4/5* N/A, 10/12/2005 11:35:27 AM Good Value. Great motherboard overall, but there are a few major complaints. Anything over a small sized tower will require some handy work to get the Disk Drive IDE cable to reach the IDE input on the lower right of the mobo. Also, The stock bios won't let me overclock at all. When I restart the clock changes back to stock, and the options for overclocking are juvenile at best. For ~$xx this was a steal, though. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #5 5/5* DXMage, 10/12/2005 6:47:53 AM WOOT!!! I just pulled my old system board that was socket A and put this in with an AMD64 3000+, loaded the drivers and it registered everything on the first boot. After rebooting I was in World of Warcraft on just the second boot. This board was the easiest upgrade ever after working with thousands of system over the years at work and home this is the new standard for me. You simply can't get a better board to work with, uber flexible with the upgrade paths, easiest upgrade ever, really inexpensive (not cheap as this isn't a cheap shoddy board) the SATA and SATA2. This is the best bang for the buck period. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #6 5/5* N/A, 10/11/2005 10:42:51 AM AGP or PCI? Yes Please... So far so good, bios is a bit limited but there are a lot of work around and non-propri bios's out there already for OCing. This being said, this board is not a true OCers dream but works great as a simple Gamers mobo looking to extend that AGP life span and not buy a new mobo to upgrade to PCI. Just a bit more voltage options, and a bit more traditional bios labeling, would be nice. Oh and I don't know about that 5% deficit that I have read about my Bmark scores are just as good as other Mobo's scores amd some better than higher end systems. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #7 5/5* ScreaminEagleFatBoy, 10/11/2005 9:28:27 AM Good bang for the buck I am pleased so far. I got this board because the price was right, and because I had a AIW Radeon 9800pro AGP card. I got a wild hair and decided to get a PCI-X card anyways (MSI 6800 128MB,256-bit)and this board came with the updated 1.20 BIOS too. Lots of options but it recognized my DDR400 as DDR333. Easily fixed in BIOS. Interesting enough it appears you can run BOTH AGP and PCI-X cards at the same time, but I havent tried it yet.Board Installation was easy as usual if you're not an idiot. The manual sucks and is real basic. Check out sites like anandtech, tomshardware and ocworkbench with their reviews like I did first. You need to have XP SP2 installed before installing the AMD K8 drivers, and get some long, rounded IDE cables cuz the connectors are at the bottom of the board. One problem. This board did not like my cheap Soundblaster live 5.1 card. With onboard AC97 disabled(duh) I still got a splash in device manager under sound devices. I tried removing it, but it still came back like an acne outbreak. Removed the SB card and used the onboard sound no more problem. Any advice besides a better sound card? Old machine was; P4 2.8c/Abit IC7/Kingston HyperX Maxtor SATA This machine; Asrock 939Dual SATA2/AMD X2 4200/1Gig Corsair XMS DDR400/Maxtor 160gb SATA/Lite-On DVD burner/Sony DVD drive/Sony CD-RW drive/MSI GF6800 PCI-X. This system works great so far for gaming (BF2, FarCry etc.) and video encoding. If you check out the benchmarks at Tomshardware, theres not alot of difference between this board and the NF4 boards, so I am keeping my fingers crossed. PLUS NEWEGG ROCKS!!! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #8 5/5* TZ, 10/11/2005 8:56:10 AM RAM speed found in BIOS OK, disregard my post earlier... I can't believe how many times I overlooked the RAM speed setting in the BIOS. Board running great. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #9 5/5* N/A, 10/10/2005 7:52:49 PM blows intel away This mobo is great for xx bucks you just cannot touch it with an inxxl. here is a list of my specs: AMD athlon 64 venice 3000 512mb PQI Power Ram 120 gig HDD ATI Radeon 9550 256mb Lite on CD burner. payed like 350 bucks My friend has an intel 3gig p4 with 800mz fsb, 1 gig of hyper x ram, and a geforce 6800 256mb. I EAT HIS COMPUTER with something so much cheaper ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #10 5/5* gkline, 10/10/2005 6:08:51 PM Great board. Running an Evga 6800, 939 3500 venice and a gig of kingston dual. System runs smooth and stable. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #11 5/5* blert, 10/9/2005 8:13:56 AM Great mobo for price Absolutely no problems with install, updating bios, configuration- and I'm what most would call a "n00b". If you are in the market for a solid AGP board with some pretty cool future upgradeability options don't spend lots of mon-ay on something else (it's made by a division of ASUS, BTW) Not the best overclocker in the world but there are intelligent options. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #12 5/5* TheButler208, 10/7/2005 8:15:39 PM Awesome motherboard. I haven't had one problem with this motherboard at all. Teamed with a gig of ram and an athlon 64 3500+ this thing is unstoppable. I wanted something that can support AGP because benchmarks show the leap in performance from AGP to PCI-e is not yet noticeable. (and I love my X800XL) But, it will be with the next generation of PCI-e cards. So thanks to this board I will be ready. As for the bad reviews, they were probably caused by bios 1.1.(known to have problems) These boards now ship with bios 1.2 and are faster and trouble free with this bios. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #13 5/5* Mobbob, 10/7/2005 4:03:23 PM Assembled system 9/22/05 and has been running ever since. Upgraded from an MSI 6565 P4 2.4GHz@533Mhz FSB. Moved my PC 2700 (333Mhz) ram over to it, even running at its 333Mhz spec it seems to run fine even though it's below the PC3200 (400Mhz) ram I'm supposed to use. Moved over my eVGA Geforce 6800 GT AGP card with no problems. WinXP 32 bit installed without a hitch. My board came with 1.10 BIOS so I updated to the 1.20 version on ASRock's website using the good ol' floppy drive and DOS. Cool n' quiet drivers installed and work as they should, the AMD 3800+ Dual core processor throttles according to load. Old Compy: MSI 6565 Mainboard P4 2.4Ghz @ 533 FSB 1GB PC2700 (333) Kingston HyperX running at 266Mhz eVGA GeForce 6800 GT AGP New System: ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ 1GB PC2700 (333) Kingston HyperX running at 333Mhz eVGA GeForce 6800 GT AGP NOTE: In order to get cool n' quiet to work you need to install the AMD Athlon 64 CPU driver and the Cool n' Quiet software. After that you need to go into the "Power Options" control panel icon and select the "Minimal power management" option. This allows cool n' quiet to do it's thing instead of windows controlling it. Hopefully this review helps some people decide on this board. Oh BTW, ASRock is the value brand of Asus, just FYI.	ojibwa (8968)
395429	2005-10-14 12:40:00	The board that I want will save me $200 immediately, and still allow me to upgrade to a PCI-E card (or two) without any issue or loss . The board may even support Socket M2 . If I go on this path I will always be saving money . I can wait until the price drop you spoke of to see exactly what I can spend my money on then . By then there may even be more AGP/PCI-E mobo's coming out to create competition, of better quality and/or of less price . I'll get a good CPU for cheap now . Probably be at least a $50 drop in price on the 3500+, and that is a much easier amount to spend in my case . I can upgrade my GPU at any point, maybe get a 7800GTX when they hit $400, and then another when they go to $300-200 for SLI . I was playing Deus Ex 2 years ago daily for almost a year . Graphics for me aren't everything . I tried the demo of F . E . A . R . with my current setup, it still blows my mind at 800x600 . When I first played Half-Life 2 it was amazing to behold . That was when I had my GeForce4 MX 440 installed . It only supported up to DirectX 7, but I was still amazed at the clarity of the image . I put up with a lot of lag with that card at higher resolutions/settings, but now with the 6600GT I'm able to achieve an average of 60FPS during normal play, dropping as low as 30FPS during the most intense moments, while playing UnReal Tournament 2K4 on Max settings with 1280x1024 set . I think the reviews speak for themselves, and I admit that it's a gimmick that this mobo is able to handle AGP 8x as well as PCI-E 16x, but is that so horrible? it does it well just to settle the nay sayers by golly .	ojibwa (8968)
395430	2005-10-14 18:20:00	ASRock Hopefully this review helps some people decide on this board. Oh BTW, ASRock is the value brand of Asus, just FYI. Asrock is a subsidary of ASUS. That doesn't mean it is a cheapy ASUS. And I hate them.	pctek (84)
395431	2005-10-14 18:58:00	Asrock is a subsidary of ASUS. That doesn't mean it is a cheapy ASUS. And I hate them. Are you saying that ASUS is cheap and you hate them? (don't make sense to me since your board is ASUS.) So then you hate Asrock? If so what's the reason? Or do you hate the people reviewing? :confused:	ojibwa (8968)
395432	2005-10-14 19:06:00	Are you saying that ASUS is cheap and you hate them? (don't make sense to me since your board is ASUS.) So then you hate Asrock? If so what's the reason? Or do you hate the people reviewing? :confused: I don't like Asrock. I don't like ANY cheap, cut-down, skimp on quality components. You can find whatever reviews you like to support your decision. Try this one: www.tomshardware.com Thats why I don't like this one much. He has a point. Try to include everything to make it "future-proof" its got to come at a cost. And its pointless. You can never stay ahead of the game. There will always be the next latest thing. You have made a decision, you just asked for opinions from people. So go ahead and buy whatever you like.	pctek (84)
395433	2005-10-14 19:35:00	Sounds more to me like it's got everything for today, and a bit of tomarrow, and seems very sensible to me . I'm trying to see your point of view, but everyone else loves it, whereas you have the negative view on basically anything I come up with (least it seems that way) . By they way, they said usually when they try and put everything into one, there is some cut corners (read a bit more) so let's see what THIS board has to offer . End of the review "In comparison with a respectable nForce4 motherboard, the overall performance of the ASRock board in the test is unfortunately below what our recent test of the chipset would have led us to believe . Focusing on the most cost-effective product possible apparently has its cost: Depending on the benchmark, a 5% performance deficit compared to the Abit Fatal1ty AN8 we brought in should be the maximum even with a budget board . Despite this possibly being justified by the fact that many users who want to upgrade are prepared to make sacrifices, we should point out that they will do so only if the price is right . " This is the most negative part of the entire review, and it's only because they were using the original BIOS . If you went a little more in depth into studying the product you would find out that this issue has been solved (nevermind perhaps reading what I post) . I guess what bothers me is that you didn't put much effort into what info you gave me, you just tried to pass on your opinion rather than gather facts for me . Make some pro and con's, product comparison maybe; tell me exactly why buying the setup you have is going to be any better than what I'm thinking of as my choices evolve . Plus most of your answers were just, Negative, that's a bad choice and you should only buy going the most expensive route you can . The most bothersome part about it is that you're one of the only people that replied in this topic . I'm not getting multiple views on the subject and it makes it all the more difficult to trust your judgement now that I've found that you aren't even trying to be helpful anymore, but seem to want to beat me . Ya, in the end I'll be the one deciding how to spend my money, but hopefully I can make an informed decision and not just settle for the most expensive route . Last thing, just because I'm buying the board that makes you believe for some reason that I'm being over prepared . What it sounds like to me is that you just don't want to except any new ideas because you're too spoiled with what you've, and/or have had bad experiances in the past with hardware and you've become jaded . Or it could be this last one (hopefully not) you're just an ass of a person in general and it has nothing to do with other people . I don't like lameness .	ojibwa (8968)
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