Legit Reviews

Well... I've pretty much had it. I'm giving up on trying to find somewhere or someone that'll sell me a 478 PCIe motherboard. Plus, what with TES: Obvilion coming out on the 20th...

Yeah, I've waited near five months and I'm just tired of waiting.
My current system will probably go to my father who is to this day is still using an old PIII 500mhz system from 2000 (though upgraded to 768MB RAM).

Anyways, my new setup as follows:
$309 - eVGA GeForce 7900GT CO
$130 - Opteron 144 939
$67 - ASRock 939Dual AGP/PCIe/CPU slot
$67 - Corsair VS 1x1GB PC3200
$100 - Antec LifeStyle SONATA II with 450W
$95 - Seagate 250GB SATA
$24 - Airnet 802.11g PCI
$37 - Samsung DVD Burner SH-W162Z
$45 - Shipping and Handling

Total: ~$874

I'm on a budget if you haven't noticed yet.
Can't go any higher than $1000 as I need money for books and such.

I am planning to upgrade to 2GB eventually, that's why I only got a single stick. Hopefully single channel won't have too much an impact on the system's performance until then.



I'm still not entirely sure on the parts so I'm going to wait a few days and play around with alternate configs, but this one seems pretty close to the final setup. Suggestions if any are welcome.

Looks good! You might want to get more than a stock cooler if you are going to OC. I have an Si-120 that I'm not useing that I plan on lapping and selling...someday I'll get to it.

Kerii wrote:<<<-----------I am planning to upgrade to 2GB eventually, that's why I only got a single stick. Hopefully single channel won't have too much an impact on the system's performance until then.-------------->>>

single channel won't effect your 939 cpu if you run it at DDR500 or so. see, the reason that 939's need dual channel is that they have an Internal FSB from memory controller to core. this intermal FSB on 939 cpu's is rated for 1000mhz, like it sez on the box. the 1000mhz bus requires 4000mb/s to be satisfied by the core. DDR500 is PC4000 but we all know that it's more like DDR550 that makes the 4000mb/s grade.

the internal FSB in the cpu is locked and won't be affected by any overclocking. so until you get your second gig stick, running your single at around DDR550 to get 4000mb/s in system ram bandwidth, you'll have a happy and fulfilled core.

the 754 is another example. it has an 800mhz internal locked FSB from memory controller to core. the 754 core requires 3200mb/s and running the single channel DDR400 should satidfy that need. but we know that DDR400 doesn't give us 3200mb/s, about DDR420 gives the reuired bandwidth and anything over that is wasted on the core. but the tighter the timings and the higher the mem bus, the snappier our systems are, so don't neglect timings either. ;)

TGM

FZ1 wrote:Looks good! You might want to get more than a stock cooler if you are going to OC. I have an Si-120 that I'm not useing that I plan on lapping and selling...someday I'll get to it.

Yikes, thanks for the reminder. Just realized I forgot to include a CPU cooler. The Opteron is just an OEM.

$45 - Scythe SCNJ-1000

Anyone know if that's good enough for the 144?

TheGeekMistress wrote:...

Went right over my head.

geez, no one understood any of that?

i feel... i dunno.... like i have all this knowledge but no one can undetstand my posts... kinda makes me feel worthless.

TGM

*sulks away*

Hey wait, come back! I was just kidding.

I'm just lazy, so sue me.

Anything I can't understand in one pass I'm usually too lazy to reread, lol.

Kerii wrote:Hey wait, come back! I was just kidding.

I'm just lazy, so sue me.

Anything I can't understand in one pass I'm usually too lazy to reread, lol.

don't you have that curiousness about things you don't automatically understand?

i know i do. i can't stop wanting to learn or understand new concepts and or technology.

i'm sorry if it was too much for a one time read.

TGM

Hey TGM,
(sorry to jack this post)
Good insight on the ram vs. cpu. I knew this was an issue, but never crunched the numbers or looked them up or whatnot. You're just helping out all us lazy folk :-p, don't feel bad. Keep up the good work!
-Greg

ok, thanx greg


Kerii,
the short of it is, run your one stick single channel ram at no lower than DDR500 (250mhz) and your core will never notice the difference.

TGM

That I understood easily.

Thanks for the help.

it sounds so boring and non informational that way.

i haven't explained why it would be good to do that and therefore giving you no recourse but to blindly follow my directions.

i find that not to be challenging and people learn nothing.

i spose many people are like that, they just like to be told what to do.

i can't stand that personally. someone tells me what to do with some setting or something, i have to, no must, research it out and come to my own conclusion, even if it's the same as the person telling me what setting or such to change.

my mind works overtime on everything. maybe thats the difference, then i have OCD too. but thats another story. but it certainly keeps me on a subject till i know as much as a person could know without getting a degree on the matter, lol

TGM

Don't want to sound ungrateful or anything but I'm actually planning on underclocking the CPU and leaving the RAM at stock. I honestly have no need for that much power most of the time.

I uhh... kinda already researched around, but in the opposite direction. So... sorry if I seemed less than enthusiastic about the advice.

Plus... this last case has given me a burning hatred of whiny fans and just fan noise period. Which is why I'm looking into a quiet setup.
(If you haven't been able to infer it from my choice of video card, case, PSU, hard drive, DVD burner, and fanless CPU heatsink.)

well, like i had said in the post that "went over your head" the core has a locked 1000mhz FSB that requires 4000mb/s memory bandwidth to operate at full potential. if you do not give it the 4000mb/s your performance will suffer greatly in gaming and transcoding or dvd burning and large jobs like these.

underclocking does not change the internal memory controller's bandwidth requirements. it's a locked FSB.

the HTT bus is not the FSB.

TGM

Well... I'll manage.

If the slowest CeleronD/Sempron can do 43FPS in FEAR at 4xAA 1024x768 on a 7800GT (and that being only 1 frame behind an FX-57... i.e. GPU limited), I think an Opteron and 7900GT will do fine.
I don't play RTS that much anymore, so that's out too.

Well, not like CPU really matters anymore these days. Honestly, any money spent over $100 for a CPU would be better spent on the graphics card for game performance.

I can always change it back to stock or overclock it when I get around to my Premiere work.

for the majority of things i have to agree with you. By going with the opty you have you should still see 2.6ghz in an overclock if you want to push it.

infinitevalence wrote:for the majority of things i have to agree with you. By going with the opty you have you should still see 2.6ghz in an overclock if you want to push it.

he sez he wants to under clock the cpu... but what i'm trying to stress is that no matter what speed the cpu is running the internal memory controller needs 4000mb/s to operate up to it's potential.

if you're running at 2.0ghz the internal memory contrller still has a locked FSB of 1000mhz to the core, so it will still require 4000mb/s to actually work to it's full potential no matter the clock speeds.

in NF2/Barton or i875P/P4 terms, it would be like running your core at 3.2ghz on a 100mhz FSB.

TGM