Advice for new computer

[Ron Joiner]

I have pretty much settled on the following stuff:

Antec SX1040 400w
Athlon 64 3500+ S939
Asus A8V Deluxe S939 K8T800Pro
Corsair Dual Channel 1024MB PC3200 or OCZ 2X512 DDR 3200
Arctic Cooling Silencer

My question : I have a 120gig HDD that is only ATA. Given that the Asus
board is SATA do I have to change anything in the BIOS to identify the ATA
drive.

Since this is a mid range system what video card should I look at; ATI X700
(AGP) or Nvidia 6600? Cannot afford to go 6800 or X800.

Ron

 

[Bob Knowlden]

Ron,

I have an A8V, Rev 2. I've had it for about ten days.

I believe that an ATA hard drive would be detected by the BIOS before the
SATA drives. You shouldn't need to do anything special to get an ATA drive
to be the boot drive.

(I had a little trouble with drive letter assignments at first with my A8V,
but I was trying to set up a pair of SATA drives in RAID 0 as the boot
drive. The array was originally assigned a drive letter after the DVD-ROM,
DVD burner, and IDE ZIP drive. I don't recall doing anything much to fix it,
but after a fresh XP install the array is now C:. An ATA hard drive ought to
give no trouble.)

Are the X700 or 6600 available yet? Is the X700 due to appear at all as an
AGP card? (I've read that the PCI Express version of the 6600 will be first
to market in that series. I don't see it at Newegg or Monarch yet, though.)
Are aware that the A8V can't use a PCIe card?

My own card is a 6800GT, to which I've added an Arctic Cooling NV5 Silencer.
The card peaks out about 10C less than with the stock fan, but mainly I like
the idea that the card's heat is dumped out the back of the case. The
Silencer is aptly named; it's completely inaudible over my (fairly quiet)
case fans.

I think that you may have to wait a bit to get a midrange AGP card that
supports the 2.0 pixel shaders like the X800 and 6800 cards. Alternately,
wait a bit and get a S939 mainboard with PCIe.

Or, just grit your teeth and buy the cheapest 6800 or X800 that you can
find. (Or, use an Radeon 9800 or nVidia 5900 card.)

After I swap in a Thermalright XP-120 for the retail heat sink and fan, I
intend to avoid adding any more hardware to the system this year.

Have fun.

Bob Knowlden

Address may be scrambled. Replace nkbob with bobkn.

 

[Mac Cool]

Ron Joiner:

Since this is a mid range system what video card should I look at

What games are you going to play on it?

 

[Rockin Ronnie]

Ron Joiner:




What games are you going to play on it?

Doom3 and HL2 and basically the coming generations of games. I know some
games are optimized for different cards, example OpenGL is better with
Nvidia, D3D with ATI.

Ron

 

[Mac Cool]

Rockin Ronnie:

Doom3 and HL2 and basically the coming generations of games. I know
some games are optimized for different cards, example OpenGL is
better with Nvidia, D3D with ATI.

Then you better get the fastest card you can afford. Doom3 favors Nvidia;
HL2 is expected to favor ATI. Honestly, I think the top cards from each
are so similiar in speed and visual quality that it probably makes little
difference which you buy. Wait a month or so and see how the various cards
perform under HL2.

 

[Rich Greenberg]

Ron Joiner:

Since this is a mid range system what video card should I look at

I have a similar question for the PC I am building.

I play few games. Mostly solitaire.

I am light on graphics. Mainly trimming images for my web site.

I do a lot of word mangeling, so clear text is important.

Today's Fry's flyer has a Diamond 256mb ddr 8x agp card with ati's
radion 9550 for $100 (with a $30 rebate). Also an ati radeon 9600 with
128mb ddr for $120. no rebate.

Should I consider either of these or something else? Can the 128mb be
upgraded to 256? Should it be?

 

[Dave C.]

I have a similar question for the PC I am building.

I play few games. Mostly solitaire.

I am light on graphics. Mainly trimming images for my web site.

I do a lot of word mangeling, so clear text is important.

Today's Fry's flyer has a Diamond 256mb ddr 8x agp card with ati's
radion 9550 for $100 (with a $30 rebate). Also an ati radeon 9600 with
128mb ddr for $120. no rebate.

Should I consider either of these or something else? Can the 128mb be
upgraded to 256? Should it be?

If you aren't a gamer, 128MB should be at least twice as much RAM as you
need already on a video card. See for yourself. What resolutions does the
video card support? Now what resolution will you run your monitor in? For
word mangeling, get yourself an LCD monitor, preferably NEC brand. That's
more important than the video card that is driving it. -Dave