Looking for advice for 64 bit system

[Don Burnette]

Hi all,

I will be getting my annual bonus on Friday, and am strongly looking at
going ahead and building a 64 bit system.
I currently have an Athlon XP 2800+ Barton running at 3200+, ATI 9800 Pro
128 mb vid card, with an Asus A7N8X Deluxe ver 2.0 mb, and 1 gb of pc3200
Corsair matched LL ram.

I am strongly considering socket 754. I know, it will not be as upgradeable
as socket 939. However, I tend to upgrade my system on a regular basis
though, and would not hesitate to move to a new mb /cpu in a couple of
years.
My thoughts are to go ahead and do the 754, to get some good bang for the
buck for the next year or two. Keep the 9800 Pro, and upgrade to next
generation when they come more available and down in price some.

Should I wait for the Nforce4 boards for the 754, or go ahead and go with
Nforce3? Is there a compelling reason I should really look at spending the
extra money right now and go with socket 939? Or perhaps wait for socket 939
pci express boards?


Any advice would be appreciated.


Thanks,

 

[General Schvantzkoph]

Hi all,

I will be getting my annual bonus on Friday, and am strongly looking at
going ahead and building a 64 bit system.
I currently have an Athlon XP 2800+ Barton running at 3200+, ATI 9800 Pro
128 mb vid card, with an Asus A7N8X Deluxe ver 2.0 mb, and 1 gb of pc3200
Corsair matched LL ram.

I am strongly considering socket 754. I know, it will not be as upgradeable
as socket 939. However, I tend to upgrade my system on a regular basis
though, and would not hesitate to move to a new mb /cpu in a couple of
years.
My thoughts are to go ahead and do the 754, to get some good bang for the
buck for the next year or two. Keep the 9800 Pro, and upgrade to next
generation when they come more available and down in price some.

Should I wait for the Nforce4 boards for the 754, or go ahead and go with
Nforce3? Is there a compelling reason I should really look at spending the
extra money right now and go with socket 939? Or perhaps wait for socket 939
pci express boards?


Any advice would be appreciated.


Thanks,

The big advantage of the 939 pin part is that it will support twice as
much memory. The 754s can only support two DIMMs at 400MHz, the 939s can
support four DIMMs at 400MHz. The price difference between the two isn't
that great, a 3500+ (939) is $251, a 3400+ (754) is $205 according to
pricewatch so I think it make sense to go with a 939 on an MSI K8N Neo2
(Nforce 3 Ultra). There aren't any performance advantages for PCI Express
at the moment unless you are planning on buying an SLI system with two top
of the line graphics cards. The NForce 4 is new and PCI Express is new so
I'd wait several more months before buying an Nforce 4 system so they have
a chance to work the bugs out. The Nforce 3 has been out long enough that
it should be as solid as it's ever going to get.

 

[Blaedmon]

I'm probably in the same boat as you upgrading-wise. I've chosen the 754
with a k8tv800 and k8nsnxp boards - both using 3000+'s. I cant see a good
enough reason to shell out more cash for 5% more performance on a 939
system. Doesnt make sense. The 754/939 chip price difference is almost
negligable, but of course you have to get the right board which supports
it - which is more cash. If youre one of these people who upgrades quite
often, then the choice is obvious. Save some cash - 3-5% performance
short-term bragging rights just arent smart.

 

[Ed]

On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 10:18:20 -0500, General Schvantzkoph

(Nforce 3 Ultra). There aren't any performance advantages for PCI Express
at the moment unless you are planning on buying an SLI system with two top
of the line graphics cards. The NForce 4 is new and PCI Express is new so
I'd wait several more months before buying an Nforce 4 system so they have
a chance to work the bugs out. The Nforce 3 has been out long enough that
it should be as solid as it's ever going to get.

I was just reading (on THG) SLI doesn't work with all games, and unless
the game is added to the video driver for SLI you can't run the game in
SLI mode. Is that true?

Ed

 

[Wes Newell]

Should I wait for the Nforce4 boards for the 754, or go ahead and go with
Nforce3? Is there a compelling reason I should really look at spending the
extra money right now and go with socket 939? Or perhaps wait for socket
939 pci express boards?
Any advice would be appreciated.

The only reason to wait IMO would be for PCI-E. If you don't need that go
ahead with any of the 754 boards that have a PCI lock. For a CPU, I'd
choose the 3400+ simply because it runs at 2.4GHz and has a 12 multiplier
and it's very cheap in comparison to other A64's running at that speed.
It's performance at stock speed will outperform a 3500+ 939 simply
because the 3500+ omly runs at 2.2GHz. And it will beat a 939 3800+ in
benchmarks that don't need the extra bandwidth of dual channel, which is
quite a few. And with a 12 multiplier, it'll be that much easier to
overclock. Take note of the very first benchmark here. The socket 754
3400+ even beats the 939 4000+. Then go through all to see if this meets
your needs. Remember that almost all benchmark charts tend to show small
differences in speed as huge with the graphs when there's really very
little difference. Look at the numbers, do the math.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2275&p=6

 

[Don Burnette]

The only reason to wait IMO would be for PCI-E. If you don't need
that go ahead with any of the 754 boards that have a PCI lock. For a
CPU, I'd choose the 3400+ simply because it runs at 2.4GHz and has a
12 multiplier and it's very cheap in comparison to other A64's
running at that speed. It's performance at stock speed will
outperform a 3500+ 939 simply because the 3500+ omly runs at 2.2GHz.
And it will beat a 939 3800+ in benchmarks that don't need the extra
bandwidth of dual channel, which is quite a few. And with a 12
multiplier, it'll be that much easier to overclock. Take note of the
very first benchmark here. The socket 754 3400+ even beats the 939
4000+. Then go through all to see if this meets your needs. Remember
that almost all benchmark charts tend to show small differences in
speed as huge with the graphs when there's really very little
difference. Look at the numbers, do the math.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2275&p=6

Great advice, and thanks to all!

I shall go ahead and order the 3400+ 754 socket. I can use my current vid
card, sound card, ram, with no problems, and throwing a new mb/cpu in will
be a piece of cake. Hopefully a gig of ram will still be good for a little
while.

Btw, is MSI the way to go for the Nforce3 mb? Better than Asus? I really
like my current Asus board, have never had a MSI.

 

[DougH]

I was just reading (on THG) SLI doesn't work with all games, and unless

the game is added to the video driver for SLI you can't run the game in
SLI mode. Is that true?

Ed

Since nVIDIA is still writing and improving the drivers for SLI, this is
true for the most part. The SLI mode kicks in for a given game only if a
profile for that game is written into the video driver. If a game profile
isn't there it is either in the works and will be there in a later driver or
the game won't benefit from operating in SLI mode so they won't write a
profile for it.

DougH

 

[Wes Newell]

I shall go ahead and order the 3400+ 754 socket. I can use my current vid
card, sound card, ram, with no problems, and throwing a new mb/cpu in will
be a piece of cake. Hopefully a gig of ram will still be good for a
little while.

Well, my first computer started out with 4K, so I would hope a gig is good
for a while since I only have 512Meg now and don't even use half of that.
[wes@wes2 wes]$ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 516040 499832 16208 0 122072 161236
-/+ buffers/cache: 216524 299516 Swap: 811240 0
811240

Btw, is MSI the way to go for the Nforce3 mb? Better than Asus? I really
like my current Asus board, have never had a MSI.

One good board from a company doesn't mean the next will be good, nor does
one bad one mean the next will be bad. So I'd just look for one with the
chipset and most of all, features i wanted.

 

[Carlo Razzeto]

The big advantage of the 939 pin part is that it will support twice as
much memory. The 754s can only support two DIMMs at 400MHz, the 939s can
support four DIMMs at 400MHz.

Interesting... What kind of limitation is that just out of curiosity? I ask
because I'm actually using 3 DIMMS @ 400MHz in my Chaintech NF3-250
motherboard.

Carlo

 

[General Schvantzkoph]

Interesting... What kind of limitation is that just out of curiosity? I ask
because I'm actually using 3 DIMMS @ 400MHz in my Chaintech NF3-250
motherboard.

Carlo

The board specs that I've seen have a two DIMM at 400MHz limitation,
perhaps the Chaintech is different or maybe it's really running your DIMMs
at 333MHz.

 

[Ed]

The board specs that I've seen have a two DIMM at 400MHz limitation,
perhaps the Chaintech is different or maybe it's really running your DIMMs
at 333MHz.

I tried 3 sticks in my VNF3-250 with BIOS 1.0, it said DDR400 on boot,
but there was clearly a performance drop with 3 sticks in it...
Sandra 2004 memory scores
2*256 = 3094/3094
3*256 = 2746/2746

Ed

 

[Carlo Razzeto]

On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 20:42:34 -0500, General Schvantzkoph
I tried 3 sticks in my VNF3-250 with BIOS 1.0, it said DDR400 on boot,
but there was clearly a performance drop with 3 sticks in it...
Sandra 2004 memory scores
2*256 = 3094/3094
3*256 = 2746/2746

Ed

Perhaps it is running the DIMMs at a slit\ly lower timing?

Carlo

 

[Lachoneus]

Interesting... What kind of limitation is that just out of curiosity? I ask

because I'm actually using 3 DIMMS @ 400MHz in my Chaintech NF3-250
motherboard.

Hmm. What capacities? Single- or double-sided?

Consulting my K8N-E Deluxe manual, I can see that it specifies a maximum
speed of DDR333 when three DIMMs are used--even single-sided DIMMs. But
maybe that's conservative, or only when paired with an older A64
stepping, or something.

Basically, the board says it supports DDR400 only when
(1) One DIMM is used, or
(2) Two DIMMs are used, with one of them in the first slot.

Three single-sided DIMMs shows a maximum speed of DDR333, and three
double-sided DIMMs shows a maximum speed of DDR200 (!).

Looks like I won't be upgrading the RAM on my system any time soon, as I
have a pair of double-sided 512MB DIMMs...

I went with an S754 3000+ when I built my system five months ago, when
S939 chips couldn't be found for under $300, but if I were building a
system today, I'd spend the little extra cash on a Winchester.

 

[Ed]

Perhaps it is running the DIMMs at a slit\ly lower timing?

Carlo

na, I always set the ram timings manually in bios, CPU-Z and Nvidia tool
both showed ram was @ DDR400 too, it was like the chipset was adding
wait states to the ram or something.

Recently I tried 3 sticks again,(2*512 ballistix + 1*256 corsair) with
BIOS 4.0, no matter what I set the ram DDR value in BIOS it boot up with
ram @ DDR200(100MHz) LOL, Oh and it ran really slow, barley broke 1000
points in sandra 04 memory test.

Ed

 

[Carlo Razzeto]

na, I always set the ram timings manually in bios, CPU-Z and Nvidia tool
both showed ram was @ DDR400 too, it was like the chipset was adding
wait states to the ram or something.

Recently I tried 3 sticks again,(2*512 ballistix + 1*256 corsair) with
BIOS 4.0, no matter what I set the ram DDR value in BIOS it boot up with
ram @ DDR200(100MHz) LOL, Oh and it ran really slow, barley broke 1000
points in sandra 04 memory test.

Ed

It's a shame chaintech is ruining what could be an awesome motherboard with
really bad support.

Carlo