I'm looking for your opinion on my New System.

[dberladyn]

Hi all,

I've been a little back on forth on some of my choices after hastily dumping $2200 on a new system. I'm looking for opinions as to what were right and which where wrong (or at least could have been better).

INTEL P4 3.0E Ghz 1Mb
ASUS PC800-E-DX
AMPX 512Mb PC4000 (x2 for a total of 1Gb)
MAXTOR 250Gb Sata 8Mb
SH 465W Power Supply
SAPPHIRE x800 Pro ViVo 256Mb


What should i have done differently?

P.S. > Is it worth it for me to buy an Soundblaster Audigy 2 sound card?

[Eaglee]

Re: I'm looking for your opinion on my New System.

Hi all,

I've been a little back on forth on some of my choices after hastily dumping $2200 on a new system. I'm looking for opinions as to what were right and which where wrong (or at least could have been better).

INTEL P4 3.0E Ghz 1Mb
ASUS PC800-E-DX
AMPX 512Mb PC4000 (x2 for a total of 1Gb)
MAXTOR 250Gb Sata 8Mb
SH 465W Power Supply
SAPPHIRE x800 Pro ViVo 256Mb


What should i have done differently?

P.S. > Is it worth it for me to buy an Soundblaster Audigy 2 sound card?

I would have gone with an AMD64 - better performance for less $$$$

[Yawgm0th]

Re: I'm looking for your opinion on my New System.

Yep. If you spend $2200 on a gaming system and it has a 3.0E, it was a waste of money. You can't even take full advantage of the video card...

Oh well. At least make use of that PC4000 and overclock the hell out of that thing.

Edit: That's assuming you're in the U.S., anyway...

[dberladyn]

Re: I'm looking for your opinion on my New System.

Really? I don't understand AMD, how much faster would my system be? What features on teh video card can I not use? Which AMD Processor and ASUS motherboard should I have bought?

Maybe I'll sell my P3.0E ($240) and PC800-E-DX($238), it was only a $500 investment, the card was more. Tell me what i should have!

P.S. Sorry for posting this in the wrong forum.

P.P.S. >> Prices are in CANADIAN Dollars.

[Yawgm0th]

Re: I'm looking for your opinion on my New System.

Well, it's not so bad if it's Canadian dollars. Still, that's around $1700 U.S. Even with high Canadian prices, that's not good.

It's not that you can't use the video card, it's that you're bottlenecking it.

If you can get an MSI K8N Neo Platinum 2 and Athlon 64 3500, those would be good replacements. It will be a bit over $500 Canadian, though...

After that, get some super cooling and overclock the processor. You buy PC4000 RAM for overclocking. It performs poorly at PC3200 speeds because of poor latencies.

[dberladyn]

Re: I'm looking for your opinion on my New System.

Yes its Canadian dollars, I also forgot to mention there is 14.5% sales tax and Windows XP Professional included in that CDN $2200 figure. sorry.

Hey.. I've overclocked to 3.4Ghz...

[Yawgm0th]

Re: I'm looking for your opinion on my New System.

Try for a lot more than 3.4 GHz... Well, what kind of cooling system do you have?

[dberladyn]

Re: I'm looking for your opinion on my New System.

How much more?

I have a 24" steel tower and I just bought a couple of case fans and and a Cooler Master Aerogate 4.

http://www.coolermaster.com/index.ph...ero%204%20Lite .

I think I'd have done better if my CPU heatsik had copper instead of aluminum. I don't understand why all heatsinks aren't copper, doesn't it conduct heat much better?

I've raised the frequency to 227mhz (FSB of 900mhz), no voltage increases, no latency changes 3-4-4-8, no agp changes. At 228mhz I had the occasional sudden reboot so I dropped it down a notch. I play FAR CRY with the settings completely maxed and witha resolution of 1600x1200. I figure this is a good stressor.

After a good hour or two of playing, if I reboot and look at the bios... I can see a motherboard temp of 25C and a CPU temp of 50-53C. What would you suggest my next move to be?

[Yawgm0th]

Re: I'm looking for your opinion on my New System.

Get some Arctic Silver 5 and maybe a new cooler because you're probably getting temperature limitation. I'd also suggest you change your RAM's tRAS (the biggest number) to 9 or higher because anything lower would be improper tRAS (and will perform slightly worse).
You are correct that copper conducts heat better. But it also costs more than aluminum and it heavier. Most HSFs meant for good overclocking are made of copper. In fact, the award they quote on that page is this:
PureOC Recommended: "I'd advice this cooler to anyone without serious overclocking ambitions."

I'm not sure how much you can get with a 3.0E, but I think you could bring the FSB as high as 250MHz with better cooling. You may also need to raise CPU voltage to get any higher.

[dberladyn]

Re: I'm looking for your opinion on my New System.

Ok.. so I am coming to conclude I've wasted a lot of money on the wrong equipment. I have a few questions about overclocking....

my frequency right now is 227mhz, this brings my FSB to 900mhz... what does that do to the AGP port and the video card? I just started noticing today that trees in FAR CRY are showing up with red leaves and trunks. Am I ruining my equipment?

You think I can get to 250 mhz eh? What would that bring me to? 3.75 ghz? Thats a 25% overclock...

I'll increase the tRas to 9.

[dberladyn]

Re: I'm looking for your opinion on my New System.

I don't see the option for the tRAS in there, maybe I need to look again. Below is what I found, bold numbers are the values present when I disable set timings by SPD. (I think that means disable auto timings).

DRAM CAS Latency 2 2.5 3
DRAM RAS# Precharge 4 3 2
DRAM RAS# to CAS# Delay 4 3 2
DRAM Precharge Delay 8 7 6 5
DRAM Burst Length 3 4

So if I make changes what should I change? CPUZ and SiSoft Sandra tell me my memory is 3-4-4-8. I can't tell in teh bios because its currenty under some form of auto setting.


P.S. My temps after playing two hours of FARCRY today where 47C/119F for the CPU and 25C/77F for the motherboard. Isn't that fairly cool? Assuming the ASUS Hardware monitor is accurate.

[Yawgm0th]

Re: I'm looking for your opinion on my New System.

If those are your choices, then it appears your board doesn't give good support for higher tRAS latencies.

If you are having video problems, it's possible that your board has no PCI/AGP lock. If this is true, then you will need to stop here. Someone else can comment on that specific board as I've never follower socket 462 boards.

Those are decent tempts. What is the CPU temp when you first start the computer after it has been inactive or not doing much (the idle temps, in other words?).

[dberladyn]

Re: I'm looking for your opinion on my New System.

The CPU is 36C/98F

The Motherboard is 22C/71F.

It's cool down here where I have my computer, that may contribute a little to the cooler temps.

I might try to go higher, I haven't had any video probs since that level, I think maybe it was just a certain texture that ATI doesn;t render properly. I think this game was designed for nvidia chipsets.

If my mother board has no AGP lock, that means that when my FSB / Frequency gets increased the AGP does as well? What does that do to the AGP card?

[Yawgm0th]

Re: I'm looking for your opinion on my New System.

It's basically overclocking the AGP bus. This does nothing for performance, but it can cause problems. An AGP bus will not overclock very far and be stable. It can mean higher temperatures on the card, which will mean artifacts. An ATI card should play any game an nVidia card will without problems. But for all I know, it has a working PCI/AGP lock. Your CPU and system temps certainly aren't the problem.

[wayout44]

Re: I'm looking for your opinion on my New System.

If my mother board has no AGP lock, that means that when my FSB / Frequency gets increased the AGP does as well? What does that do to the AGP card?

I take it that your mainboard is a P4C800-E Deluxe (you stated a PC800-E Dx to which no info can be found)?
If so then in the BIOS under the Advanced tab change the AGP/PCI Frequency from Auto to 66.66/33.33 and that will lock those buses at spec.