nah, probably not the same thing then. What I'm talking about knda sounds like a woodpecker, if you know what I mean. tap tap tap tap tap tap tap ad nauseum while your computer hangs.

Holy pc constructors Batman!

Well, I sent out a mail to harass the guys building my pc for taking so long (always staying mildly polite tho, you know how it is, they'll screw you over even worse if you get totally pissed off), and guess what: complications.

Turns out Athlon isn't delivering the socket 745 64-bit processors to them anymore. Which means re-choosing mobo, CPU, and more importantly: gfx card! (PCI Express instead of AGP)

So...I could go for a mobo with socket 939 and AGP, but heck, in the long run I'm 100 times better off with PCI Express. Which means new gfx card, and I wasn't going to save on that...so...I guess I'll have to go nuts now already. I would have preferred to wait for the price drop in a few month's times, but screw it, AGP and socket 745 are goners anyway.

If anyone has any remarks about me making a big mistake or something they're welcome to scream tho.

ok, i've been revising my order. Not counting the case it's now:

->A8N-E mobo...looks like a beauty

http://usa.asus.com/products/mb/socket9 ... erview.htm

->Athlon64 3500+ Socket 939 / 2.2 GHz / 512 Kb processor
->cooler unchanged
->SATA HD unchanged

So, now I'm thinking about RAM and Gfx card...PCIX for the last one. Any suggestions, around the 300€/$ mark? I'm currently thinking about the ATi X800 XL 256DDR3 PCI-E, but I'm open for remarks!

Also, PC3200 ram is the fastest DRR ram around in terms of sheer FSB size, right? Just want to make sure I could overclock over 200mhz if necessary...if not i'll have to look at new ram, too.

If you're gonna answer please do it as quick as you can...I wanna make sure I get this order over with quickly, hehe. Damn lazy ass computer assemblers.

Sounds fine to me, without doing any reseearch. I don't have time for it at the moment, so you can't really go wrong. Assuming you're still looking for input in a couple days, I may revise that.

Still, your choices sound fine. To be honest, even if there is faster RAM, the price difference may not be worth the modicum of real-world performance increase you'll get. The most important things (imo) is to get decent RAM, the fastest processor you can afford, a good motherboard chipset, and of course a hgh-end gfx card.

As for the gfx card, I"m an nvidia snob, so I would always recommend you go with the best nvidia card you can afford. However, I don't have any stats to persuade you with right now (not having time to research), so that's only a personal opinion atm.

Hehe, I'm more of an Ati man as you probably know. But in the end the difference is minimal anyway and varies from game to game, when looking at benchmarks. So which brand isn't really a big deal, I guess. But I'm going with Tom's hardware PCIX summer benchmark for reference, should be good enough.

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphi ... index.html

As for RAM: I'm think of maybe getting some new ram. My mobo would have dual channel, so that means I'm better off with 2 equal bars of ram right? I currently have 2 bars of 512mb PC3200, but I'm transferring one piece to my old pc to keep that running. So, when I buy a new bar, would I be best off with another 512mb or a whole 1 gig bar? Performance-pricewise, I mean. That's my very last question, promise. If I can order by the end of Sunday i'll be happy.

I looked around a bit myself (it's not that hard, apparently )and turns out you can get dual channel memory stuff if you use two identical ram bars in the first two ram slots. Sounds logical, because it ties in with parts of the idea behind SLI and RAID and blabla.

But would that mean identical as in size, or identical-identical? (in brand and everything)

you're best off getting identical identical. In fact, you're best off getting RAM chips from the same manufacturing run. Hence why they actually sell RAM in sets of two.

That way you're guaranteed equal timings and response and whatnot. Even the exactly the same RAM from different production runs may have slightly different performance, which could potentially affect your performance. Exactly how much that REALLY matters, I dunno.

K, thanks for the input. I just ordered the ram (2 identical Apacer DDR400 CL 2.5 bars of 512mb) and the graphics card. I went with that ATi X800 XL 256DDR3 in the end. I doubted for a while between that and the shiny new speed monster, the Geforce 7800 GTX.

It really eats up all the other gfx cards in the most recent benchmarks, but I fell over the price in the end. 500 bucks is a bit too rich for my blood. Besides, I noticed that the main difference in performance between the top-end cards is in the freakishly high resolutions, genre 1600x1024 stuff. Not really that much of a difference for normal gaming.

So looking at the Tom's hardware benchmarks the X800 XL -in most cases- was only outdone by SLI stuff and the top of the line Ati cards of the moment, in 'normal' resolutions. The much more expensive GT 6800 Ultra was even lagging behind most of the time. So much for my motivation.

So the new pc is supposedly all ordered up, even with the problems in the initial order. Pray for me dudes.

nice spec mate, slightly better than mine

Hehe, thanks! Let's just hope there won't be any more slowdowns in the coming-together process...sigh. Just got a mail from the pc ppl, they expect to have it ready by Thursday. We'll see. The ram and gfx card guy I know for a fact does daily pick-ups at his provide, so that shouldn't take much longer than a few days either.

What are your specs btw BJ? Just wondering...I'd be interested to see yours too Satis. I know you have a pretty powerful gfx card, but can't remember which. (except for that it was Nvidia )

athlon xp3200+
1gig pc3200 cas 2 memory (two sticks of 512)
Asus A7n8x 2.0 MB
GeforceFX 6800 w/128MB of RAM

you guys are all slowly surpassing me, but it's ok, I can play basically any game I want at virtually any resolution I want. Though I'm dialing down the details on some of the more high-end games (like BF2).

still a decent spec satis it'll see ya right for a while yet.

Athlon64 3400+ socket 754, which means i'm a little bit stuffed for upgrades
1 gig ram (2 x corsair 512)
MSI K8N neo platinum nForce 3 mobo
Nvidea 6800GT (with zalman heatsink fitted) 256Mb (agp)

so very close to yours really ox.

No shit, that's virtually the same system. CPU isn't all that important compared to gfx card anyway when it comes to performance. It'll feel good to have the gfx card edge for a month or two around here, hehe. (i'm not counting Derf's +256 version of my card ) Call me a gloater, but for the one time I can I'm not letting the oppurtunity slip.

But yeah, it probably doesn't matter on most current games anyway, in standard resolutions all these systems can effortlessly work most games anyway. I just hope I can run Oblivion near-high.

I'm kinda glad the computer-guys' stock of 745 products ran out, tbh...in hindsight it would have been a very unfortunate choice of me to go with that in this time.


EDIT: btw, who the fuck buys Intel anymore these days? I don't anyone who's got an intel CPU, so I seriously wonder how they get business.

Companies like Dell and HP use Intel for their systems. They prolly get huge cuts from Intel or are bullied into using Intel (AMD has sued Intel over that). Plus many average consumers just think "Intel inside" is good, so they don't consider AMD.

Ahem