The New AMD Building Thread

What are the WD Passport HDD, they're driven by USB. They run very cool and Quiet. Movie transfers seem very good 30 to 45 seconds on a 700mb file[500gig HDD]
Bought this in Conjuction with WD Media Player. Both were a 100.00 bucks ea

 

Sam,
I was actually talking about the 150! LOL!!

Russ

 

WoW! That's impressive! I wish they gave the model of the Seagate 250 though and it's specs, because there are three, one with a 8MB, one with a 16MB and one with a 32MB cache. The 8's and 16's that have the PMR & NCQ just smokes the lesser 32MB by almost double the speed. I can see the Native Command Queuing makes the biggest difference, where as the Perpendicular doesn't make any real difference in speed, it's just less likely to have any magnetic corruption from sector to sector on the drive, and should be quieter.

With those SSDs, you can see the effect the NCQ and the cache has on them. Jesus, they are so much faster than just a few months ago. I'm impressed!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Anybody tried the new Mozilla Firefox v3.5

 

Well...I thought I was, guess not LOL! Momentarily.

 

Rick,
I tried it just the other day! I still had Hotmail problems with it sometimes sitting there with that little yellow window that says loading, but not all the time! And of course the YouTube video plug-in gets shut off by Mozilla so you can't download them!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

I'm running the FF3.5 as of early this morning.A big improvement IMO. A lot smoother and no problems so far.They brought back a lot of add ins that wasn't in the last few releases.I don't know about hotmail but Comcast mail's not screwing up like it was, so far at least.

 

The 150GB is a little faster and quieter (though a little less reliable and compatible), and is indeed newer, but not that new. It's been around at least as long as Socket 939. I'm pretty sure we were still limited to no more than 250GB at the time, maybe 300.

 

Does anyone know of a good site offering the following comparisons:

AM2 versus AM2+ versus AM3?

Phenom X4 versus Phenom II X4?

Also, I'm looking for a top notch motherboard without the top notch price. I assume 780GX is the current best chipset. I need at least one eSata port. Any ideas?

Thanks,
Toad

 

You don't really need comparisons.
AM2 = old platform for dual cores
AM2+ = first platform supporting triple and quad cores (I believe)
AM3 = new platform supporting the better AMD triple and quad cores, also supporting DDR3 memory (but this isn't compulsary)

Phenom X4s are absolute crap. Phenom II X4s are the ones that are actually worth buying.
790FX is the best chipset. 790GX is the lower-end one that offers integrated graphics. 780G is the old one, 770 is the budget one.

 

Yah, that pretty much sums it up. Although it was kinda funny with one of my AM2 boards (K9N6SGM-V). They couldn't seem to make up their minds whether it would support "Phenom Processor." I chalked it up to it being an 89W MAX MAX board. There was a 94W Phenom, but I guess that was too much for my board. Not really disappointed about that since the first edition Phenom was a joke.

If your a gamer or Overclocker, either the 790FX, or 790X is a good choice. If you just need an "Office Like" computer, then the 790Gx is a good choice with its capable on board graphics, with the gaming upgradeability option later.

 

ToadWiz,
It's not so much a case of the sockets, it's the chipsets. For instance if you put an old Athlon x2 4800+ in an AM2+ 780GX motherboard it will improve it's performance by about 17%-19%. You can't put it in an AM3 motherboard, because the chip has no DDR3 controller!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128387

Probably about the best board for the price, at the moment. For all it's features, at $110, it's a bargain. I have essentially the Same motherboard in my 790GP-UD4H, only mine has the On Board Graphics!

Take a look at this 790X motherboard. It would suit your needs and give you something you can eventually Upgrade to a full AM3 chip with DDR3 and open up some new features on the motherboard you didn't have before. It's also ready for CrossFire when ever you are! It leaves you a lot of upgrade paths without having to buy everything at once. Pick up something that you can use now, like the AM3 Phenom II. Next maybe get another ATi video card when you are ready (you need ATi for CrossFire), and get your graphics going good. your final upgrade would be a 790X AM3 Motherboard, and nothing would take a big bite out of you A$$ doing it!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128378

There's also a 790FXT that has 10 Sata Ports if you plan on needing that many!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128377

I'll never need 10 Sata ports, so I'll stick with the $110 model and save $70! LOL!!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Surely you can put an old CPU in an AM3 board if it uses DDR2 memory?

 

Sam,
I haven't come across an AM3 MB that's Not DDR3, and without the DDR3 memory controller in the chip it won't work. The "so called" AM3, AM2+, AM2 motherboards are almost all DDR2. Jetway has two motherboards that have both DDR2 & DDR3, but who wants a Jetway that's limited to 4GB of memory, either way? They don't even show either motherboard on their own web site! That doesn't exactly inspire much confidence in future customer Support and bios upgrades! LOL!!

Russ

 

Then what's this?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128387

 

Well...wonderful! I can see what i'll be doing in the morning. My primary system just lost internet connectivity. My link speed shows good, Ethernet shows connection, so im leaning toward a driver issue. Since its windows 7, I can't say im surprised. Guess there's another kink needing a fixin LOL! It was rather out of the blue, so im a bit nervous about that. I hooked my ethernet cord to my offline secondary, and its green across the board! Meh, im to tired to work it out now. I'll probably be half a second from dreamland, and it'll hit me LOL! That happens more often than not

 

Not quite as bad as my dilemma. I have a dodgy motherboard that will be really expensive to replace, but it didn't come with a box so I can't really ebay it, and it didn't come with the sound board so I can't return it. I can't really afford to replace it, but if I don't replace it, I have a really expensive PC sitting here depreciating without being much use...

 

theonejrs, sammorris : I just bought this Board
GIGABYTE GA-MA790X-UD4P AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 790X ATX AMD Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128387

I plan on useing an AMD Athlon 64x2 6000+ AM2,with it
any thoughts on what memory would best suit this marriage
Would the DDR3 be better ? Would 2-2gig be better then 4-1gig
Timing on the DDR3 seems to be higher most seem to be in the 7s & 9s
Voltage seems lower then DDR2-which I guess is better

 

Sam,
It's a DDR2 only 790X that can run AM2, AM2+ and AM3 on DDR2 memory! Any socket AM2 chip will work in it. The Jetway's had 2 sockets for DDR2 and 2 sockets for DDR3. They are AM2+/AM3 only! You can't put your old socket AM2 4800+ in it, even using DDR2. It won't work! No bios support! I guess it makes sense! MB manufacturer's don't want to support 4 generations of CPU, so from now on only CPUs for AM2+ and up are going to work. It's still pretty nice that AM2 is getting a decent send off. Biostar and Gigabyte have a couple of really good 790 motherboards, but I prefer the GigaByte over the Biostar because the BioStar has HD3300 OBG, while the GigaByte gives you heat pipe coolers for the NB and VRMs instead! It also overclocks very well! I haven't found any more DDR2/DDR3 motherboards either, so there's only about 20 or so MBs left that can run all three platforms!

Russ

 

You mean Socket AM2 chip, not Socket 940 - not the same