The Official PC building thread!

you ought to be able to swap agp ati for agp nvidia without much problems just be sure to uninstall the ati drivers

 

Except of course that the 7950 isn't AGP, it's PCI express 16x. 1GB is ok, but I'd recommend two for that level of performance. Don't forget to use a beefy cooler like the Arctic Freezer 7 or the Zalman 7700/9500.

 

What u think of this?

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=241158

good or bad??

 

See the other thread.

 

HUH?

 

See the P4 vs AMD thread. You posted the same there, and that's frowned upon.

 

Hello everone...

I'm leaning toward buying this mobo because it comes with a nice combo deal on newegg that marks the AMD Athlong XP 3800+ processor down to $247 from $297.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131584

Now I'm trying to decide on a decent graphics card. Can someone please recommend the best graphics card I can buy for this mobo that will cost under $150??

I was considering this...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130017

I'm using this site to benchmark what's good...but the upper end cards are price, of course...
http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics.html?modelx=33&model1=305&model2=304&chart=79

Buy the way...I plan on playing Age of Empires III. So this is a good benchmark.

 

Another dumb question...

If I buy an OEM hard drive off of newegg, what cables will I need to buy to hook it up?

This is the setup i'm considering...

graphics card...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16814102657

ram...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16820145486

processor...
http://www.newegg.com/product/Product.asp?item=N82E16819103562

mobo...
http://www.newegg.com/product/Product.asp?item=N82E16813131584

What do you think??

Would I need any special cooling system to keep this baby cool and quiet?

Thanks everyone. Happy gaming, and take care.

 

Excellent news nephilim, I'm looking forward to when I eventually get mine...
The mobo's fine, dougsjc it's a good purchase, especially at that price. The CPUs also good, but if you can afford it, try the X1800GTO over the X1600XT, it's a lot better performing. Other than that it's all good.

 

hi sammorris and everyone . well i pulled the trigger and ordered the AMD Opteron 175 Demark ,iam not waiting another 6 weeks for the price drop which probably isnt going to be much anyway on that CPU iam set on pretty much everything else (per my sig) other than iam going to run two harddrives one for the OS and one for my data plus i ordered the Zalman 9500 should have it up and running in about two weeks , CANT WAIT !!!!!!!

 

let us know what it's like!

 

sammorris...

would this X1800GTO be sufficient?...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814241009

There are multiple different options...based on how makes it I guess?

You can also save like $20-$30 on newegg if you buy one with an "open box". Does that mean it's used, or has been returned or something? Would I have to buy cables for it?

Thanks for the advice.

 

If I got this hard drive...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144701

All I would need is an 80 pin IDE cable?

Thank you.

 

Sammorris,

You recommended this graphics card to me before...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814131007

Do you still think that'd pretty solid? Or is the X1800GTO MUCH better? The one in the link in this post would save me 80 bucks or so. So the difference with the X1800GTO would ahve to be justified.

Keep in mind that I plan on using only 1 graphics card (not 2 in parallel). I don't do anything like using multiple graphics cards, multiple hard drives, or overclocking at all. I'm an old-school just buy hard drive, processor, mobo, ram, and graphics card and roll with it kind of guy. Nothing extreme.

Thanks!

 

It depends. Did you mention AOE3? The X1800GTO is a hell of a lot better card than the X800GTO, but of course US pricing is different to UK pricing, so the difference is far more where you are. It's up to you, the X800GTO will run out of steam long before the 1800.

 

Thanks for the advice guys.

I've decided to hold off on my computer build for now. Instead I am going to wait for this to happen....

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=2800

If the price of the X2 3800+ really does drop to $169 at the end of July as this article suggests, then I will apply those extra savings toward the better graphics card. Plus the only reason I picked the mobo with the ati chipset was because newegg had a bundle deal that lowered the price of the X2 3800+ by 50 bucks. Since with the price slashes taht won't be as important...maybe i'll look into a Geforce mobo instead. I guess either is good.

Just got my 20 inch viewsonic in today. Looks pretty nice - although I don't have a modern graphics card right now that is DVI compatible. That'll have to wait until August when I update my new build I guess.

If there was a dead pixel on my new monitor, would it be pretty obvious? Or is there a way that I can test for that? I'd like to do it soon so I can return the monitor if I have to. But everything looks good to me.

 

@dougisjc,
I found a little test that does just what you want(test for dead pixels) you can get it for free right here>http://www.dps.uk.com/freeware_DTP.htm

Good luck.