nForce3 or nForce4 w/ new card?

[Wombat]

I was thinking about getting PATA<->SATA converters. A co-worker has 4 of those 250GB Hitachi drives on converters, and it's working great for him, even using the on-board RAID.

I plan on OCing whatever I get. And the Venice cores seem to be doing 30% OC with standard voltage and heatsink. But they'll be doing it with a faster FSB, too

[Jammrock]

I was thinking about getting PATA<->SATA converters. A co-worker has 4 of those 250GB Hitachi drives on converters, and it's working great for him, even using the on-board RAID.

I plan on OCing whatever I get. And the Venice cores seem to be doing 30% OC with standard voltage and heatsink. But they'll be doing it with a faster FSB, too

If you've got the cash you can always try a San Diego core. 1 MB L2 cache and overclocking abilities of the Venice core to boot. More price and harder to find right now though.

[Wombat]

I looked at them. Newegg has them. $335 for the 3700. More than 2x what a 3000 Venice would cost. I think I'd do better buying a cheaper Venice, and then spend the money again later when I can get something faster if I ever find myself processor limited.

[TnT]

Oh and I found that buying stuff at mwave.com and ewiz.com can be much cheaper than newegg even with shipping from multiple places.

[Jammrock]

I looked at them. Newegg has them. $335 for the 3700. More than 2x what a 3000 Venice would cost. I think I'd do better buying a cheaper Venice, and then spend the money again later when I can get something faster if I ever find myself processor limited.

Save up for an Athlon 64 X2 Or FX2

[Wombat]

Oh and I found that buying stuff at mwave.com and ewiz.com can be much cheaper than newegg even with shipping from multiple places.

I've never shopped with ewiz, but I don't like mwave anymore. Their availability is iffy, and their support isn't very good. At least w/ newegg, they'll likely have everything, and their inventory control rocks. Plus, the one-stop is great if you say "I bought X, Y, and Z from you, but they don't work together."

[TnT]

I've never shopped with ewiz, but I don't like mwave anymore. Their availability is iffy, and their support isn't very good. At least w/ newegg, they'll likely have everything, and their inventory control rocks. Plus, the one-stop is great if you say "I bought X, Y, and Z from you, but they don't work together."

mwave hasn't given me any problems, true on the one-stop part. I've only noticed that newegg's prices aren't always as competitive as they used to be but I've heard from others that they've gotten worse service from newegg over the years.

[Wombat]

So, the choices are made. I'm going to sleep on it before I order:

DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 Ultra-D Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

VANTEC SF9225L 92mm 2 Ball Cooling Fan - Retail
THERMALRIGHT XP-90 Heatsink - Retail

2x CORSAIR ValueSelect 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200)

Logitech MX518 931352-0403 2-Tone 8 Buttons 1x Wheel USB + PS/2 Optical Mouse - Retail

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Venice Integrated into Chip FSB Socket 939 Processor Model ADA3000DAA4BP - OEM

SAPPHIRE 100105SR Radeon X800XL 256MB GDDR3 PCI-Express x16 Video Card - Retail

There's a couple PATA<->SATA converters coming, too.

I was going with the Gigabyte K8N Ultra-9 until the last minute, the DFI seems to be just as good, with more tweaking options.

[Delany]

If you are getting a THERMALRIGHT XP-90 Heatsink then i'd assume the DFI LanPart M/B would be the better choice. Gigabyte have a habit of using a plastic backing plate on the CPU retainer on the Motherboard (my M/B is a prime example) which means that if you are going to use a Thermalright heatsink you have to replace this backing plate with a metal one or you'll probably snap it in half with the retention pressure of the different heatsink.

I don't know anything about DFI Boards though so you'd be best to check...

[Wombat]

Oh and I found that buying stuff at mwave.com and ewiz.com can be much cheaper than newegg even with shipping from multiple places.

They're having a Memorial weekend sale. Lots of stuff at 99 cent shipping. What sucks is that the $7 fan has $5 shipping, and 2x$4 for the SATA converters. Still, I guess $21 for shipping $800+ via FedEx Saver is acceptable.

Edit: After mentioning this, I shopped around. I got the SATA converters, XP-90, the exact fan I wanted, some AS5, from another store. I still spent $823 total, but got a good bit more for it. Newegg ended up with $714 in orders, with $6 shipping.

[Mikko]

Hi guys,

What do you think of VIA K8T800Pro chipset and ASUS A8V Deluxe motherboard. It looks pretty good AGP-8x board by the specs. I understand rev.2 boards will also have working AGP/PCI frequency locks, right?

http://www.asus.com.tw/products4.aspx?l1=3&l2=15&l3=68&model=238&modelmenu=1

http://www.asus.com.tw/products4.aspx?modelmenu=2&model=238&l1=3&l2=15&l3=68

[Admiral]

I have one and it's great.
There are certain issues though when overclocking past 260fsb and you have SATA drives in RAID on the VIA controller, the performance starts to drop considerably and there is also the risk of corrupt data.
That's why it's recommended to run the SATA drives on the Promise controller.

edit: also, on the memory side, the 1011 bios is stuck on the 2T command rate no matter what you set it to in the bios, so it's better to run the 1009 or 1010.03 beta bios for which the 1T command works.

[Mikko]

Thanks, Admiral

Did you ever tried the integrated sound card? Any thoughts about the quality compared to NVIDIA SoundStorm, for example? Or compared to your SB Audigy 2?

[Admiral]

Sorry, don't know, I had the Audigy 2 plugged in and the onboard sound disabled from start.

[Hati]

Hi,

looks like boards with ULI M1695/1567 chipset will be interesting for people who want to upgrade to one of the latest AMD CPUs and keep their AGP card. With the option to switch to PCI Express graphics later :

http://www.ocworkbench.com/2005/uli/m1695/g1.htm

(native AGP 8x and PCI Express x16)

Hati