not up to date with current hardware, need help.

leishi85

I haven't been reading every new article about computer hardwares like i used to a year ago, so i don't really know what's the best stuff around is.

a friend asked me to help him pick out some stuff for his upgrade, he is currently using a p4 2.4gh machine, and he is looking to upgrade his motherboard, CPU, RAM, video card, and he is looking to go athlon 64.

The budget is around 1000 for the above mentioned items, so what's good guys??

w00t!!, want the best possible, don't want to give him any excuses that intel is better than AMD.

thanks.

leishi85

gotta give it a big B.U.M.P, come on guys, i know u can do better than nothing

profdlp

leishi85 wrote:

...he is looking to go athlon 64...

Socket 939 for sure; Socket 754 will have limited upgrade potential.

I've been very happy with my MSI K8N NEO2 PLATINUM (Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce3 Ultra). I put an A64 3500+ in it and it definitely rocks.

It's not a PCI-E board. If you want to go that route, keep looking.

OCZ Gold Series (Speed DDR 400 (PC 3200), Cas Latency 2, Timing 2-2-2-8) is sweet, but you ought to ask Mackanz what would be best for whatever system you select.

Patriot RAM is nice, too. Make sure you go for the "Extreme Performance" stuff.

Whatever you get, make sure it's dual-channel.

I'll leave the Video Card recommendations to those who know better about that sort of thing than myself.

leishi85

yes he will go with socket 939 for sure, but i thought nforce 4 based board would be better, i was thinking going with DFI, and pci-e video card will also be the route.

more recommendation people.

profdlp

leishi85 wrote:

...i was thinking going with DFI...

The DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 SLi-D has been a favorite around here.

leishi85

i was looking at newegg for the DFI board, but i saw two, and can't really tell the different except for one supports sempron and one doesn't, and the one that doesn't support sempron is 30 dollars cheaper

http://www2.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Manufactory=1307&PropertyCodeValue=709%3A7495&PropertyCodeValue=0&PropertyCodeValue=0&PropertyCodeValue=0&PropertyCodeValue=0&PropertyCodeValue=0&PropertyCodeValue=0&PropertyCodeValue=0&PropertyCodeValue=0&PropertyCodeValue=0&PropertyCodeValue=0&PropertyCodeValue=0&PropertyCodeValue=0&PropertyCodeValue=0&PropertyCodeValue=0&PropertyCodeValue=0&PropertyCodeValue=0&PropertyCodeValue=0&PropertyCodeValue=0&PropertyCodeValue=0&PropertyCodeValue=0&PropertyCodeValue=0&PropertyCodeValue=0&PropertyCodeValue=0&PropertyCodeValue=0&description=&MinPrice=&MaxPrice=&SubCategory=22&Submit=Property

what else is different?

profdlp

If you're talking about the two most expensive ones, the only other difference I see is in the RAID options.

Thrax

The more expensive of the SLI-DR also has an onboard audio option that the other one doesn't appear to have.

profdlp

Good eye.

6 Channels vs. 8 Channels

leishi85

any other inputs about the other hardwares?? like the ram and video card and cpu.

he will be doing a little overclocking, since i convinced him that he should because it is just morally right.

Mt_Goat

Thrax wrote:

The more expensive of the SLI-DR also has an onboard audio option that the other one doesn't appear to have.

Neither has onboard video. The difference is that as Prof mentioned, the more expensive one has an additional RAID controller for a total of 8 SATA ports. 4 are by way of the Nvidia RAID and 4 are by way of a Silicon Image controller. In addition there are some extra goodies like a Z-Box and monitoring and diagnostic readouts for the front of your case.

edcentric

Look at the recent anandtech reviews of memory on this mobo. Some good info.
The DFI LP mobo will deliver over 3.5V to the memory if you need it, and there are some ways to make use of it, can you say 300 fsb.