MBoard,CPU and Video Options

Black_Ghost_FN

I'm planning on building a new computer some day. So I have some questions...

1) I may get the Radeon 9800 XT 256MB. Is this sufficient for any game out their on full graphix, or would you reccommend a certaian 512?

2) Whats the best motherboard to support this card and what CPU should I get thats at least 3 Ghz, but the faster the better. It's important the the Board has 4 memmory slots (dual channel) (I will want about 1GB of memmory)

3) I've had some ideas for video, but what video card would you reccomend for crazy surround sound?

4) Whats the fastest DDR Ram for this setup?

Maybe you could give me a specific setup that meets these requirements?

Thanks for your time, ANY help is really apreciated!

Mark

Nightwolf

If your planning on gaming, i'd recomend a 939-pin 64-bit amd and an nvidia video card (like 6600gt,6800,6800gt,6800ultra). But thats just my opinion.

qparadox

1) The amount of memory on a video card isn't the limit of the cards capability .. it tends to be the memory bandwidth. In real world terms, the memory size is sorta like a parking lot and memory bandwidth the roads leaving from the lot. It doesn't matter how big the lot is if there's so much traffic coming and going that you can't park!

The 9800 XT is old technology, unless you're getting an ub3r cheap deal you probably want to go for one of the new gen cards (ATI X series or Nvidia 6600/6800) check out benchmarks.

2) Ahhh the MHz myth ... clock speed only matters relative to other processors of the same series. See the quote below for an explanation of this. I'll let other people debate AMD vs intel, but 512 MB dimms are cheaper than 256's so you only *need* 2 slots atm (but 2 spare are nice for upgrades ).

3) I think you mean sound card . First of all what speakers are you using / what sort of setup do you have planned. What is your intended use?

4) The "fastest" DDR ram will depend on what type of system you end up going with.

A lot depends on your use of the system and whether you're willing to overclock .. if you could give us some more guidance we may be able to help you more.

Thrax wrote:

Question:
Why does adding pipelines allow the CPU to reach higher clockspeeds? Doesn't it add complexity, which would (at least logically) keep the CPU from reaching high clock speeds, because there's more to go wrong?

Answer:
In a CPU, a pipeline is like a factory assembly line—it executes program instructions one stage at a time. The more stages there are in the pipeline, the less time each stage needs to complete its work, so the faster the CPU can cycle. While most CPUs have four to seven stages, and the Athlon is considered a superpipelined CPU with 10 stages, the P4 has more than 20 stages.

But superpipelines have drawbacks, which partly explains why a P4 doesn’t always perform as well as the clockspeed would indicate. Clock frequency is not an absolute measure of performance.

One drawback of superpipelines is the penalty they impose when the CPU must branch to another part of the program (Say.. Suddenly going from encoding a movie to loading plugins). Like an assembly line that must stop to change the kind of vehicle it’s manufacturing, a CPU pipeline must often pause to load a different stream of instructions. The deeper the pipeline, the greater the penalty during this switch. Modern processors try to avoid that penalty by using branch prediction units, and preloading registers that the CPU thinks it will have to use next.

So, by adding more stages to the pipeline, the CPU is allowed a higher speed because each stage needs less time to do the work, and when each stage needs less time to do the work, the clockspeed may rise because the demand on the pipeline isn't as high now.

Look at it this way: One assembly line has 10 steps to complete a car, and it has six minutes to build a car. That means each step may spend no longer than 36 seconds building. Each step needs exactly 36 seconds to build.. There's no room for extra efficiency, this line is assembling at maximum capacity.

Second assembly has 20 steps to build a car, and it must also do it in 6 minutes, and each step can take no longer than 18 seconds.. But here, because each step is so specialized, these steps only take 10 seconds. This line completes each car with 2 minutes and 40 seconds to spare.. Which allows them to send more cars down the line to assemble per day. But there's a problem in this one; the workers sometimes work so fast that there are errors, which may impede the next step, or the final product in total... So sometimes the cars have to be aborted and started over, thus diminishing the efficiency of this line, and reducing the 00:02:40 that this line has left to assemble. To compensate, this line has begun noticing when and where the errors go wrong in majority, and has started to predict where it needs parts to keep the errors under control.

But.. Even in the end; line two is still faster. If they added more steps to the assembly, it would reduce time per step, and increase the efficiency further.

Black_Ghost_FN

Thanks for fast replies!

Well As for the sound, I guess 7.1 or 5.1, This will be a gaming computer, and the speekers can be determined after.

For video, I just want something that can play games like halflife 2, doom 3 and farcry on cranked graphix.

Is this good?...

GeForce 6800 Ultra Extreme - ~450MHz Core, ~550MHz GDDR3 Memory (256MB), 16 Pipelines, June, Price TBD


If I use this, what would be the best MBoard? And CPU? (hopefully 4GHZ+)

I may accually want to go 4 GHz+ on CPU and 2 GB on RAM!!

Edit: I may not overclock unless I cool the hell out it. But it should be fast stock.

madmat

I'll give you the racer's mantra "Speed is a function of money; How fast can you afford to go?"

That said, what you're looking at doesn't exist, there is no stock 4ghz CPU out there, you can get an AMD A64 with a 4XXX Performance Rating but it's not actually a 4ghz chip, the speed is considerably slower.

That doesn't mean it's slow by any means, typically the A64's kick some serious butt for gaming and as you're talking about building a gaming PC I'd suggest you look into one. Soon they'll have the 4800+ with dual cores released, it's not "the" ultimate gaming chip but if you're the type that likes to play a game while having your PC doing background tasks such as encoding DiVX or xViD or encoding a bunch of MP3's from WMA's (or the like) it might be a CPU to look into IF you've got the money to burn and desire to have the biggest CPU on the block.

If you really want to go all out you could go with an SLI setup with 2 6800U's and a 4800+ and 4 gigs of ram (4x 1gig sticks) and use the new 64 bit version of XP to get some benefit from things like the new 64bit FarCry patch that's just been released not to mention the fact that 64 bit windows will allow you to theoretically address up to several (4 I think) terabytes of system ram and with Longhorn just around the corner, from everything I've seen if you want to run it it is going to be a ram whore.

For sound I'm a tried and true Audigy junky, I like the way their (Creative's) sound card's sound and the Audigy 2NX (?) has 7.1 sound support and if you get the platinum version it ofers a front mounted headphone jack/firewire/aux input which makes for ease of use at lan parties.

If you look around you'll find previews of the new A64 dual cores on several sites and from what I've read, they are pretty stout for the right user.

SoLo

Nightwolf wrote:

If your planning on gaming, i'd recomend a 939-pin 64-bit amd and an nvidia video card (like 6600gt,6800,6800gt,6800ultra). But thats just my opinion.

I agree, nvidia has great support for SLI compatible MB, this is where you have two graphics cards working as one..And the cheapest way to have this is two 6600gt of the same maker..And let me say they work great.!!! i currently have one 6600gt by apollo and i get almost perfect gameplay with maxed out graphics.and this method is cheaper than a 6800ultra..

p.s. the 512mb video cards that are coming out now are amazing i would think but theres no real big need to go with a video card that big at the moment..
just a lil info..

Black_Ghost_FN

-Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra-SLI Motherboard

-Geforce 6800 Ultra x2

What CPU should I use with this? And what RAM?

Well My goal is just to have enough to play any game on full graphics without overclocking and never have it run slow.

So I wouldn't really need two 6800's would I?

Can you just put 1 in the MBoard?

PS. Yea that Audigy is what I was looking at getting.

ryko

just my suggestions.....forget about gigabyte---most people here will tell you the same as they are just quirky boards most of the time.

if you aren't o/c'ing, i would go with asus for its stability, 2gb of of low latency ram will be plenty, and a sandiego core a64 if you can afford all of this. something like this below....

asus a8n-sli dlx
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131517

a64 3700+ (san diego)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103539

patriot 1gb pc3200 (2.3.2.5) x 2
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820220045

bfg 6800 ultra, 256mb, 256bit (1 will be plenty for all new games---can always add the 2nd later)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814143023

gonna need a new psu to power all of this stuff...

antec tp2.0 550w
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817103931

Black_Ghost_FN

Thanks Guys, that helps a lot

SoLo

um,for the buget i would go for a AMD 3400+ or even the 3200+for they are great chips...