Hey guys, you've been very helpful on my thread "AMD or Intel?" and I appreciate it. I was initially looking at intels for my first build but I have decided on building an AMD system. This is my preliminary selection so far: AMD 3500+ Venice or 3700 San Diego ASUS A8N Deluxe SLI mobo 1 6800GT video card for now 1 gig low latency (PC3200) ram (Maybe 2 gig???) Ram question: Can you only run PC3200 ram on AMD chips or can you go PC3500? Some have suggested that low latency is really beneficial for AMD's so is it best to stick with 3200 low lat ram instead of 3500 ram with a tad higher latency? Now the request for suggestions and opinions. Are their brands of Vid Cards, Mobos, and Ram that work better together from a compatibility standpoint and are their brands out there that don't work well together? This is my first build so I would like to learn and be wise about what brands I'm selecting so I can hopefully minimize any potential compatibility issuses or hardward issues. I'm not sold on the ASUS mobo yet either. I do want an SLI board though. Thanks for any help and wisdom you can share with me and for any suggestions. You guys have been great. Later
Your rig would be great. The SLI deluxe has been around for a while so the bug have really be ironed out and it's a slick board. Still arguably the best for SLI. You can get one with dual-16x lanes however which will be good when video cards need the extra bandwidth but it will cost you. The 3700 and 3500 perform the same as stock but if you are a heardy overclocker you'll find the 3700 can reach higher speeds, provided you have great cooling. I recommend going with Thermaltake or Arctic cooling on this one. Zalman is good but hard to fit sometimes. There's really no problem using Ram with speeds up to PC4000 (or higher even) in many cases but it's always a risk as it's not officially supported. There's really little advantage anyway unless you're into overclocking so I'd say stick with what works PC3200. It's what all the high end AMD gaming computers come with anyway so obviously there's plenty of life left in it. You can use ATI, nVidia, Matrox, etc. if you want, so long as it's PCIe it will work fine. As far as ram goes stick with the big name brands: Patriot, Corsair, OCz, G.Skill, Geil, or Kingston. I prefer Corsair and OCz myself but they're all good. If low latency is your thing then go with the Geil One series which has the over all best timings now but honestly you'll notice no difference in your framerates and day to day use. More ram makes more of a difference but 2 is mostly overkill at the moment. Check newegg out as they have and unbeatable selection and reviews below pretty much all items (if there's no reviews it's either new or for good reason most likely). As far as actual brands for vid cards go you can pretty much go with any as they don't actually design they're own cards so they all perform close to eachother. However the design of the heatsink and cooling fan has some bearing on the cards life and especially the overlocking potential (which is really easy to do on video cards). I'd go with MSI, ASUS, XFX, Gigabyte, BFG, EVGA, PNY or leadtech as they often has high quality cooling and a few extra features on the cd (and better games!).
And for the record that "unbeatable" link was autolinked as we affiliate with them, it wasn't my intent to link it
Thanks Exfo, You're right about the RAM speed. I don't plan on OC'ing but I may dabble into it a little after I run the system for a while. But yeah if I'm not OCin'g then it wouldn't be that beneficial with the faster RAM necessarily. What do you think about dual core? Is going to help in gaming at all since your gaming depends so much on the Vcards? Is it really just going to help in applications and processing data? However, does it really process faster than a single core so would it be good future proofing for the PC for future gaming? I put a new thread under the CPU,etc board asking this question. Thanks for you help and inputs, I appreciate it.
No prob man, for right now dual-core doesn't help at all in gaming. But in some current apps like photoshop and some audio programs you'll see a good boost. But it's really more of a future proofing exercise as you pointed out. Dual-core (or multi-core whatever the number may be) is pretty much the future so apps and games will definately take advantage of the technology in time. But not too soon as it's a modern technology and games take forever to develope so it will probably be about 1 1/2 or 2 untill there's really a gaming benifit. Just a guess but for right now unless you're into the very fastest filter speeds for Photoshop and audio sampling etc. I wouldn't really go for it as it will be a little too outdated when dual-core catches on.
