New Mainboard/GFX/RAM opinions

[zxnet2k]

Hi all,

Building a new pc with limited budget - after some searching around came across the following board:

Gigabyte AM2+ AMD770 DDR2

Seemed to have some positive reviews and at only £65 it did look interesting - however I wanted to get a 2nd opinion on it! Is this board quite an old board - or would it be reliable and quick enough to last a couple of years?

I was also looking at the following graphics card - XFX ATI Radeon HD 4850 650Mhz 512MB DDR3 for just under £100 and memory OCZ Technology 2X1GBKIT 240PIN PC2-8500 DDR2 1066MHZ SLI for just under £30.

Can anyone offer me some pointers - all opinions gratefully received

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Is the motherboard the GA-MA770-UD3?? This has the newer SB700 southbridge:

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/...e=GA-MA770-UD3

If you are buying an AMD chipset motherboard make sure that it has the SB700,SB710 or SB750 chipset.

Scan have the XFX HD4850 for around £86:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/512MB...VI-XXX-EDITION

It is on Today Only until around 1pm for around £80:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/512MB...VI-XXX-EDITION

Novatech also have the GTS250 512mb for around £89 delivered too:

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/s...e.html?NOV-250

There is also the HD4770 which is around slightly slower than the HD4850 but has very lower peak power consumption and overclocks well:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Search.aspx?q=hd+4770

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/d...%204770&d=

Also I would look at getting a good quality branded 450w to 500w PSU to run any of the above graphics cards.

I would also look at getting 4gb of RAM too as 4gb of PC2-6400 RAM can be had for under £40.

Remember you are eligible for free postage from Scan with 20 posts on Hexus for orders over £20 excluding VAT.

[Hyperviper34]

Have a look here for an alternative build for £330 which can be easily adapted if you have a bit more to spend - Clicky

[zxnet2k]

Does the PC2-8500 RAM function a lot more effectively than the PC2-6400?

At the moment I am wondering whether it would be better to buy either 2GB of the 8500 or go for 4GB of the 6400?

[zxnet2k]

Hi guys, just reading through your replies would there be much performance or price difference between the SB700,SB710 or SB 750 chipsets?

[scaryjim]

Hi guys, just reading through your replies would there be much performance or price difference between the SB700,SB710 or SB 750 chipsets?

The SB7xx is the southbridge chip (i.e. "half" the chipset) - it generally handles the IO (sata ports / USB etc). While it isn't necessarily the most important part of a chipset, the previous generation SB600 used on a lot of AMD chipsets had noticably poor performance, so should be avoided. The 700, 710 and 750 all have acceptable performance for the IO and the main differences are in feature set - the SB710 has a technology called ACC that improves overclocking by tuning the system, and the SB750 adds both ACC and RAID5 support on the SATA controller (the 700 and 710 only support RAID 0, 1, 0+1).

The SB710 is currently only available on the AMD 760G chipset (although there are rumours of a 780G ASROCK mobo with it) - motherboards based on this cost around £50.

The SB700 is featured on the 740G, 780V and 780G chipsets (the difference between those being the featureset of the onboard graphics, pretty much), as well as a few 770 chipset motherboards (a lot of these still have the old SB600 though, so read the specs carefully). These range from ~ £40 for the 740G, up to approaching £100 for some 780G motherboards, although the majority of 780Gs are ~ £60

The SB750 is found on all AMD 790GX chipset motherboards, as well as select 790X and 790FX boards. 790GX Boards start from ~ £75, with most costing £100 or more. 790X boards with SB750 are about £90, but there are only a few available - again watch out for ones with the SB600 which should be avoided. The same goes for 790FX boards - the ones with SB750 tend to cost about £140 - cheaper ones will probably have SB600.

Ebuyer is very good at quoting both the chipset in use and the southbridge. Scan isn't so much. If you're not sure about a board check the manufacturers website, or come here and ask us knowledgable types for some help

Oh, in terms of RAM your computer will run better with 4GB of DDR2-800 (i.e. PC2-6400) than 2GB of DDR2-1066 (PC2-8500). Memory speed is rarely a bottleneck, and if you have less memory data will be swapped to hard drive more often, which is a lot slower than your memory

[zxnet2k]

Thanks scaryjim your last post cleared up a lot of confusion

Reading about some potential overheating problems for the North bridge on the GA-MA770-UD3 that I was looking at, I think instead now I am going to go for the GA-MA780G-UD3 which isn't much more and doesn't seem to have any mention of the overheating trouble. It also does feature the SB700 chip and has future potential for crossfire support!