many queries

[BC_bones]

im about to buy components for a new system and im hoping i can get someone to answer a few questions for me

would an amd939 system running at stock speeds on a ddr400 board benefit from faster memory like some pc4400 sticks? im not really all that up on techy stuff and my pieced together knowledge leads me to belive that if my cpu fsb is running slower than the ram its gonna cause a bottleneck. but then on the other hand extra headroom for the fsb is usaully a good thing. obviosuly im more than a little confused and would really appreciate any advice before i hand over my money

second question, is dual channel worth it?

last question would i be wise to wait for the new venice chips with their sse3 jiggerypokery or are winchesters ok

cheers

[StormPC]

Don't go by speed, (PC3200...PC4400) go by quality. If you are overclocking seriously then PC3200 with TCCD chips is the way to go. Some PC3500 and up use TCCD as well which is why I say don't go by the speed.

Dual channel worth it? You mean kits or S754 vs S939? If you're talking aboout matched pairs or memory the answer is they can be. In theory you have a better chance for a higher overclock if you get a matched kit. Just like, in theory a 3500+ should overclock higher than a 3000+. Do they always? No. You just get a better chance of higher performance. In truth there is no such thing as dual channel memory, only dual channel memory controllers.

Is DC (S939) worth the extra money over SC (S754)? Depends on the CPU and your application. Many S754 CPUs will slaughter the S939 chips even though they don't have dual channel controllers. This is because some of them have double the L2 cache, something most applications seem to like. Other applications like a higher memory bandwidth more, so it just depends what you're doing.

If you want to go SLI you must go S939, and if you want to use the newest CPUs, most of them will be S939 as well. Don't listen to the futureproofing socket 754 is dead arguments though because they're categorically wrong.

It's always wise to wait when a new technology is about to be released. That way, even if you don't want to go bleeding edge at least the older stuff will usually make a decline in price so you'll get your system for less in all likelihood.

[BC_bones]

thanks for the help, youve cleared up all the grey areas. sli looks appealing but a 754 with a kv8 board seems a bit saner, going to wait untill nforce 4 has matured a bit before taking the pci e plunge.

thanks again

[HKPolice]

NF4 is very mature already. The drivers are bulletproof. There are no bugs. The NF3 S939 boards are buggy. nVidia learned from that.

[BC_bones]

you reckon that maybe i should change now? only thing is it means buying a 939 processor, board and pci-e graphics card. if it means the setup would be reasonably future proof then id be tempted to pay more

[HKPolice]

Ya, S939 is very futureproof. AMD is shifting to DDR2 in 2006 but they'll keep making S939 DDR1 cpus.

Also, Dual core cpus coming out end of this yr will also run on S939.

[BC_bones]

thanks for the help hk, going to go and pawn anything not nailed down and get the nf4 set up. who needs food when i can play wow in 1600x1200 glory

[StormPC]

Futureproofing is a myth. There is no such thing in computers.

Going S939 does not necessarily mean going NF4. The VIA chipsets are great, and you could go K8T800 (AGP) or K8T890 (PCI-E).

If I were you I'd get an AGP board and stay away from the PCI-E stuff until they release videocards that can take advantage of the features. Right now there is no benefit (unless you consider SLI a necessity) to PCI-E. By the time they do introduce PCI-E cards that utilize the extra power of PCI-E you will need to upgrade your motherboard anyway (futureproof my arse!) because any CPU available today will be a huge bottleneck.

[BC_bones]

while i get its impossible like you said storm to future proof indefinetly, moore's law and all that business. id like to make a system that will see me through the next 3 or so years while im trying to finish off a degree while working to pay for it knowing that money will be very tight. what im worried about doing is not leaving myelf with an upgrade path if it does need a new graphics card etc.. and i maybe have some spare pennies then i can get it without needing to change everything.

i think ive got myself confused over nf4 being the only current method of using pci e and how important its gonna be in the future. is it possible its going to replace agp completley?

[BUFF]

i think ive got myself confused over nf4 being the only current method of using pci e and how important its gonna be in the future. is it possible its going to replace agp completley?

VIA K8T890 chipset also is PCI-E as is ATI's Radeon Xpress 200 & I'm sure that SiS also have a PCI-E/AMD64 solution.

PCI-E will eventually be to AGP as AGP currently is to PCI graphics cards.

[HKPolice]

I wouldn't recommend the other PCIe solutions because they're less mature than nVidia. Via's drivers are questionable at best. The ATi's chipset looks promising, but I'll believe it when I see it because older ATi chipsets were a flop.

[StormPC]

The problem with the ATI based boards is that the ones available now have little to no overclocking features. They do work very well though. Stable and fast for a stock board, with no compatibility issues.

The VIA chipsets are extremely fast and stable, and although they are not the chipset of choice for overclockers they actually overclock quite well as you can see from the ASUS A8V Rev 1.2 in my sig. It has the top spot in 3DMark2001 for ASUS boards regardless of platform, OS or videocard. It has held this record for five+ months and has yet to be beaten by any other ASUS board on the FM ORB. This despite the existence of several new ASUS boards including the A8N-SLI which is of course nForce4.