Another "New PC, thoughts please" Thread (£1200 Budget)

[darrensen]

Might be worth getting the 480 Version of that PSU. If you decided to go SLi then it's probably worth getting that extra juice!

[Scarlet Infidel]

Yes id agree, try and work the 480w tagan into your budget.

[herman368]

Yes id agree, try and work the 480w tagan into your budget.

okay after all its only 8 more quid than the 430W one anyway....

Do you guys think this badboy will overclock to 4000 clock speeds?

[Dark Horse]

I doubt very much you'll get the 3700 to 4000, plus if my brain is working don't they use differant Mobos?

Your brain really can't be working...

They both us the same socket...

Stock the 4000+ is 2.4ghz and the 3700+ 2.2ghz. Almost all 3000+ chips will overclock to 2.4ghz so the chances of a 3700+ not making it is incredibly slim.

The 3700+ should hopefully reach 2900mhz if you've got good cooling, which is something you haven't mentioned (unless I have missed it). What cpu cooler are you planning to get?

[herman368]

Thats the thing for the time being I'm gonna stay with stock cooling. Then in about a year I'll do a big upgrade to the whole system probably with another 7800GT, 2 vga coolers, new CPU HSF and a lcd fan controller.

The thing I'm confused about is about overclocking. Will that memory prevent me from getting to, say, 2900mhz. I read that this CPU is multiplier locked so I have to increase the "fsb" but that requires the memory to overclock. 2900/12 is about 240 so the memory wud need to be clocked another 40 mhz? Im probably so wrong, Im so new to this whole overclocking thing.

[Dark Horse]

For Athlon 64s you can overclock the memory separate to the frontside bus. The two are related by using a divider ie 1/2, 2/3 so the fsb was at 240 you could use a 6/5 divider to keep the ram at 200mhz.

This basically means the processor runs faster but the ram doesn't so you get the mhz benefit although not the mem bandwidth so its not quite as good as running both at the same speed but definately not bad.

A good cpu cooler is a must if you're overclocking, a decent one will only cost £20 but will most likely be quieter more efficient and give you a far better overclock.

[herman368]

I read that using a FSB:RAM ratio is bad for performance

"This solution, however, isn't ideal. Running the FSB and RAM with a ratio causes gaps in between the time that the FSB can communicate with the RAM. This causes slowdowns that wouldn't be there if the RAM and the FSB were running at the same speed. If you want the most speed out of your system, using an FSB:RAM ratio wouldn't be the best solution."

Regardless, I think I'll stick with the Corsair Value, I've made some rigs with them in for friends and they have performaned very well.

[herulach]

I read that using a FSB:RAM ratio is bad for performance



Regardless, I think I'll stick with the Corsair Value, I've made some rigs with them in for friends and they have performaned very well.

Is that a quote from an article on AMD64? It was bad on nforce2, and also not ideal on intel, im unaware of any performance deficit on 64, other than the obvious lower speed.

[Dark Horse]

AMD 64 bit chips have the memory controller on the processor so there is minimal performance loss unlike nf2 where the memory controller was on the motherboard so performance as lost communicating between the mb and processor.

edit:
From this article:

http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=get...141&howtoID=58

When overclocking the HTT you will force the ram to accompany the HTT at whatever speed the HTT is running. However, if you do not have ram that can scale as high as your HTT bus can, don't be afraid to use a lower ram speed in an effort to scale your HTT higher if your concern is ramping cpu MHz. We will get back to this idea later in an effort to explain why running a lower ram speed is not disastrous to performance. The benefits of the on die memory controller, and the HTT bus serve to decrease performance losses in running lower ram speeds. Additionally, the architecture of the A64 is such that the system is not penalized severely for lower ram speed/MHz as much as it’s competitor in the Pentium4.

[Olly1234]

A little more from a madshrimp article..

Since the Athlon64 had no traditional FSB, there is really no true synchronized ram speed, which implies the memory runs at same frequency as fsb. This would be the case in Intel 865/875 motherboards whereas memory running at 1:1 ratio would run at the frequency of the front side bus and at default levels 200 MHz bus and 200 MHz memory (400 MHz effective due to DDR). In the case of the A64 the memory controller(and hence the fsb) is moved onto the CPU die, so is in effect running at full core speed. Since we don’t have memory that can run at the frequency of the A64 cpus, there is no true synchronized ram speed to the bus and any setting is asynchronized to the CPU speed.

[herman368]

Okay guys I think I'm gonna order the base unit today

I hope I chose the right stuff, this badboys gonna have to last me a few years.

[beca5olo]

Exciting