Mobo + VGA spec needed

Hi to all. I 'm putting together a new rig but can't decide on wh
ich mobo and gfx card to get. Was hoping someone could share their experiences on such matters. here is what I've settled for so far:

Corsair HX520W modular PSU
Antec P180 black
Athlon X2 4200+
Seagate 7200.10 320GB 16M

RAM (1gb, DDR2, Dual Channel) either of:
Corsair (2x512mb) XMS2 PC6400 CAS4;

OCZ (2X512MB) PC2-6400 Platinum CL4

GeIL (2X512mb) PC6400 C4

I'm looking to spend around 100 bucks on each of mobo and vga card. also if any better alternatives to above please tell. thanks

if you goto £110-115 on a card you can get a 7900gs otherwise you in 7600gt area which are good but 7900gs would be alot better

also do you want an sli board or just standard

although tbh if you dont have the bits yet i'd buy acore2duo 6300 or 6400 and a board like the gigabyte ds3 £90ish abit ab9 £85 and the 6400 is £150 6300 about £125 gonna give you alot better performance and overclock really well

Hi thanks for replying. firstly I forgot to metion I need AM2 socket board. I won't be needing SLI or Crossfire, though I would like as many featues as say the FOXCONN C51XEM2AA if such a board exists.

On the issue of intel, I heard a rumour a while ago that on most intel systems there is embedded DRM technology; any credence in this?

what about the ATI range, say the sapphire radeon X1950Pro? how do these stack up against the NVidias?

x1950 pro is about £130 a little more than the 7900gs but definitely worth it didn't mention it as thought it may be to far above your budget i got a 7900gs the week before x1950 pro came out and wish i'd waitied

not 100% sure about drm on intel

boards
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=405144

this one is supposed to be a good board
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=467402
review here http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=7074&page=1

ideally as the review says an nforce 590 board would be better but the price on those is near £150 so your choice

hope this all helps

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PROMISuser

firstly I forgot to metion I need AM2 socket board. I won't be needing SLI or Crossfire, though I would like as many featues as say the FOXCONN C51XEM2AA if such a board exists.

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not for $100 ...
Worth looking at the abit nF-M2 nView as it's an amazing little board for ~$90 - leaves you an extra $10 toward your gfx :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PROMISuser

On the issue of intel, I heard a rumour a while ago that on most intel systems there is embedded DRM technology; any credence in this?

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on most Intel machines with the 9xx series chip sets there exists the TPM module.
on most XP machines it is used for extra security (think the IBM fingerprint
scanner) apart from that it remains dormant.it will exist on forthcoming chip sets from nvidia and ati.
see here

thanks Danroyle, the K9A looks about right. I've been dead set on an AMD for a while (the performance comps I read at the time were against the old Intel Dual Cores - AMD murdered them!) but I've just been on THWG and the conroes look convincing.

Only thing is, (To alsenior) I hear AMD or affiliates don't do DDR/TPM, is this right? You say Intel's TMP is nothing to do with DRM, or rather that its dormant. is it then possible that at a point in future, patches or updates might wake the sleeping beast?

Also you say that Nvidia and ATI will be releasing this stuff on forthcoming lines. is that to say there are none on the current market, and if not which ones might they be?

I would love a conroe, but DRM makes me nervous. with this in mind, AMD or Intel? - the pirate's choice ;-)

(PROMISuser is a fictional character and any references to pirates is coincidental. No pirates were hurt in the making of this message)

Just to clarify that last post, by 'pirate' I mean just P2P stuff for personal use, not ripping cd's on an industrail scale or anything. I just want to know that all my files won't lock up one day (or get me locked up!). Has anyone you know of had such issues?

Back to the original post, I'm still not sure if I should get ATI or nvidea vga card. If I go AMD is it best to get the same make as the chipset?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PROMISuser

Just to clarify that last post, by 'pirate' I mean just P2P stuff for personal use, not ripping cd's on an industrail scale or anything. I just want to know that all my files won't lock up one day (or get me locked up!). Has anyone you know of had such issues?

Back to the original post, I'm still not sure if I should get ATI or nvidea vga card. If I go AMD is it best to get the same make as the chipset?

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either card will work well its mostly down to whether you like ati or nvidia and if you ever want to do sli or crossfire obviously then board choice factors in but in terms of price vs performance the x1950pro at £130 has got to be your best bet it will run any game out there at a good resolution with a decent amount of aa and af

and i know lots of people with conroes who do p2p and have no troubles at the end of the day if there are more than one of you living in the house they cant put you all in prison so just deny it say some little hacker must have done it :)

Thanks guys, much kudos. One more thing, of the memory sticks I outlined earlier, which is the best for performance, reliability and bfyb? Are there any other ones I should consider? Apart from gaming would I notice a big performance difference between 1 and 2 gigs, especially in multitasking? As I'm gonna get either a 4200+ or a 6400 conroe and moderate OC'ing, is 800mhz memory overkill, or would 667 do just as well? cheers.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PROMISuser

Only thing is, (To alsenior) I hear AMD or affiliates don't do DDR/TPM, is this right? You say Intel's TMP is nothing to do with DRM, or rather that its dormant. is it then possible that at a point in future, patches or updates might wake the sleeping beast?

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amd are on the tpm promoters list right next to intel.
see here

tpm is dormant under win xp. but vista will bring it's true potential and with it's drm features you should be scared. but it will be in all platforms eventually

hmm, interesting stuff... Looking thru the Q&A pages of that last link looks as though the TPM chip is 'usualy' grafted onto the mobo. from further reading however I've seen mention of it embedded in certain CPU's (Intel) aswell, memory curtaining and all.

https://www.trustedcomputinggroup.org/faq/TPMFAQ/
'Are systems with TPM's available?
Desktop, notebook and tablet PC's with TPM are available from Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Intel, Lenovo, Toshiba and others.'

No mention of AMD there. I'm wondering if they've just not got round to doing it yet, but I'm sure they will. I think the thing with AMD is that they don't do mobo's or chipsets, so its down to 3rd parties to take care of that stuff. just a question of which ones do TPM and which don't. What I need is a list of parts or manufacturers (or even full system specs) that omit TPM/TCG architectures. The only thing I have found is 'TPMmatrix' but it lists only ones that have it and in any case is 2 years outa date. Do you have the knowledge (or a good link)? thanks for your time.

AMD make chipsets, under the name ATI :)

your right...jeez, anyone would think I was some kind of noob ;-S

shaithis, any thoughts on that mem question from earlier?

Well, all 3 are pretty much of a muchness :)

Might be worth digging around to see which overclocks the best (I know the OCZ stuff goes quite a distance witha bit of latency tweaking, mine was hitting well over 500FSB).

Still, I would go Core2Duo....can't see any point in buying AM2 currently.