What's hot?

Thanks Wes, bang for buck I'm kinda leaning towards the 4400+ but the
motherboard possibilities seem overwhelming. Any Faves?

"Wes Newell" <w.newell.TakeThisOut@TAKEOUTverizon.net> wrote in message
news:EmqKh.17872$qe5.1800@trnddc05...
> On Fri, 16 Mar 2007 02:54:26 +0000, John Doe wrote:
>
>> Hey People,
>> been out of the loop for a little while, sooo looking for a heads up on
>> what
>> motherboard /cpu (AMD of course)combo's are hot for oc'ing.
>>
> The AM2 dual core X2 3800+, now at about $100 will easily clock from the
> default 2.0GHz to 2.6GHz (and probably a lot more) has to be the best bang
> for the buck around.
>
> --
> Want the ultimate in free OTA SD/HDTV Recorder? http://mythtv.org
> http://mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html Usenet alt.video.ptv.mythtv
> My server http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/cpu.php
> HD Tivo S3 compared http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/mythtivo.htm
>
 >> Stay informed about: What's hot? 

On Fri, 16 Mar 2007 07:22:35 +0000, John Doe wrote:

> Thanks Wes, bang for buck I'm kinda leaning towards the 4400+ but the
> motherboard possibilities seem overwhelming. Any Faves?

All depends on what you want. There's certainly no shortage in choice.

--
Want the ultimate in free OTA SD/HDTV Recorder? http://mythtv.org
http://mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html Usenet alt.video.ptv.mythtv
My server http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/cpu.php
HD Tivo S3 compared http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/mythtivo.htm
 >> Stay informed about: What's hot? 

On Mar 16, 5:29 am, Wes Newell <w.new....RemoveThis@TAKEOUTverizon.net> wrote:
> On Fri, 16 Mar 2007 07:22:35 +0000, John Doe wrote:
> > Thanks Wes, bang for buck I'm kinda leaning towards the 4400+ but the
> > motherboard possibilities seem overwhelming. Any Faves?
>
> All depends on what you want. There's certainly no shortage in choice.

Odd, I just wrote a reply and I thought it was accepted by GG, but it
has not shown up after 15 minutes, so I'll try again.

I am in the same boat, it has been some 5 years since I built my last
two PCs. A lot has changed since then. I see the AGP interface has
been replaced by PCIe. It seems to come in 1x and 16x. What is
this? Is 16x sixteen interfaces in one connector? I would expect
that to be pretty durn fast! Do video cards now support PCIe as the
standard interface?

I see that PATA has been replaced by PATA. I guess that is good, but
some MBs still support both, right?

It looks like the current best performance/price memory is DDR2 since
it seems to have crossed over on price parity. I have seen MBs that
claim to support up to 32 GB! That seems like a lot of RAM.

If I were looking to go dual core at a reasonable price, what would
you recommend? I don't need high performance video, but I would like
for it to not impact the memory speed. My current MBs use shared
video memory and I think this sucks down the CPU too much (especially
running from SDRAM).
 >> Stay informed about: What's hot? 

On Sat, 24 Mar 2007 18:48:41 -0700, rickman wrote:

> On Mar 16, 5:29 am, Wes Newell <w.new....TakeThisOut@TAKEOUTverizon.net> wrote:
>> On Fri, 16 Mar 2007 07:22:35 +0000, John Doe wrote:
>> > Thanks Wes, bang for buck I'm kinda leaning towards the 4400+ but the
>> > motherboard possibilities seem overwhelming. Any Faves?
>>
>> All depends on what you want. There's certainly no shortage in choice.
>
> Odd, I just wrote a reply and I thought it was accepted by GG, but it
> has not shown up after 15 minutes, so I'll try again.
>
> I am in the same boat, it has been some 5 years since I built my last
> two PCs. A lot has changed since then. I see the AGP interface has
> been replaced by PCIe. It seems to come in 1x and 16x. What is
> this? Is 16x sixteen interfaces in one connector? I would expect
> that to be pretty durn fast! Do video cards now support PCIe as the
> standard interface?
>
PCIe is the new standard and both AGP and PCI are out or on there way out.
Unlike AGP and PCI, PCIe is serial. And yes PCIe 16x is the new video
standard, and PCIe 1x-4x will replace regular PCI as time goes by.

> I see that PATA has been replaced by SATA. I guess that is good, but
> some MBs still support both, right?
>
I would hope they wouldn't drop PATA for some time, as there's still a lot
of pata drives around, especially optical drives. I have noticed some
boards have cut the IDE controller to just one though.

> If I were looking to go dual core at a reasonable price, what would you
> recommend? I don't need high performance video, but I would like for it
> to not impact the memory speed. My current MBs use shared video memory
> and I think this sucks down the CPU too much (especially running from
> SDRAM).

I find it hard to recommend anything without knowing the specific purpose
the machine is going to be used for. Just find a board that has all you
need and get it.

--
Want the ultimate in free OTA SD/HDTV Recorder? http://mythtv.org
http://mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html Usenet alt.video.ptv.mythtv
My server http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/cpu.php
HD Tivo S3 compared http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/mythtivo.htm
 >> Stay informed about: What's hot? 

On Mar 25, 2:04 am, Wes Newell <w.new... RemoveThis @TAKEOUTverizon.net> wrote:
> PCIe is the new standard and both AGP and PCI are out or on there way out.
> Unlike AGP and PCI, PCIe is serial. And yes PCIe 16x is the new video
> standard, and PCIe 1x-4x will replace regular PCI as time goes by.

Yeah, that is what I figured. So 4x and 16x are faster or actually
that many serial interfaces used together? I see the connector for
16x is huge in comparison, so it is likely that many running
together.


> I would hope they wouldn't drop PATA for some time, as there's still a lot
> of pata drives around, especially optical drives. I have noticed some
> boards have cut the IDE controller to just one though.

Yeah, I forgot the optical drives. There is not a lot of push to put
them on SATA.


> > If I were looking to go dual core at a reasonable price, what would you
> > recommend? I don't need high performance video, but I would like for it
> > to not impact the memory speed. My current MBs use shared video memory
> > and I think this sucks down the CPU too much (especially running from
> > SDRAM).
>
> I find it hard to recommend anything without knowing the specific purpose
> the machine is going to be used for. Just find a board that has all you
> need and get it.

I only wish it were that simple. I have friends who have hated boards
they bought. It is not just a matter of features, it is also an issue
of reliability, operability, flexibility and just plain ease of
setting up. These are all things that don't get typed into the data
sheet or user manual. I am hoping to get some advice from people who
have used various MBs or even if it is just some general advice in
terms of features or makers I should avoid.

Even if you don't want to recommend anything Wes, I am hoping others
will.

The machine will be used for electronic design work including FPGA
(chip) design. This tends to be very CPU and memory intensive
requiring as much RAM as you can throw at it and all the CPU speed you
can gather. Having a dual CPU is great because you can run a design
and still use the machine while that is going on. The disk is not
important for this as it is not used for much until the run is over.
 >> Stay informed about: What's hot?