Hardware upgrade

EchoDown said:
From word of mouth...Asus is the more stable of the 2....
However theyre both great,good stuff.
Edit:I wouldnt wanna debate right now!hehe
Edit2:BTW Mike,the power supply should not be overlooked,they are often the cause of instability.
Click to expand...

Thanks EchoDown
The current powersupply is a K-Mex 500W - looks good quality but does not seem a known brand:(

I hope I do not have to replace it.

The fact that sli reduces the available bandwidth for each card to 8 as against 16 - does that not largely negate the benefit of two cards:confused:
 
/me in grade 9, sort of, /me starting most of my HIGCSE subjects next year
/me did quite well, methinks

so mikef, u wanna maybe adopt me??? :p

/me wonders of grumbling that it aint fair :(
 
mikef said:
The fact that sli reduces the available bandwidth for each card to 8 as against 16 - does that not largely negate the benefit of two cards:confused:
Click to expand...
Theres an ASUS, might be the premium one u mentioned, that has SLI x16, so both cards still run at x16 in SLI mode
 
Ok...
About the 8x 16x....Cards dont even really fully utilize 8x PCI Express let alone 16x.....As far as I can see nothing is written to utilize 16x yet...Visually and performance wize no difference,at best 1fps(frame rate per second)
As for the PSU....500watt is more than enough....350 should be enough,or is atleast the minimum requirement,but it's always good to have a little something extra under the hood.
K-mex:Hmm dunno it
I can suggest the following brands:
Antec
OCZ
Power and Cooling
Enermax
The PSU will work but I wouldnt recomend it to anyone.
Edit:Basically the key to the PSU is providing enough wattage on the 12v rail....your specs should be on the side of the PSU you can post em if you want
:)
 
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PSU specs:
+3.3V = 32A
+5V = 30A
+12V1 = 17A
+12V2 = 16A
-12V = 0.3A
 
uhuh.....
Ok,wattage must be on the right rails...
Todays PC's stress the +12v rail the most
That PSU has dual +12V rails which is nice.....minimum combined should be around 25....17A on each is fine then.
+3.3V and +5v are less critical....
Looks fine I guess,again though I wouldnt recomend Kmex,never heard heard of it,but it seems ok spec wize.
 
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Hi Mike

I am also in the process of deciding on my next PC and have gone over the SLI debate in my own head many times. I also struggle to justify the cost of 2 graphics cards right now, but for a couple hundred rand more, at least you will have the option to add a second card later.

Spending R400-500 more now will mean you can save a lot later when the GPU needs to be upgraded eventually, because you will only need to get another 7800GT, as opposed to whatever is top of the line then.

And in your case, you will have something to bribe the boys with end of next year...:D

The dual 16x PCI-e Asus board that was mentioned is the A8N32-SLI Deluxe, but is quite a bit more at around R2100-2200.

BTW, where are you getting your prices from?
 
Mike, you might want to check out the harddrive. I'm not sure if you can use SATA2 harddrives on a normal SATA connection. It should be backward compatible but just make sure about that.

The A8N SLI-D and the A8N SLI Premium have normal SATA while the A8N32-SLI D has SATA2.
 
Rather strip down to 1 gig ram and then dump the extra cash into a better CPU cuz u can always get more ram now or then but u can't just upgrade the CPU just like that... U can get a nice 64bit AMD and maybe a duel core... As as i am always sayin to the AMD boys, AMD is bringing out some new toys next year pretty soon so maybe wait for that and then get those or the current chip prices will drop and get a current one for a bit less.

My 2c
 
2gig ram load times in games,becoming the norm to have 2gig for the new games......
Its not like his Cpu will be holding him back,he could go for a San Diego 3700?
Much of a muchness I would say,not to argue!!!*ducks*
I was just keeping the pricing in mind aswell,it's the PSu I would be worried about.
Asus A8N32-SLI-compatible with SATA II 3.0 Gb/s
A8N SLI Premium-4 SATA2 connectors
 
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2gig RAM is just over kill its not like it matters if the Game takes a little longer to load... I would have a better CPU that is more future proof than have a &^%$ load of RAM. I mean which is easier to do get new or more RAM or a CPU... Is that CPU that u posted a 64bit if it isn't i would defiantly reconsider... So, i don't really know AMD been an intel boy for a long time. But from what i read AMD is looking pretty good, but only the newer ones.
 
hehe
Ok,I would prefer quicker load times personally,the difference is notable.
Yes A64
The thing is going for a dual core AMD cpu would not be right at the moment,it's overkill,games havent barely begun to be made to support them Properly...you would see points increase in benchmarks yes,but this is a kid and he obviously wants cool looking graphics in his games,so that is what I would focus on.
The venice core is more than capable.
Besides AMD is coming with quad core etc late 2006 early 2007,now that is future proofing.
 
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:) Thanks for the comments guys

The prices are mostly from computersonly in Jhb
 
mikef said:
The prices are mostly from computersonly in Jhb
Click to expand...
Realised that when I saw the Gainward price :) More or less in agreement with most of the comments. I would drop the extra gig RAM and put the $$$ towards any of the dual core CPUs. My new year's resolution is getting a 4200x2 to complement the Gainward and I plan to make good on it :D
 
hehe,I just cant justify dropping something that you will notice a difference with ,for something that lacks proper support and will be outdated by the time Games actually bottleneck the CPU he is going for,in this case I think it is more about the graphics card.I am a proud owner of an AMD 3500+
Hehe
:D
 
EchoDown said:
hehe,I just cant justify dropping something that you will notice a difference with ,for something that lacks proper support and will be outdated by the time Games actually bottleneck the CPU he is going for,in this case I think it is more about the graphics card.I am a proud owner of an AMD 3500+
Hehe
:D
Click to expand...
Will you feel better if I change it to "drop the extra ram and put the $$ towards a quality 550w+ PSU" :)
 
Hmmmm,lol,I would settle for spending the extra cash on the PSU and keeping the memory....
*ducks again*
:eek:
Edit:I think one thing is clear,this system is gonna be a blast for a young gamer!
BTW the cheapest dual core on that site is double the price of this CPU,waiste of money for bragging rights.
For a Heavy hardware enthusiast with cash to experiment fine,but the advantage would come with multitasking with CPU intensive apps that which I just dont think in this case is going on.That being said,this core is well capable of hitting 2.5 with decent RAM and PSU.
 
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Thanks for the help guys

Final system:
MB - DFI Lanparty SLI DR = R1950
CPU - AMD 3500+ = R1499
RAM - 2 * Corsair 1GB DDR400 = R1800
Graphics - Gainword 7800GT 256MB = R3400
Harddisk - Hitachi 250GB SATA2 = R960
Case - Thermaltake XaserV Wingo V8000A = R820
(Total R10429)

Still considering upgrading psu
 
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