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Building an Athlon 64 and need input
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Posted by: taguy
Ok I have honestly never owned anything but a Pentium PC. I have heard alot of good things about AMD though. I am building a second pc because my other half says she never gets to use to pc between my games and me on the net lol.
I need advice on a cpu for my new pc though. I am looking at trying to build one that will play my on-line games better then my pentium. This is the system I have now
MSI neo2 motherboard
P4 3.0Eghz Prescott cpu
1.27g pc3200 ram
Radeon x1600 pro 256mb video card
Sound Blaster Audigy
80g hard drive
Now the second mother board I have is a MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum edition. Says it is designed for an Athlon 64 socket 939 processor. Now AMD processors seem to be alot different and I have no clue about them lol. What cpu would play games like WoW and CoH/CoV better then my pentium. I will probably be using another x1600 video card and probably at least 1g ram at first. I was thinking about getting a AMD Athlon 64 3700+ w/1mb cache but like I said I have no idea how this cpu compares.
Now don't get me wrong I have no complaints with my current pc but I figure if I am building another I wanna try and get better performance.
Thanks for your help in advance 
Posted by: goranpaa
Hi!
The 3700+ is a very nice choise yes.
But if your MSI mobo can use a dual core AMD X2 3800+ ? ( Maybe a BIOS update can take care of that?) And you think you can shell out some more money on the CPU? That would be the best bet.
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Manchester 1GHz HT 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket 939 Dual Core Processor - Retail $295.00
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...N82E16819103562
But the 3700+, will handle any game you throw at it. And do it very well.
But I would get the Geforce 6800GS (AGP) instead of the X1600. Even if it costs somewhat more. Or a X800 GTO2 or X800XL (AGP) if you can find them for a good price. And take advantage of the 4 more pixel pipelines for ex.
For RAM, this is a pretty cheap and very nice RAM ( Timings T1. 2.0-3-3-6).
G.SKILL 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Unbuffered DDR 400 (PC 3200) Dual Channel Kit System Memory - Retail $89.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...N82E16820231012
I use sutch RAM for my second AMD rig socket 754 SLI. And they work beautyfully.
I have owned a couple of Pentium 4 rigs.
But when it comes to gaming, the AMD rigs are outstanding.
Even my socket 754 AMD rig is faster than any of the Pentium rigs I had before. And then the s. 754 AMD, does'nt support dual channel RAM.
Posted by: goranpaa
I checked MSI's list of AMD X2 compatible mobos. And if you update the BIOS to v. 1.9 it should be o.k. according to MSI.
http://www.msicomputer.com/msiforms2/Athlon64X2.asp
EDIT:
A third way you should take under consideration, is maybe to try to sell that MSI mobo. And get a PCI Express motherboard and a PCI E videocard instead. This will be a better way to go for future upgrades.
And also the PCI E videocards are cheaper. And many of the latest models and even the upcoming ones, will be PCI E only.
This is a nice and not so expensive motherboard:
EPoX EP-9NPA3ULTRA Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail $85.00
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...258#DetailSpecs
And with this videocard:
eVGA 256-P2-N553-AX Geforce 7600GT CO 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail $189.00
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...N82E16814130283
Include the G.Skill RAM and that AMD 3700+ And you will have a nice gaming rig, that will work well with the new Windows Vista.
Just remember, that AMD motherboards are 24 Pin ATX power connector and Intel is 20 Pin.
So you may have to get an ATX converter 20 to 24 pin for your PSU.
ASPIRE 20 pin to 24 pin ATX Power Supply Converter Model CVT2024 - Retail $3.75
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...N82E16812201001
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