New PC to play TES Oblivion

[AlexK]

After a week of reading up on motherboards I'm still not sure.I've been told
that the DFI nf4 SLI has bios issues & is picky about the type of ram used, is this true?

right now I'm leaning towards this http://www.take2.co.za/product.php?id=583080 what do u guys think?Is this more stable than the DFI?

CPU - 1. http://www.take2.co.za/product.php?id=544381
2. http://www.take2.co.za/product.php?id=518796
3. http://www.take2.co.za/product.php?id=518797

Graphics Card - http://www.take2.co.za/product.php?id=1432846
Will this card work with the above 2 boards or do I need one from Nvidia?

As for the rest of the components I haven't got a clue.
btw I'd like to play the game with max settings

Please help.

[casecutter]

First off, if you are buying an ATI card, do not get a SLI board. ASUS just released their newest Crossfire board that would be excellent for you and very stable to boot. It is called the A8R32-MVP and it is the best upgrade path with an X1900. Here is a review:

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2697&p=1

This board is also supposed to be an unreal overclocker. Your best choice for a board.

Of course you should get the 4400+ if your budget allows it, but the 4200+ is also a very good choice.

[matm347]

There's plenty of info on machine specs on the Oblivion's forum, and apparently anything faster than a 6800GT should be able to play on high settings. Your 1900XTX should play it with no problems. I have the 4400+ and like it, it overclocks moderately well with mine at 2.68 watercooled.

I agree with casecutter, the new ATI chipset is very nice!!

[AlexK]

Thanks for the link I'll read up on that board later tonight.
What about the rest of the components,

does the case make a difference with regards to cooling?
how many case fans should I get, should I get a cpu cooler thingy as well?
Which psu & ram?

I do intend to overclock.

[AlexK]

Sorry forgot 1 more thing, would a 4000+ single core be better than a x2 3800? &
Is the gpu overkill, can I get a cheaper one that would get the job done?

Thanks 4 mentioning the oblivion forum mat, I keep forgetting 2 check it out.

[matm347]

I would say go with the dual core, games are coming out much quicker than I expected that support multi cores. The Quake 4 patch which adds dual core support made a big difference.
The 1900XTX is one nice card and would complement an overclocked AMD dual core nicely. IMO there's no such thing as overkill in the GPU department.

With air cooling, the case can make or break how much you can OC. I suggest searching for some reviews on the case(s) you like. You can have 10 case fans and still not flow, it's all in how well the case is designed.

[Yawgm0th]

I would say wait for the release of either Intel or AMD's new stuff. Both look pretty good (though Intel looks a bit better ATM) and both will actually give you some upgrading room (assuming Intel decides it needs another new chipset for newer processors).

[AlexK]

It takes a while for the new stuff to get here.I’ve been waiting to upgrade since the middle of last year but the SLI boards only started arriving in December last year & the Asus A8N32 deluxe got here in January of this year, waiting for the new stuff would take too long.Besides as long as I can run the games I want this year I’ll be happy.

Anyway this is what I’ve come up with, don’t know if they’re any good or not.
Please let me know if I’ll have any incompatibility issues, I’m worried about that.

Any idea what the max overclockability of the cpu would be?



Ram : 1. OCZ DDR2 PC2-4200 / 533MHz / Platinum Edition / Enhanced Bandwidth / Limited Edition / Revision 2 /

Dual Channel 3-2-2 timings.

OR



2. OCZ DDR2 PC2-5400 / 667MHz / Gold Edition / Enhanced Latency / Dual Channel 4-4-4 timings.512mb x2


Case:1. http://www.take2.co.za/product.php?id=1477797 OR
2. http://www.take2.co.za/product.php?id=532714

CPU Cooler: http://www.take2.co.za/product.php?id=550839 Do I Need This?

PSU:1. http://www.take2.co.za/product.php?id=34917 OR
2. http://www.take2.co.za/product.php?id=550859

HardDisk:1. http://www.take2.co.za/product.php?id=53125
2. http://www.take2.co.za/product.php?id=1413318
3. http://www.take2.co.za/product.php?id=1532522

CPU: http://www.take2.co.za/product.php?id=518797

GPU: Link in first post

Case Fan: http://www.take2.co.za/product.php?id=596142 Do I need more
than one or will this do?

Motherboard : The 1 that casecutter recommended Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe
If I can find it.Haven't had any luck so far.Can u recommend something else if I can't find it?

Am I forgetting anything?

[matm347]

Well, the AM2 socket has not shown any improvement at all as the DDR2 speeds are not what they need to be. Intel has finally gotten better, but still needed to be overclocked to over 4Ghz (which it does pretty easily) to best AMD in gaming, again, the slower DDR2 has quite a bit to do with this. And if Intel sticks with their track record, they will need probably 2 or 3 different chipsets for the new line.

But you will need DDR, not DDR2 if you go with socket 939, AM2 will support DDR2. OCZ GX is supposed to overclock really well and it comes in 2gig kits and the new heatspreaders!


I cannot see a picture of the first case, but case 2 seemed to have plenty of spots for fans, without looking inside I can't give a good answer though.

If you plan to overclock, you'll want the best cooling possible.

I would go with PSU 1, bigger is better when overclocking.

I suggest HDD 3 as it supports NCQ (native command queue) which will speed things up as long as your controller supports it.

That motherboard is quite new, it may take a few weeks to show up in stores..which would be worth the wait IMO...but any NF4 board will be comperable in performance, DFI/ASUS make good overclockers.

Like stated above, my 4400+ can only hit right under 2.7 with watercooling and still be stable. My first core is limiting me, so you may get over 2.8, but you may not. Overclocking ability has always been luck of the draw. Your air cooling will probably be your limiting factor though.

[Yawgm0th]

Originally Posted by matm347

Well, the AM2 socket has not shown any improvement at all as the DDR2 speeds are not what they need to be. Intel has finally gotten better, but still needed to be overclocked to over 4Ghz (which it does pretty easily)

A 4GHz P4 will not beat a mid-range Athlon 64 in most gaming applications. I don't know what benchmarks you'be been looking at, but you've been misinformed. It would be comparable to a 2.0GHz to 2.5GHz Athlon 64, depending on the game. Intel's new processors, on the other hand, appear to be ready to topple AMD's advantage at stock speeds. Granted, AM2 is coming out sooner and there will be some more clock boosts and no one knows for sure what performance change the new socket will bring, but Intel's next generation does not need to be overclocked (nor clocked that high at all) to beat AMD gaming performance by a considerable margin. That's assuming Intel didn't do something funky to the AMD system they tested on at IDF.

Originally Posted by matm347

the slower DDR2 has quite a bit to do with this. And if Intel sticks with their track record, they will need probably 2 or 3 different chipsets for the new line.

DDR2 isn't really slower anymore (the speeds have gotten to the point where it can make up for the latencies and the high DDR overclocks), and it has absolutely nothing to do with the performance difference. If you can remember back to when LGA775 came out, DDR and DDR2 performance tests were run on just about every site and they showed less than 5% difference in 95% of applications, and not all of them were in DDR1's favor.

Regardless, I suppose I can understand why you don't want to wait. You might be sorry when you next upgrade and your RAM, processor, and motherboard are all obsolete, but I can certainly understand why you wouldn't want to wait. That said, I suggested that because you would only be waiting about one month before the socket was available (game comes out March 20th, AMD2 comes out late April last time I checked).

As for your actual choices, there's no major problem with DFI SLI board, although the new Crossfire boards have some very interesting advantages that make it a tough choice in some ways. However, Crossfire itself is not one of those advantages. Unless you use a widescreen monitor or regular LCD (Crossfire is debilitating on a regular 4:3 CRT due to its refresh rate limitation) and want unusable performance at a ridiculous price, Crossfire doesn't make sense. If you did need that kind of performance, then using an LCD wouldn't make sense anyway because you would be capped at 60FPS. SLI is a much more feasible technology, but honestly neither are even remotely reasonable. Niether are useful on the mid-range and low-end, and on the high-end they're just overpriced. A single 7800GTX+ or X1800+ is all you're going to need for quite a while. The next generation of cards (along with the spiritual DX10 and Vista) should be out before the performance of SLI/Crossfire is worth paying for.

Basically I would say don't try to match up the brands of the video cards with the brands of the motherboard chipset. You are really unlikely to use SLI or Crossfire. It has consistently been much more economical to buy a new high-end card than to go with a mid-range SLI card or last-gen SLI upgrade, and I don't expect that to change. Although the 6800GS comes really close, with the added power requirements and the cost of an SLI board it basically tied its high-end counterparts (mainly the 512MB 7800GTX) for performance and price. I wouldn't expect more of that, though. If you're thinking of Crossfire as upgrade option I'd also recommend against that not just because it's probably not going to be economically feasible (cheaper to sell the old card and buy a new one than to buy another of the old), but because the next generation will feature hardware support for WGF2.0 (a.k.a DirectX 10). Unlike the last gen (last two from nVidia) supporting DX9.0C, which was an improvement, but now huge, WGF2 hardware support will basically be the next big must-have as it will be required for a lot of thing in Vista and WGF2-based games right away (as opposed to PS3 in DX9.0c, which is only used in a few games and recieved late adoption by developers).