Personal computing discussed

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ganset10
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new E6600 gaming build

Mon Aug 21, 2006 11:18 am

Hello all

Lets start with this, this isn’t my first build, but I find myself unable to decide which motherboard to buy for an E6600 gaming rig. (as i've never built a system on a newly released cpu) the 975x boards are great if you want crossfire, but the 965x appears to be less expensive. What would you all recommend for

Motherboard
RAM
Heat sink and Fan for the E6600

Right now I have these as potential

ASUS P5B 965X
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.a ... 6813131030
Patriot Signature 1GB DDR2 667 (2x512)
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.a ... 6820220070

if you have questions please ask.

Everything else I’m fine with, and there really is no issue when it comes to price. I’m looking to purchase this in about a month or so on newegg, when availability and prices stabilize, I hope.

Thanks for the Help

This is an awesome site and forum.
 
Flying Fox
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Mon Aug 21, 2006 11:50 am

What will be the use of the computer? If you are going to game or run a few apps, it is not so good to get 2x512 at this point. Drop down to the E6300/6400 if you have to, but get 2gigs and a good video card.

The P5B is fine. People have success with Gigabyte's DS3 as well.
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king_kilr
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Mon Aug 21, 2006 1:37 pm

Also, what is your budget?
Damn the torpedoes , full speed ahead.

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FroBozz_Inc
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Mon Aug 21, 2006 1:48 pm

Here's an article that shows that the 4Meg vs. 2MB cache advantage isn't really all that right now, and overclocking a cheaper e6300 or e6400 can give you e6800+ performance. In other words, it's nice when a $250 or less CPU can pretty reliably overclock to $1000 CPU levels.

My e6400 running on the stock cooler OC'ed quite easily to 2.88Ghz, with plenty more to go. That's fast enough for my needs right now.

I fully agreee with the 2GB over 1GB advantage, especially for gaming.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/sh ... spx?i=2802
 
ganset10
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Mon Aug 21, 2006 2:16 pm

budget, there really isn't one, but to be realistic, i'd max out at $1300 to $1500. And it will be a gaming rig.

GPU is going to be X1900XT

the change to 2GB sounds good, is the DDR2 800 worth it?

Thanks for the replys
 
Flying Fox
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Mon Aug 21, 2006 2:23 pm

ganset10 wrote:
the change to 2GB sounds good, is the DDR2 800 worth it?
Only if you overclock, and you may need a stick of cheapo DDR2 <800 to boot your board first to bump the voltage up for the DDR2-800.
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ganset10
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Wed Aug 23, 2006 3:04 pm

 
lordT
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Wed Aug 23, 2006 3:12 pm

Build looks sweet. Just make sure you have a spare stick of RAM to flash the bios since iirc, the RAM uses >1.8V. Also consider a bigger HD if possible
 
steelcity_ballin
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Wed Aug 23, 2006 3:17 pm

lordtottuu wrote:
Build looks sweet. Just make sure you have a spare stick of RAM to flash the bios since iirc, the RAM uses >1.8V. Also consider a bigger HD if possible


What he said.... That's the exact ram that was problematic for me.
 
Flying Fox
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Wed Aug 23, 2006 3:25 pm

Check other forums to see if some other uses can boot the P5B with DDR2-800 without needing a separate low speed stick.

Drop to E6300 and get a larger HD.
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king_kilr
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Wed Aug 23, 2006 3:59 pm

Your original post says you are waiting a while to build, in that case you might want to hold off a bit on picking a GFX card, as DX10 may be out by then.
Damn the torpedoes , full speed ahead.



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ganset10
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Wed Aug 23, 2006 4:28 pm

willing to wait, at first yes, but the more i see the new systems being built here, the more i want mine finished. Ever since i got BF2 working on my current system with a ATI 9200 card i've wanted a new system to really see what the game can do as well as others.

So

it's looking more like a finish date of mid september at the latest.

BTW i'm building two of these, one for me and the other for a friend.

When are DX10 support cards supposed to be available?
 
king_kilr
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Wed Aug 23, 2006 4:36 pm

Only info I could find is G80(Nvidia DX10) is estimated for September although that could be an old projection, my advice is wait, sorry :wink:
Damn the torpedoes , full speed ahead.



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gbcrush
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Wed Aug 23, 2006 4:43 pm

king_kilr wrote:
Only info I could find is G80(Nvidia DX10) is estimated for September although that could be an old projection, my advice is wait, sorry :wink:


My gut instinct would be to wait too...

But DX10 will be useless without Vista IIRC, so you'd be waiting until january at least. Plus, then you're talking about revision 1.0a type hardware on some power-hungry beasts.

I'd rather go with at least the 6 month refresh if not the following full release after the first DX10 cards come out, just to see if they cant make the things more efficient and useful.

*edit*
Scratch that I'm a moron. You could pick up a DX10 card early (if they come out) and still run it for DX9 games for now.

My thought still stands though, if you can afford a nice modern DX9 card without hurting yourself too much, I'd get that and play it out until the DX10 cards show incredible performance benefits or games you want start using DX10 features.

No point in getting a DX10 card and locking yourself into its features early if they're gonna start making better DX10 cards once Vista and DX10 games actually come out.
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mattsteg
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Wed Aug 23, 2006 4:56 pm

gbcrush wrote:
Scratch that I'm a moron. You could pick up a DX10 card early (if they come out) and still run it for DX9 games for now.

My thought still stands though, if you can afford a nice modern DX9 card without hurting yourself too much, I'd get that and play it out until the DX10 cards show incredible performance benefits or games you want start using DX10 features.
Meh. Remove all the DX10 mumbo-jumbo from that and just think about it this way. Get the best value within your budget, based on what's available and what you think might be available soon. Don't over-obsess about features, but don't completely ignore them either, depending on how long you keep your card. The DX10 checkbox won't be especially important/vital for a few years.
gbcrush wrote:
No point in getting a DX10 card and locking yourself into its features early if they're gonna start making better DX10 cards once Vista and DX10 games actually come out.
That's not really a concern. Once parts ship en masse the featureset of cards isn't going to change enough to matter. It never has, within a given directx generation. Maybe you're concerned about the next gen being stinkers performance-wise, but that risk is always there to some extent.
...
 
king_kilr
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Wed Aug 23, 2006 5:51 pm

I doubt that new massively better DX10 cards will come out just 6 months after the first batch. G80 is supposed to be the complete new line from nvidia so we can expect it to preform as such. Also a big thing with DX10 is that all cards are supposed to carry the same feature set, so most of the real performance increase in cards will me more memory and faster clocks, which we will see regardless of DX10 or DX9.
Damn the torpedoes , full speed ahead.



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ganset10
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Thu Aug 24, 2006 8:17 am

I'm thinking of sticking with the X1900xt or maybe the GT for now, and look into the DX10 cards next year, after Vista and ATI's R600 are out.

Only real concern now is the memory posting or not on build day, but the memory I selected is 1.9v so i'm hoping it might work out of the box. if not, fall back to the 667 to adjust voltage.

Last question for now, OC the E6400, how and what needs to be changed?

thanks
 
king_kilr
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Thu Aug 24, 2006 2:57 pm

i havent oc'd one myself but i beleive u need to adjust the FSB, voltage(maybe), and the memclk/fsb ratio

but i could be wrong :wink:
Damn the torpedoes , full speed ahead.



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ganset10
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Tue Sep 19, 2006 10:57 am

i'm very happy to report that both systems are up and running with no problems. I do have a two questions,

How do you change the memory timings? right now it's reading 5 5 5 18 and i'd like to run it at 4 4 4 12 or at least 5 5 5 15. I tried the 4 and it refused to boot at all. had to remove the battery to clear bios.

And the Core and Memory clock speeds for the X1900XTX i bought show as 648core and 774memory are these correct? I know the specs say 650 and 1550, is there a clock mulitplyer for the memory?

so far everything else looks fine, thanks for the help

ganset
 
Flying Fox
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Tue Sep 19, 2006 11:02 am

The RAM may not be able to run at those timings. It is sort of overclocking (running at smaller tolerances) and it is usually YMMV.

Be happy, and welcome to the Conroe club. Thinking of Folding? :wink:
The Model M is not for the faint of heart. You either like them or hate them.

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Inkedsphynx
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Tue Sep 19, 2006 11:30 am

ganset10 wrote:
i'm very happy to report that both systems are up and running with no problems. I do have a two questions,

How do you change the memory timings? right now it's reading 5 5 5 18 and i'd like to run it at 4 4 4 12 or at least 5 5 5 15. I tried the 4 and it refused to boot at all. had to remove the battery to clear bios.

And the Core and Memory clock speeds for the X1900XTX i bought show as 648core and 774memory are these correct? I know the specs say 650 and 1550, is there a clock mulitplyer for the memory?

so far everything else looks fine, thanks for the help

ganset


Memory is doubled. So that's 1548. I wouldn't worry about them being 2 mhz off.
 
NeXus 6
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Tue Sep 19, 2006 11:45 am

Try 4-4-4-12-4-42-3-10-5-13 and run your memory at 2.1v. BIOS should be updated to the latest as well.

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