Author: Michel Langeveld
Date: 03:19:09 12/18/04
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On December 18, 2004 at 05:04:48, Eran Karu wrote: >Hi Michel, > >Thanks for your help. > >Right, more memory will help. > >I consider three items for a new AMD computer as follows below: > >1. Processor: AMD Athlon 3500 512Kb Cache Box 64 Bit 939 > >2. Two memory chips equals 1024 MB: Kingston 400 MHz DDR Non-ECC CL2.5 DIMM 512 >MB > >3. Motherboard: Asus A8V Deluxe Dual DDR, SATA, Wi-Fi, VIA K8T800 Pro Chipset >AMD Athlon 64 Bit > >Do you think the three items above are very good? > >Thanks, >Eran Karu Hello Eran, Good questions .... difficult to answer. It depends on what you wanna do with this PC. If you only wanna play against an engine then Harddisk + graphical card is not important. But for as chess engine developer, that works also a lot with big files HD performance is also important. Have you ever used tablebases? If I would b you then I would read each evening some reviews and stuff on the internet and take at least a week time to make the decision. Here my opinion. I am not sure if all facts are 100% right. 1) The AMD Athlon 3400+ is slightly faster and cheaper as this processor, but I can understand this choice. If you go for this then would try to find it a 90mm (winchester core() version. This version consumes less energy, produces less warmth, so you can use less noisy coolers. Maybe not so interesting for you, but a 90mm version of a chip can also be better overclocked as the 130mm version. 3) I handle first the motherboar, then the memory, because the motherboard influences the memory: Asus is A-brand, so I think this should be ok. For me a motherboard should have: * At least support for DDR400 * much number of slots of DIMM's * support SATA * some overclocking possiblities (like to increase FSB in small steps) * support for LAN * minimum sound card I bought at the moment a Neo Platinum board, because I can increase the FSB with very small steps with this. I think this is not possible with the Asus. The Neo platinum is a very good motherboard. Comes very complete: good cables, clear manual, good software Redhat Fedore Core 3 detects this motherboard at once. At Windows I had to install the latest drivers (included on CD) to let it detect the lan card, etc. If you gonna use Windows 2000, then be sure you use SP4. For Asus there seems be 4 possibilities in socket 939: 1) NVIDIA nForce4 SLI : A8N-SLI Deluxe 2) NVIDIA nForce4 SLI : A8N-SLI 3) VIA K8T890 : A8V-E Deluxe 4) VIA K8T800Pro : A8V Deluxe I like NVIDIA because of the good qualitity. The first 3 are based on PCI-express. The last 1 is based on AGP. Do you have an PCI-express card? If you don't have one then I would go for the NVidia, but with AGP. This is not possible with ASUS, so I would switch then to another brand. Another negative point is that board 4) you choice seems not to support SATA (hope I am right). I have now ATA133 harddisk in my new machine. It's very fast ... but still the harddisk is sometimes a bottleneck if I work with very big files > 1Gb. If I had to buy a new PC I would invest in a SATA drive. The neo motherboard I use does already has SATA support. Take also care what power supply a motherboard supports. If you don't want to loose money on a power supply then look for a board that supports ATX power. 2) I would look what is the recommended memory for the motherboard you choose. There are some sites that have a tool where you can choose motherboard, and then it comes with memory. On the msi site they also have recommendations on memory. At least I would use DDR4 and memory that is CL2. And since the socket 939 uses a dual memory interface I would look for a board that really supports this. I hope it helps you what I wrote. Michel
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