Chip/Board Comparison please.

[Smitty090]

Hey all,
Brand new to this site but have been working with computers quite some time. I have something that has me unsure of what route to take.. could use some help if anyone can answer or help clarify. THANKS!

Buying a new PC in September. Was going to buy the following:
AMD 64 4000+ Socket 939 Processor
ASUS A8N SLI or A8N SLI Deluxe Motherboard
3Gig 400 MHz DDR Ram
PCI Express 256MB Nvidia (GeForce) Vid Card (exact model undecided yet)
250 or 500 Gig SATA 300 Hard Drive(s)

- Basically a blazing fast PC. But here is where I started to wonder....

memory at 400MHz. There is some DDR2 Ram out there as high as 800MHz but the boards that support that only seem to be for the P4 chips and P4's seem to go as high as 3.6-3.8Ghz (MUCH more $$ than AMD 4000+) and FSB is 800MHz vs AMD 2000Mhz.
I am starting to wonder if maybe the slightly slower chip and front speed bus (P4) would actually outperform the AMD because you can have the RAM accessed at double the speed.
What I am getting at is would my screaming AMD system get bottle necked so much because of the much slower 400MHz Ram that the P4 system with 800MHz ram would out scream it so to speak?

Any insights on this? I know this is a long post but thanks for the time. I am hoping for some factual knowledge on this as opposed to semi educated guesses if possible but all input is welcome.

Smitty

 

[DJ-CHRIS]

Okay, if you want you can make the ram faster by something called overclocking. It would be easy to get your ram to run at 600mhz. DDR2 at high speeds has super high latency's as well, which lowers the peformance.

AMD is defiantly the better build, and try to find anything that will run that 800mhz DDR2 at 800MHZ.

I also highly recomend reconsidering the motherboard, as in my opinion it's total rubbish.

 

[Smitty090]

So you feel my original AMD would be the faster build then?

Also, I always felt ASUS had one of the better boards out there but I am definitely open to suggestions on other socket 939 boards if you have any?

One main reason I looked at that Mobo is because it has all the options: 2000Mhz FSB, PCIe, SATA300. I dont mind spending a few bucks more on a better board if you know of a better brand.

Also this is 90% for gaming too which I forgot to mention.
Thanks!!!!
Smitty

 

[DJ-CHRIS]

The DFI Lanparty series are the best board series out their for AMD. Their top board is the Lanparty SLI-DR.

Asus do have good boards, if your going for Intel build's.

 

[Smitty090]

Well I have looked at the Lanparty SLI-DR and SLI-D and thank you for the reccomendation. They fit the specs I wanted as well as have some great overclocking options. Overall I am quite impressed with these boards and will dump the ASUS for these at the moment.

Thanks for turning my attention to another series!

Smitty

 

[Apokalipse]

in memory bandwith, the Pentium 4's with DDR2 actually lose to the Athlon 64's in a lot of cases. AMD made the Athlon 64's with the memory controller on the CPU itself. the Pentium 4's have to talk to the memory controller on the motherboard, which is much slower.

the Athlon 64 motherboards (socket 754 and 939) have a much lower load on the Northbridge too (which is usually where the Memory controller is)

because AMD have put the memory controllers on the CPU, they get to decide when to go DDR2. they will go DDR2 when it comes down in price, AMD are trying to make things less expensive for people

if you want to overclock, definately get one of the DFI NF4 boards. they hold all the top records for Athlon 64 overclocks.

also, for overclocking, consider RAM from G.Skill. they have RAM guaranteed to get at least DDR600

 

[Smitty090]

Thanks for the replies. That's allot of great info and exactly what I was looking for!

Smitty