with the AMD Phenom in mind (Am2) game motherboards??

[Kisskerven]

Keeping that new AMD in mind... what would be a good Am2 socket board out now that will support them?

and were talking high perf gaming board of course, and explain why please.. I have a board in mind but I want to see if anyone mentions anything close to it.

Oh and it doesn't have to run Sli/Crossfire in full 16x 8x is plenty fine.

 

[PP Mguire]

8x is all you need right now really. There are only 2 AM2+ boards on Newegg right now which is hella lame. Id wait till the cpus come out cause the good boards typicaly follow afterwards.

 

[Kisskerven]

I would guess that 'standard' ddr2 800 will be used on most the boards wouldn't it?

Iam trying to get some parts down on paper to price and such since Xmas is coming and all that. My budget dropped sharply for a computer with a busted car so I'll have to buy it small bits at a time- hopfully being on it by Feb, or May.

I figure the wattage is going to be about the same as the Intels quad cores (maybe?) or possibly less- so if I shoot for the build that intel made- 712w power is needed- so 750 with 45a (ish) 12v rails. for the power supply.

I figure Ill start with 2Gig ram and if I need more Ill get another 2Gig

As for vid card- Iam not all that impressed with the 8800 line nvidea has- it seems all hype powered rather then reasonable- sure it benchmarks higher but .. do you really need that- if another card plays games at a comfy detail level for half or even 1/4 the price Id be satisfied. I hate "bloom" effect anyway.

Case is set in my head- its a cheap one but effective cooling- both 120mm intake and exhaust set up.


IN mind of the Video- can anyone reccomend a pci express x16 vid card? I would like cheap as possible- but well built- Iam not sure to go with a gddr3/2 128bit/64bit 128m/256m or what... its a temp card - it needs to play games (lets say Hellgate London) on at least LOW settings- that way I can play my games- until I get more then 50ish dollars for a card (probably 250ish end result card since 8800 doesnt impress me) any maker- i care less Ati or nVidea or whatever else- as long as it has some good review

also with turbocache/hypermemory - does anyone know if you can utilize this feature with windows vista's "readyboost" performance- where you allocate a % of the usb flash drive to be used as system memory (like RAM but closer to a pagefile) ?

If so.. that'd be pretty sweet instead of using the RAM- use a FLASH drive to increase your VIDEO performance... theres some really fast USB flash drives with readyboost compatibility for really cheap to (about 20 bucks for a 1gig stick)

Info is GREATLY needed on that- because all the document (wiki and windows alike) has not mentioned anything on them... so it leaves me wondering if anyone's tried... if you have vista, readyboost usb, and a vid card with hypermemory or turbocache (depending on brand) can you try for me?
etc.. etc..

 

[PP Mguire]

I would guess that 'standard' ddr2 800 will be used on most the boards wouldn't it?

All AMD boards will be DDR2 until AM3/DDR3/nF7 boards come out.

I figure the wattage is going to be about the same as the Intels quad cores (maybe?) or possibly less- so if I shoot for the build that intel made- 712w power is needed- so 750 with 45a (ish) 12v rails. for the power supply.

The Phenoms are aimed at lower wattage use than the Intel counterpart BUT i extremely doubt youll need something that big. Im not saying its a bad thing just its not needed (a 750watt PSU i mean) unless your heavily OCing with a quad core, SLI ect. If you plan on getting like a 9800GTX, Phenom X4 AM3 ect ect later on then yea youll need it or close to 1kw. To stress non-confusion, just get the big PSU your looking at lol

IN mind of the Video- can anyone reccomend a pci express x16 vid card? I would like cheap as possible- but well built- Iam not sure to go with a gddr3/2 128bit/64bit 128m/256m or what... its a temp card - it needs to play games (lets say Hellgate London) on at least LOW settings- that way I can play my games- until I get more then 50ish dollars for a card (probably 250ish end result card since 8800 doesnt impress me) any maker- i care less Ati or nVidea or whatever else- as long as it has some good review

Err, why dont the impress you? They are only the best cards availible right now......But in any case, you can get GDDR3 256bit mem interface cards for quite cheap. If you can get a 7900GS or if you HAVE to go lower id say 7600GT. Just to get you by with the bare minimum....(I ran games on a 9800XT but some dont have that kinda luck)

On RAM, if your going to be using Vista i would say 3gig or more. 2 is fine but ive had hinderd performance under 2gig of RAM. With 3 ive had no troubles at all, and thats with a Vlited copy of Ultimate X86.

 

[Kisskerven]

well my first vista experiance will be full throttled with my lil 2gb ram and then testing with ready boost- but i plan to kill some of the visual- iam not too fond of the clear windows and such, so I wont use quite as much as normal users. also pretty much 2 hours after install and playtime ill be tweaking it using some guides to improve performance.

so iam not really worried about 2v3 gb of ram

the 8800 series is nice and all I just don't see the need for them (for my use) Yes I play high end games- but rarely do I ever play on full spectrum graphics- I turn things down to ensure I don't lag and etc- it could just be because Iam on an old machine but I don't use things like bloom and stuff anyway so thats another "well see about it" after I get a working high grade machine running.

 

[PP Mguire]

well my first vista experiance will be full throttled with my lil 2gb ram and then testing with ready boost- but i plan to kill some of the visual- iam not too fond of the clear windows and such, so I wont use quite as much as normal users. also pretty much 2 hours after install and playtime ill be tweaking it using some guides to improve performance.

so iam not really worried about 2v3 gb of ram

Must i stress again that my comparison is on a Vlited copy of Vista** I have alot of normal things taken out including alot of security measures so that way there i have as little as possible hogging my ram.


**Vlite is a program that will allow you to edit the utilities, programs, services, ect of Windows Vista (Starter-Ultimate). I have a whole load taken out so i only have a 3gig Vista install on both my laptop and Home unit (Hard drive #3). I only have about 25 processes running despite the usual 40-50 a normal Vista user would have. Thats alot of programs running in the background hogging RAM.

 

[Kisskerven]

iam not stressin your set up its just a new dell core 2 duo is in the other room and its doing just fine on its 1gb ram, its quick and loads quick and really is impressive- iam jelous of my roommate. and no its not mod or even case broken- full warrenties

 

[PP Mguire]

Thats normal programs, but what about games?

 

[Kisskerven]

hes not a real gamer so I wouldnt know- i trialed a game on there and it was decent- no hang ups and stuff but it wasnt a real "graphical intense" game i was just seeing if it would work on vista

 

[PP Mguire]

You should load up like a Bioshock demo and try it out.