Which mobo/vid card to go with...

[Train]

Yep!

[mcseguy9]

You have both been awesome. I really, REALLY appreciate your help with all of this. The quick responses have been great. Hopefully I can stop bugging you now.

[liam858]

The combo with the Biostar mobo, no.

Get the 3600+

and any of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813130542

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813186100

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131143

Avoid Biostar, ECS, and PC Chips mobos like the plague.

Liam

[mcseguy9]

Crap, I just realized that the combo has a Biostar mobo so that's no go. Check out the combos here

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...Field=0&Page=1

I think I can swing the one with the Asus board.

[mcseguy9]

How big a deal is SATA vs. SATA II support? I know I can add a SATA II PCI card. I'm planning on buying a SATA II hard drive to go with all of this which is why I ask.

[liam858]

I'd recommend it, the Asus combo is a sweet deal.

Uber upgradeability with support for 8gb of DDR2 800.



Liam

[liam858]

SATA II vs PATA is minimal, multiple SATA hard drives will show the difference, but with one drive, and the fact that a SATA II drive will still work on a SATA controller, there's nothing to worry about.


Liam

[mcseguy9]

I've decided to get the Asus/AMD combo. Thanks for all of your help, both of you. You've been awesome!

[liam858]

You're Welcome.

Be sure to post back when it is all assembled and fired up playing AA.


Liam

[Train]

You are Welcome.

Have fun!

[mcseguy9]

Alright ladies and gents, I have the new system built and up and running. It is amazing compared to what I've been running. And from the perspective of playing America's Army I have never played on a machine that runs the game so well. It's great. Here are all the components:

Foxconn 3GTS001-W-NP White Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
SAPPHIRE 100145ADVL Radeon X1600PRO 512MB GDDR2 PCI Express x16 CrossFire Video Card
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3600+ Brisbane 1.9GHz Socket AM2 Processor Model ADO3600IAA5DL
ASUS M2NPV-VM Socket AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 6150 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
DYNAPOWER USA EP-50X.C563-BX ATX12V 500W Power Supply
NEC 18X DVD±R DVD Burner With 12X DVD-RAM Write Beige E-IDE / ATAPI Western Digital Caviar SE WD2500JS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
WINTEC AMPO 1GB (2 x 512MB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model 3AMD2800-1G1K-R

[liam858]

Yep, that's nice, the CPU and Graphics card go nicely together, i haven't heard of the RAM/PSU manufacturers, but you can't go wrong with Asus/Foxconn/NEC/AMD and Sapphire are the best ATI manufacturer IMO. Have fun on AA.


Liam

[mcseguy9]

Cool. From my perspective this thing is smokin' fast. I realize there are faster machines out there (much faster), but again, from my perspective it's quite impressive.

I chose the case, PSU, and RAM based on user reviews from Newegg so I wasn't entirely sure what to expect except that others had great experiences with them. So far so good.