Recommended System Specs....

[InSomNiaN]

I would like your opinions on setting up my newly acquired toy....
What would be a nice motherboard/cpu setup (AMD only) for this thang??
Thx

Image Insert:

34.81 KB

[NitroX infinity]

Duh, AMD Athlon64 3200+ offcourse.
You could have figured that out yourself since this is just a PCI version of the V5.

[InSomNiaN]

Duh, AMD Athlon64 3200+ offcourse.
You could have figured that out yourself since this is just a PCI version of the V5.

Rather than doing a swell job at making at total a$$ of yourself, why don't you take the time to read the post properly....

[lecram25]

OUCH! and people say I'm harsh...


[random]
what's with the porn ads at the top right of the forum


[/random]

[amp_man]

Hmm, well, at the moment, considering the capabilities of the V5 (since 64-bit games aren't gonna be DX 7.0/OGL 1.1, I would probably say not to bother with 64-bit and just get a dual Athlon XP-MP 3200+ And an MSI Neo2 series board, I think they make a Dual-AXP Neo2.

On a more serious and budget-concious note...what is you budget anyways?

[random]
what's with the porn ads at the top right of the forum


[/random]

To entertain you And give the forums a little cash to operate, duh.

[InSomNiaN]

Hey amp_man,
I'm not really on any budget, so I'm open to all suggestions, but I don't think I'll really need/want to go for the dual cpu option.

Do you think it's better to go with the KT400A option, or jump to the KT600?  As the revised version of the KT600 hasn't come out yet, I don't want to be stuck with something buggy, on the other hand, I'd like something overclocker friendly, thus the epox questions...

And phalanx it's not offcourse.... it's of course.

[ArchAngelCD]

You will build a nice home for that Voodoo5 5500 with an AMD AthlonXP 2500+ Barton (or higher) and a Asus A7N8X-X Deluxe MB.(NForce2 Ultra 400)  Don't forget to buy some Kingston PC3200 DDR RAM (2 sticks because this board supports dual channel DDR) See the board here http://usa.asus.com/products/mb/socketa/a7n8x-e-d/overview.htm

Have fun with your Voodoo5!!!

[InSomNiaN]

Thanx for that Arch, had a look on the website and it looks like a nice board. Will have a look at some comparisons, and hopefully purchase one this weekend.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

If you want a mean 3dfx machine just go For a AMD Athlon64 FX 53 CPU combine that with 2x 512MB PC 3200 and an ASUS SK8N nForce3 Pro mobo or if you go Dual CPU go for a Dual Opteron 248 Setup with the TYAN Thunder K8W Mobo

that are some heavy sytem setups for the AMD K8 series CPU configurations.

And yeah if the Athlon 64FX is to expensive, go and grab the Athlon64 3400+ and the ASUS SK8V Mobo

And if you want to use a K7 system go for an AMD AthlonXP 3200+ & ASUS A7N8X2.0/A7N8X-E Deluxe [nForce2 ULTRA 400] or if you go Dual CPU for the K7 platform go for a Dual AMD AthlonMP 2800+ and combine that with an ASUS A7M266-D or a heavier TYAN Thunder K7X Pro

[InSomNiaN]

Whoaaa, lots of info there, thanx for all that Obi-wan.  
Just a question though, it is worth/wise to go for the 64bit cpus yet? I'll still be running Win98se as most of the games work on that os, so will I be having any issues with that and the cpu?  I'll definately be going for the 400mhz FSB barton cpu, but not too sure about the nforce chipset on the mb... any more help/info would be great!!

[Shogakusha]

Well, if money's not a real consideration I would definitely go with one of the Athlon 64s, they have great support for 32 bit applications, unlike a certain other companies 64 bit processors, so windows 98 SE shouldn't be a problem for them. Plus, when games that support 64 bit processing start coming out, you'll actually be able to upgrade to a 64 bit OS and run them, with out having to run out and upgrade.  And I really like my nforce2 board and wouldn't hesitate to reccomend nforce2 or nforce3 boards to any of my friends, but to everyone their own.

[InSomNiaN]

You will build a nice home for that Voodoo5 5500 with an AMD AthlonXP 2500+ Barton (or higher) and a Asus A7N8X-X Deluxe MB.(NForce2 Ultra 400) Don't forget to buy some Kingston PC3200 DDR RAM (2 sticks because this board supports dual channel DDR) See the board here http://usa.asus.com/products/mb/socketa/a7n8x-e-d/overview.htm

Have fun with your Voodoo5!!!

Hey Arch,

After looking up the motherboard on a few sites, seems there isn't any real difference between the dual channel and single channel versions.  
As this board doesn't have any onboard video, is it really worth shelling out the extra $$ for something that is only ~2% faster? I mean I won't be needing the onboard lan, nor do I really care too much for the onboard sound, as I recently purchased an audigy card....
What do you guys think of this??

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

Originally posted by InSomNiaN

You will build a nice home for that Voodoo5 5500 with an AMD AthlonXP 2500+ Barton (or higher) and a Asus A7N8X-X Deluxe MB.(NForce2 Ultra 400) Don't forget to buy some Kingston PC3200 DDR RAM (2 sticks because this board supports dual channel DDR) See the board here http://usa.asus.com/products/mb/socketa/a7n8x-e-d/overview.htm

Have fun with your Voodoo5!!!

Hey Arch,

After looking up the motherboard on a few sites, seems there isn't any real difference between the dual channel and single channel versions.  
As this board doesn't have any onboard video, is it really worth shelling out the extra $$ for something that is only ~2% faster? I mean I won't be needing the onboard lan, nor do I really care too much for the onboard sound, as I recently purchased an audigy card....
What do you guys think of this??

G'day Howza Go'n?

Yeah I used to live in Bunbury, Western Australia but that was 13 years ago....  But back to the topic , I'd go for a Dual Opteron 246 or 248 if money isn't your problem. Those Opterons really can kick some brutal butt!!!

The 246 runs at 2000Mhz but it only uses PC-2700 ECC Reg. The 248 runs at 2200Mhz and it also has another advantage it uses PC-3200 instead of PC-2700, so your memory bandwith should increase a little especially when all memory banks are filled, you'll then go to Quad DDR Channel 128 Bit!!!!! Rather sick hey!

A good old friend of mine here in Holland Just bought a Dual AMD Opteron 246 Machine, with 4x 256 PC-2700 ECC Reg mem okay I did say that's not so many , I would of gone for 4 x 512MB or 4x 1GB for the ram to get the full use out of it. The thing is like so: the Mainboard used Dual DDR per CPU, so if you install 1x 1GB per CPU you won't get full potential out of your system, and yeah so 2x 256 per CPU was in my opinion a little too little.

The Mainboard he uses is from Tyan, it's name is: Tyan Thunder K8W, it's a really beasty one, with the newest BIOS update you can easly Install two 248's and PC-3200 ECC Reg Memory modules. This beasty board's size is 12" by 13" and refers to Extended ATX Format.

here is a Pic of that board:





And yeah if this Mobo and it's setup is to expensive, like in my situation I went for this Setup:

2x AMD AthlonMP 2200+ [ soon 2x AMD AthlonMP 2800+ {BIOS 1010 needed}!!![:I]]
ASUS A7M266-D AMD AM760MPX.
1x 1GB PC-2100 ECC Reg Twin-Moss
1x 350 Watt Enermax PSU

Why not 2x 1GB, because this system does not have Dual and Quad DDR.

Here is a Pic of my ASUS A7M266-D Mobo:





And yeah like I mentioned earlier, I will be upgrading to 2x AMD AthlonMP 2800+, why, because they are not so expensive anymore, they are now about 209 Euros per CPU so that's fine with me. The PSU will be replaced by an Enermax 550 Watt PSU, because the MP 2800's will use a little more power than my good old 2200's.  Never had problems with SMP machines. I do alot of games that use SMP, like Return To Castle Wolfenstein, Quake3Arena and Doom3 later on. and the Doom3 Alpha Demo runs fine in SMP mode with FSAAx6 and AF x16 on my Dual MP 2200+ and ATi Radeon 9700 Pro at reso 1024x768x32 with an avaridge of 42 Frames Per Sec and without SMP I only get 28 Frames Per Sec, SMP rulezzz indeed., but I think that the 2800+'s will do a little better.

So I hope That you will have a very great time with your new SMP beast

[amp_man]

Slightly off-topic, is it just me, or is that V5 5500 PCI on a V5 AGP box?

[Rolo01]

You are right, that box is from the AGP version, the PCI box is violett...