Best Socket T Motherboard?

[jcarle]

You are correct. Memory will always run at the speed of the slowest stick of memory installed.

As for Northbridge and Southbridge, those are the motherboard's chipset components. The Northbridge controls communication between the processor, the memory, the video card and the Southbridge. The Southbridge controls communication between all the on-board peripherals, the expansion slots, the external ports and the internal connections.

Your motherboard has an Intel 955X Northbridge and an Intel ICH7R Southbridge. See the layout below:

[ringfinger]

Alright, well thanks for all your imput I really appriciate it. I may be PM'ing you once I get all the components together. I'm still not sure on the Vid card I'm going to get. I'm also trying to decide on whether to get the WD 34gb or the 76gb. I really want to have a 10,000 rpm drive as my system drive. But my guess is since I will be using it only for a system/application drive... the 34gb will be fine. And then get a couple other big SATAs for storage. Thanks for everything, and any other imput before I go on my shopping spree is welcome!

[jcarle]

You will see that there's a big performance boost by going with a 10,000RPM hard drive. It's a good choice. However, don't forget how fast hard drive space can fill up. 34GB doesn't take much to fill. A couple of large games, a few large applications and you're done for. I'd push for the 76GB if you can. You're on the right path though. Slower hard drives for data storage is fine, but your system drive will dictate the speed of your entire system since everything it loads will come off of it.

Let us know along the way what you end up purchasing, would be interesting to see what you finish with and how your experience goes.

[ringfinger]

Oh I most definatly will let you know what I end up with. I think I will choose the 34gb WD because I have 240GB total external USB 2.0 HD space, and one of the 120s that I have is actually a IDE drive in an external case, so I can throw that on the IDE controller once I have the board. That will provide me with plenty of storage for now. I do believe the 10k RPM is the best way to go for a system drive (I read XP can be installed in 6 mins flat???), however I know after a couple months I will sure wish I bought the 76! Any recommendations of a 19" digi LCD along with which type of connection and any particular good ASUS vid cards or any other brands/models?? Looking for something that will play with good framerates on games such as Doom 3 and Farcry @ 1024/768 - 1200/1600. Gracias.

Edited August 1, 2005 by ringfinger

[ringfinger]

What do you think about the P4 630 Prescott 800MHz FSB LGA 775 EM64T Processor Model BX80547PG3000F. It has 64-bit support along with HT and a 2 MB L2 cache. Only 3.0GHz, but also only $220. Also, if a processor doesn't say that its a BTX form factor, is it safe to assume that its ATX? I'm looking at getting either to 660 or 550j.

Edited August 1, 2005 by ringfinger

[jcarle]

BTX is a whole new thing that Intel is trying to make, but is not getting much success. Basically, Intel is trying to push for a new form factor that they've developed. Everyone quite enjoys ATX and is not very keen on wanting to change, therefore Intel is almost alone doing anything BTX related. As long as the processor you pick up is not specifically quoted to be BTX, you won't have any troubles. (I think it's the fan that changes, that's why the processor package is different.)

Your choice for the processor is a good one and at a good price. Most of the selection of parts in your computer really comes down to your budget. Most of the time, bigger and faster is better, but at what cost? You have to weight the cost with your budget to figure out how much performance you can afford. Keep in mind, you will get more performance from a 660 then a 550J. The biggest performance gain always comes in the actual clock speed of the processor.

There's a good value on the ASUS EAX800/TD/128M Radeon X800 128MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail, $198.00 USD if you want to go with ATI. If you want an nVidia based card, the ASUS EN6600GT/TOP/TD/128M Geforce 6600GT 128MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - OEM, $204.00 USD is at a good price.

One of the best 19" LCD monitors on the market is the Dell UltraSharp 1905FP at a reasonable $359.25 USD direct from Dell, though you can find it cheaper else online.

One of the nicest LCD monitors I've seen is the DELL UltraSharp 2005FPW at $699.00 USD direct from Dell. It's a beautiful widescreen 20.1" LCD monitor. Widescreen monitors are so incredibly useful when working and actually make games even nicer.

[ringfinger]

Alright, thanks again jcarle.

[jcarle]

My pleasure. Feel free to post here again if you have any other question.

[Technoguy]

heh jcarle nice posts there.btw had some doubts well what's this HT processor related 2 Hyperthreading?

2.wud there be ne difference if having 1mbl2 cache or 2mbl2 cache(i mean does it matter that much)

3.btw what does this convention represent pci-e express slot 16x?what's 16x for?

[jcarle]

I'm not sure what you're trying to ask about Hyperthreading?

There IS a performance increase by going to 2MB of cache instead of 1MB, but the increase is very marginal at best.

PCI-Express x16 means that the connector has 16 individual PCI-Express lanes going to that connector. Traditional PCI slots were worked by means of parallel communications, which meant that every slots had to share will all the other slots. PCI-Express changes things by working in serial mode. Each lane is x1 wide. A single lane is capable of transmitting up to 2.5Gbps in each direction simultaneously. To increase bandwidth, you simply increase the amount of lanes dedicated to a slot. x16 means that there are 16 lanes linked to that slot. Giving you a maximum possible theoretically throughput of 40Gbps in each direction, simultaneously. Which works out to 5GBps.

For more information on PCI-Express, you should read up on this article:

PCI-Express: An Overview

[Technoguy]

ty m8 well my question was 1st of all what is hyperthreading?how come u know if the processor is a HT processor?

[ringfinger]

You know if the processor is hyper threading or not whenever you see a description of it before you're buying it and it says Hyper-Threading Eabled: Yes. Or research the type of processor you have if you're talking about one you've already got. Hyperthreading allows a CPU to exucute multiple threads simulaneously in parallel on one chip, its almost like having two processors working together.

[ringfinger]

jcarle, what wattage of PSU will I need for the P5WD2 Premium??

[jcarle]

If you plan on sticking with the basics, meaning motherboard/cpu/memory, video card, one to two hard drives and one to two optical drives, then a 350W power supply should be sufficient. Though if you can, 400W would be ideal for your machine. Just remember, you're better off buying a reliable quality 350W that's more expensive, then a poor quality 450W even if it's cheaper.

[ringfinger]

Ahh, I see. I was just under the assumtion that only a specific wattage was able to power a specific range of MBs... makes sense though... having the PSU throttle power as needed with more or less devices (hence 'power supply' d'oh). Alright, thanks again for the advice! I'm most likely going to build the machine over the next couple months buying different components around payday ya know.. I'm thinking the best first things to buy would be the case and the MB... agree?

Edited August 2, 2005 by ringfinger