What board, processor and ram should I buy?

[ntruax]

I was wondering if some of you that are on here all the time can help me out with deciding what to buy next. I'm still using an AMD Opteron 165 right now. One of the ones that run 3GHz all day long. I've had it running at that speed since the day I bought it over 2 years ago. I have it in my Ultra D board with 2GB of some pretty good G. Skill ram.

Anyway, I want to upgrade. The last time I read up on anything everyone wanted a C2D. Is Intel still ahead of AMD right now as far as performance? I probably won't be getting anything Intel anyway, mainly just because of price, but if AMD doesn't have anything right now that comes close I would consider going Intel. I've been using AMD since 1999 though, so I'd rather go with something from them. But not if Intel rules right now.

If you had the cash to get any board, processor and ram you wanted, what would you buy right now? I'll have my tax money tomorrow and I want to order some new stuff A.S.A.P. I do a ton of multitasking and this Opteron has never really liked it all that much. I want something that can do at least a couple intensive things at the same time if they have anything yet. I was hoping this Opteron was going to be better at stuff like that than it is, but for what I paid for it I guess it's been a pretty good processor.

It's going to be liquid cooled so I'll probably need a new waterblock. Any suggestions for that too?

Thanks.

[Sparky]

Nice opteron. I had one of those but didn't have a good set of ram to get it to 3GHz 24/7 clocks sadly. Had a real cheap set of ram - by cheap I mean under $200 for 2GB, man oh man DDR-400 was expensive back in 2006 :eek:

intel i7 is ahead, yes. But at a price premium too (boards aren't cheap, DDR3 isn't cheap, especially triple channel). Depends on your budget. AMD's phenomII is at the same level approximately as intel's penryn (give or take a little bit, depending on the task). Plus, people are getting some really nice clocks with the phenomII, upper 3GHz range on some and with you on water you could possibly break into 4GHz even :D Appears to not degrade with higher volts either, unlike penryn, although it still may be a little early to tell that for sure yet. The other thing is AMD's true quad core architecture is superior than the kentsfield/penryn dual-die config. I am running a Q6600 right now and there are times when doing several things at once that are all cache-intensive that the FSB and split die setup ends up bottlenecking some stuff. i7 isn't like that, in fact they went with a true quad core design like AMD did this time around, plus they put the memory controller on die as well (like AMD has had since 754).

I'd personally go phenomII. I intend to replace my q6600 with one at some point. The q6600 will be dedicated to distributed computing projects :)

What water block do you have BTW? I'm running a dtek fuzion, good performing block with low restriction so good for multi-block loops.

[ntruax]

Hey thanks a lot for the info. That's exactly the kind of response I was looking for. :up:

I was looking at that Phenom II on Newegg last night for $229. Is there any particular board and ram that I should get to use with that? I'd like to stick with DFI if they have something really good, but if they don't I'd get another brand. Do you know what RAM is king to use with that? What do you plan on buying if you get one of those Phenom II's?

Right now I'm using a Swiftech Apogee water block. It's not what I wanted to buy though. Right this minute I can't remember what it was that I really wanted to get, but at the time I didn't have enough cash for it. I was trying to find the best ram to use with this Opteron and had bought several different brands to try, and yeah you're right, this DDR was not cheap back then at all. I think I was paying about $100 per 1 gig stick for it. I forgot what I paid for this G.Skill but I think it was over $250. I looked high and low for this stuff and couldn't find it anywhere. Then one day I just happened to look on Newegg for something and they had it back in stock. I think it was sold out that same day too.

I plan on ordering this stuff tonight. Please let me know on the board and ram. Thanks again for the help. I really appreciate it.

[ntruax]

Well I did a little research. What do you think about the DFI LP UT 790FX-M2R board? Also, what do you think about the OCZ Reaper PC2 8500 2x2GB ram? Or the G.Skill PC2 8500 2x2GB ram?

I can't believe how cheap RAM is now. I double checked and I was paying $133 per 1GB stick for the Corsair I was buying back when I got this Opteron. I paid $209 for this G.Skill stuff.

[Sparky]

Try and get a board with the SB750 if you can. SB600 has some flaws and I believe the 790FX-M2R has the SB600.

[ntruax]

What about the DFI LP DK 790FXB-M2RSH? That has the SB750. What board did you plan on getting?

[ntruax]

How does this sound?

AMD Phenom II X4 940 Deneb 3.0GHz Socket AM2+ 125W Quad-Core Black Edition
DFI LP DK 790FXB-M2RSH
OCZ Reaper HPC 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500)
Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000HLFS 300GB 10000 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

I'm just waiting for some more input before I place my order. That's what's in my cart on Newegg. What do you (or anyone else) think?

[tool_462]

Just a heads up on the RAM...

I ordered that kit a couple weeks ago and it was packaged and UPCed as DDR2-1066 but the actual sticks had stickers on them saying DDR2-800 :lol: They OC well but DDR2-1066 wasn't stable even with above the stickered voltages. Sadly I can't return them because I cut out the UPC for a rebate.

[ntruax]

Just a heads up on the RAM...

I ordered that kit a couple weeks ago and it was packaged and UPCed as DDR2-1066 but the actual sticks had stickers on them saying DDR2-800 :lol: They OC well but DDR2-1066 wasn't stable even with above the stickered voltages. Sadly I can't return them because I cut out the UPC for a rebate.

Did you get them from Newegg? Do you know anything about that DFI board? I've been too busy to keep up with all of this stuff for a long time now, that's why I'm asking so many questions. I was thinking about ordering a couple different brands of ram to try out, but I see that Neweggs return policy doesn't allow you to do that any more.

[ntruax]

Can anyone else please give me their thoughts on the stuff I picked out?

AMD Phenom II X4 940 Deneb 3.0GHz Socket AM2+ 125W Quad-Core Black Edition
DFI LP DK 790FXB-M2RSH
OCZ Reaper HPC 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500)
Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000HLFS 300GB 10000 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

Does anyone think there is a better choice for RAM or the board?

Thanks.

[zanzabar]

i like the gskill 2x2GB 900 cas4, and i would get what u have (cpu and MB) with the gsskill ram if u need it now but ddr3 has come way down and i would go am3. atleast with intel the ddr3 dosnt offer a statistical advantage of much but it feels faster (im not sure if it is or if its my head)

[ntruax]

Thanks for the quick reply. I really don't want to wait to buy something. I've purposely tried not to think about upgrading for at least a year because once I get the urge there's no stopping it... :ROTF:

But anyway, I can always sell this stuff to a friend of mine if I decide I want to upgrade to AM3. That or let one of my kids have it. My oldest son (he's 14) is getting this Ultra D with the Opteron and the G.Skill ram. He's wanted a new computer for a while and I already gave my other son one of my old NF7-S v2's that I used to use for folding (I miss gromacs...) :ROTF:

This might be a dumb question but are there any issues with running 4 x 2gig sticks with that board that anyone knows of? Do you think I would still be able to get a decent speed out of that setup with all that RAM?

Thanks.

[zanzabar]

no clue on 4 sticks, i know that 2x2 works fine

[ntruax]

Well it's ordered. All $830 worth. Thanks for the help. I'll let you know how it runs next week. :yepp::wierd:

[ntruax]

Well I finally got this up and running tonight. I'm having a problem though. The stupid thing is locking up while loading XP. It keeps freezing at 27% while formatting the hard drive. It's late and I'm extremely tired so I'll try to figure it out tomorrow. The processor is at 16 degrees celsius so far. It hasn't went higher than that in the bios yet so that's cool.

[ntruax]

Well this thing runs great. I've got it running at 3.9GHz. How do you speed up the ram? Like the old FSB speed. I had it all figured out with that Ultra-D, but I'm lost with this thing now. Does anyone have any advice for that or have a link that'll help me out?