Asus P5W DH or Bad Axe 2?

[Guest JustinSane]

Well the Gigabyte is now at the top of my list. I'm just not sure now what would be more worth it. Video card or proc, mobo, and ram. Maybe all of it if I wanna get crazy lol.

[Uber-Noober]

Good point Kingfisher. Thats the curse of overclocking; it always leaves you wanting more....... I'm not a fanboy of DFI or anything, I was just thoroughly impressed with my last board. That DFI nf4 UT with the 6-06 BIOS was a total rock.

 

I also agree, with the exception of Quake 4, Rome and Company of Heroes you really can't tell the difference between the old sys and the new. CS Source, Half Life and FEAR are marginally better at best. Doom 3 showed no improvement at all (very surprising to me). To be honest, I like strategy games like Civ 4, Space Empires and Galciv II the best (thats my favorite part of Rome: Total War is the main map part of game. The tactical battle scenes while fun are not the best part of the game). A new computer was not really needed.

 

Basically my main reason for getting a whole new sys was to:

 

(1) Get rid of my dusty BFG 6800GT for $$; it was just sitting on my shelf.

(2) Get two gigs of dual channel ram; the ddr 500 2x1gb were getting ludicrously expensive meaning upgrading my old rig was not worth the trouble. Also I had no guarantee my venice would stay at a 250 HTT overclock with 2 gigs of ram; its not an opty.

(3) Try a RAID 0 setup and a 100% SATA system (no IDE) with the availability of the new SATA dvd-drives. Yeah I know RAID is not all its cracked up to be but I like the fact I can copy and paste Gigabytes of data almost instantaneously. Also I was on a NWN2 binge and that game has ridiculously unnecessary load times with a single hard drive.

(4) Thrill of adventure with something new; ie. give Intel a try

(5) Have a quieter system overall; silence is golden.

 

I've always been a AMD supporter; but I thought I should try Intel for once.

 

My friend has an Opty 165 with an 8800GTX and playing his comp feels much smoother so I'll be the first to admit graphics cards are everything in games.

 

As I said before, probably the best buy of the bunch was the Bluegears sound card. Sounds absolutely magical with my Grado Labs Sr-60 headphones. I also wanted to try the alternative to Creative Labs for reason (4) above.

 

Finally, my friend made the cash offer for the computer and I sold it to him near instantly meaning I did not have a computer during the research stage of a new system. I was in withdrawal and needed a system stat. I heard good things about the e4300, Angry Games recommended the DS3 board and power supply ( I respect his opinion on these matters as gospel as he is far more knowledgeable than I on matters of OC'ing) and OCZ has always had great products and customer support. I pulled the trigger on short notice.

 

In hindsight I would've gotten the e6300, P5n deluxe (bandwidth performance of a 500+ FSB is noticeable in most games I have heard) and g.Skill to get a 3.5 Ghz overclock easy without having to mod my motherboard. Also I would have had matrix RAID (I did not research RAID sufficiently before my purchase) and a future SLI option. However, I find with SLI that by the time you need to get a SLI setup to keep up with new games, theres a new single card on the market that pwns a SLI setup anyway.

[Coors]

Well the Gigabyte is now at the top of my list. I'm just not sure now what would be more worth it. Video card or proc, mobo, and ram. Maybe all of it if I wanna get crazy lol.

 

Well...you just have to decide how much you want to actually spend. And if your married....how many nights you want to sleep in the dog house LOL

[Coors]

However, I find with SLI that by the time you need to get a SLI setup to keep up with new games, theres a new single card on the market that pwns a SLI setup anyway.

 

QFT

[Uber-Noober]

In all probability Justin, I'd stick with your current sys and get a 8800gtx. Like I said, my friends system with an opty, dfi board 2x1gb ram and 8800gtx is a beauty. I don't want you to spend all this money on a Intel rig only to be disappointed. I hope I explained my choices sufficiently to you; it wasn't all about performance gains as silly as that may sound.

[Guest JustinSane]

I hope I explained my choices sufficiently to you; it wasn't all about performance gains as silly as that may sound.

 

Definitely. Thanks a lot guys.

 

Baltimore!? I was born in Baltimore! Moved to this crappy place (Stafford, VA) 10 years ago. How about them Ravens?

[Uber-Noober]

Actually I'm a Canadian born and raised. Live here for work. Baltimore's got great seafood although I spend most of my time in DC because my girlfriend lives in Bethesda.

[Witchfire]

I know Gigabyte boards were already mentioned earlier, but just to throw my own 2¢, I highly recommend the GA-965P-S3 or DS3. I have run both, both for myself, and for customers' builds, and have had zero problems. Overclocking is easy, and the FSB threshold is high enough to not hold back any but the most extreme users.

 

For +/- $100, it's hard to beat.

[Thasp]

The only reason I like gigabyte is because of my experience with asus.

 

I have had both cold boot on me. I cleared CMOS in the asus one time, same as always, unplug the power for a minute then switch to the clear cmos jumper, and it stops working.

 

The gigabyte on the other hand, if you reset failsafe defaults and have memory that needs a decent amount more tan 1.8v to run, won't. One of my gigabytes also, one time, after setting an overclock, refused to ever boot properly again. I forget if I was going to the overclock I have now, or bringing it back to stock, but I rebooted, and it stopped. I cleared CMOS, nothing, I kept it on, nothing.

 

At least the DS3 had memory subtimings, and I got more out of my CPU/RAM with the DS3 than the stupid p5wdh. but the p5wdh has a mosfet cooler on it from the start, which is nice. No buying vga ramsinks and wasting time applying them.

 

I never had this issue with the dfi dagf I have now. I have had issues with it lying about how much vdimm it can deliver(over 2.8v = total crap), but no cold boots that couldn't be fixed with a cmos clear or a a bios CD.. intel's chipsets have yet to impress me. My AMD experience was far better than my Intel... now if only they'd make something worth buying again.