Finally upgrading..

I finally got my PCI Express upgrade after months and months of waiting for the damned prices to go down.

ThermalTake 680W PSU
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (good price/performance)
ASUS A8N-SLI motherboard
1GB Mushkin PC3200 (2.5-3-3.. cheap stuff but I don\'t O/C. I might add another 512MB)
BFG GF6800GT OC

I love this setup. The CPU is decent, but Socket 939 is going to be around for at least another year and will go dual-core giving me plenty of upgrade space. I hope this mobo supports dual-core.. I don\'t see why not.  

The 680W PSU gives me a lot of headroom for adding a 6800GT in SLI later, or even next-gen cards that support SLI down the road. (if I choose to ditch the 6800GT in a few years)

It\'s good to have an upgrade path. Intel didn\'t afford me one with the Canterwood. I bought it when the CPU\'s were at 3-3.2GHz and lo and behold Intel never pushed the Canterwood\'s 800MHz bus past.. 3.4-3.6GHz. Then they changed sockets.

Congrats, that\'s a nice rig.

nice rig, I too just got a new computer.  I\'m still going to use my AMD 3000+ dektop as a home theater pc, and will  probably  upgrade the video card next month, but anyways here it is;

Emachines 6809 notebook;
AMD 64 3200+
512 mb ddr ram (will upgrade to 1.25 asap)
80 gb hd (will upgrade to 7200rpm)
mobile Radeon 9600
built in wireless
15.4" wide screen

I figure it\'ll be nice to do some work while out on my boat or on the move, and for the price I couldn\'t pass the little bugger up.

Theomen: 3200+, definitely the best price/performance.

The 3500+ is only about $60 more, but not quite worth every penny..

Sweet setup, can I ask how much everything cost in the end?  And what kind of case are you using?

yeah, I\'m loving the the 64 3200+ for price/performance, just wait until Farcry 64 hits the streets.

*fwap fwap

I\'m using an ATX case I bought for my first built system in 1999. It works, but might need to be replaced.

Prices after shipping/tax:

PSU: $147
CPU: $216
RAM: $130-140 (can\'t remember)
GPU: $420
Mobo: $199

[videoholic]

I need to buy pretty soon.  Once these darn checks start pouring in.

[Evi]

I need to buy pretty soon. Once these darn checks start pouring in.

You mean when your hoes start bringing back your money from their all night "work"...?

bitch, where\'s my money!

Well, I got my upgrade together but so far it\'s been hell getting it to run.

It wouldn\'t boot at first, then I realized I had to switch around the little SLI card on the mobo. I switch it around, get into the BIOS.. then poof. Garbled screen, completely psychodelic video signal out of nowhere.

Turns out that I only put the card in halfway when I flipped it.. but I\'m not sure if that\'s the problem. Now the computer starts up and I get nothing but the vertical lines of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. I can do things in the BIOS, even boot into Windows (I think) but can\'t see anything but garbled crap on the screen.

I\'ve heard reports of bad video cards coming from Chumbo.com (where I ordered) and this unit (the BFG 6800GT) being a common culprit.. but I\'m not sure if it\'s the video card.. the DVI-to-VGA adapter.. or the motherboard.

Worst part of all? If one or more parts are bad, I have to RMA them and it could take forever to get them back.

[§ôµÏG®ïñD]

test a different card in the mobo, if it works ok then its most likely the card.

We got it to work.. somehow. Then, after at least 30 minutes and plenty of up-time (enough to install drivers and surf the net..) it goes back to garbled mode in the middle of a Windows session..

That\'s sounds like a DYI job gone horribly wrong.

Try monitoring the videocard GPU core temperatures. 120 degrees celcius is really
max it can take.

..but I think you might have already fried the card on that initial boot up...

[§ôµÏG®ïñD]

yea it sounds like the gpu is getting to hot, or is already f@#ked.  Take it back.