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My processor just ain't cutting it anymore. A PIII-866 just don't give me the framerates I demand.

So, I'm looking at the following upgrade:

PIV - 2.4GHz
MSI MoBo (Its not great, anyone else got recommendations)
512mb DDR-RAM
Case + Powersupply.

This will be augmented by my existing bits:

GeForce4 Ti4200
Hercules Gametheater XP
60bg of HDDs
Assorted drives.


Also, are TV tuner cards worth the effort? And can someone recommend a good DVD drive/card? My current DVD drive is a little twitchy.

You sure about the P4? Athlons still give you a lot of bang for your buck...

Crayz9000 wrote:You sure about the P4? Athlons still give you a lot of bang for your buck...

Has AMD fixed the heat problems with the Athlons yet? I have this thing about slagging expensive CPUs.

weemadando wrote:

Crayz9000 wrote:You sure about the P4? Athlons still give you a lot of bang for your buck...

Has AMD fixed the heat problems with the Athlons yet? I have this thing about slagging expensive CPUs.

As far as I know they are ok. If heat worrys you, stick on a whopping great fan/heatsink and a couple of extractor fans in the case. And dont overclock.

Stuart Mackey wrote:

weemadando wrote:

Crayz9000 wrote:You sure about the P4? Athlons still give you a lot of bang for your buck...

Has AMD fixed the heat problems with the Athlons yet? I have this thing about slagging expensive CPUs.

As far as I know they are ok. If heat worrys you, stick on a whopping great fan/heatsink and a couple of extractor fans in the case. And dont overclock.

In a word, no. Pop the heatsink off an Athlon and it'll still turn to molten goo.

I've had an Athlon powered PC since July 2002. It has given me no heat problems.

Stay away from the Asus nforce2 boards if you go AMD.
Their tech support is nonexistent and reported problems are manifold.
Visit the Asus forum at nforcershq.com and read all about it.

My A7N8X deluxe hasn't died yet, but I do have strange interference in the video at boot up that I never had with my old BX board and the same components.

This board is the last Asus product that I'll ever buy.

On the good side, the Athlon is plenty fast and the Vantec Aeroflow cooler keeps my temps at about 46°C under full load.

Go Athlon, but stay away from Asus.

Vympel wrote:I've had an Athlon powered PC since July 2002. It has given me no heat problems.

That would likely be because you have adequate heat-sinking. I've got a big, bad-ass copper and aluminium heatsink on mine with variable-speed fan, so I have no heat problems as well. But, a P4 is designed to stand up to a little more abuse. Overheat a P4 and it'll throttle back. Overheat an Athlon and you get a paperweight.

GrandMasterTerwynn wrote:

Stuart Mackey wrote:

weemadando wrote: Has AMD fixed the heat problems with the Athlons yet? I have this thing about slagging expensive CPUs.

As far as I know they are ok. If heat worrys you, stick on a whopping great fan/heatsink and a couple of extractor fans in the case. And dont overclock.

In a word, no. Pop the heatsink off an Athlon and it'll still turn to molten goo.

Well of course it will all CPU's will die if you remove the heatsink and then run it.

I know a number of people who use the Athlon series and no one has had a problem with them, even the overclockers.

Stuart Mackey wrote:

GrandMasterTerwynn wrote:

Stuart Mackey wrote: As far as I know they are ok. If heat worrys you, stick on a whopping great fan/heatsink and a couple of extractor fans in the case. And dont overclock.

In a word, no. Pop the heatsink off an Athlon and it'll still turn to molten goo.

Well of course it will all CPU's will die if you remove the heatsink and then run it.

I know a number of people who use the Athlon series and no one has had a problem with them, even the overclockers.

P4s actually will throttle back and shut down when faced with something like that. Then they come back up just fine when you put the heatsink back on. Try it on an Athlon and the results are spectacular. Still, the Athlon has the best value, being both fast and cheap, even if it's less idiot-tolerant.

And serious overclockers go to extreme measures to keep their birds cool.

GrandMasterTerwynn wrote: P4s actually will throttle back and shut down when faced with something like that. Then they come back up just fine when you put the heatsink back on. Try it on an Athlon and the results are spectacular. Still, the Athlon has the best value, being both fast and cheap, even if it's less idiot-tolerant.

And serious overclockers go to extreme measures to keep their birds cool.

I rather think that Intel do not reccomend that you try such an experiment and check your warrenty if you do try it. Not having the correct cooling on a CPU can cause damage, that a P4 is particuly idiot proof does not negate this.
Athlons are the best bang for buck at the moment, and for your average user and even average gamer are excellent value.

And yes, Over clockers do like to keeps things nice and cool..I wonder how long it will be befor someones radiator system leaks

Glocksman wrote:On the good side, the Athlon is plenty fast and the Vantec Aeroflow cooler keeps my temps at about 46°C under full load.

PLEASE tell me what this Aeroflow device is!!!

If you're getting a P4, you might want to go the extra mile and get a mobo that supports RDRAM. I hear it's a lot faster in many cases.

If you go Athlon, then most suggest DDR.

Shinova wrote:If you're getting a P4, you might want to go the extra mile and get a mobo that supports RDRAM. I hear it's a lot faster in many cases.

If you go Athlon, then most suggest DDR.

P4 was originally sorted for RDRAM wasnt it? only it was too expensive to be viable for home users.
Mind you DDR is now cheaper than SD in NZ

Dalton wrote:

Glocksman wrote:On the good side, the Athlon is plenty fast and the Vantec Aeroflow cooler keeps my temps at about 46°C under full load.

PLEASE tell me what this Aeroflow device is!!!

Think big ass heat sink

Here's an article

Think big ass heat sink

That's exactly what it is.

Here's a pic of it mounted on my A7N8X Deluxe.

Vantec Aeroflow

Note the clearance between the caps and the heatsink.
It was a PITA to mount, but it's quiet and effective.

Glocksman wrote:

Think big ass heat sink

That's exactly what it is.

Here's a pic of it mounted on my A7N8X Deluxe.

Glock's heat sink

Note the clearance between the caps and the heatsink.
It was a PITA to mount, but it's quiet and effective.

That is a big sucker...cool that it's quiet for the size of the sucker.

Also, are TV tuner cards worth the effort? And can someone recommend a good DVD drive/card? My current DVD drive is a little twitchy.

A friend of mine messed with tuner cards a few times until he finally decided it wasn't worth the hassle dealing with software incompatibilites.

As far as DVD drives go, get a Pioneer. You won't regret it.

Hauppage's TV tuner cards work fairly well, and they're compatible with DScaler, which is always a plus.

The Pentium 4 3GHz/800MHz FSB coupled with dual-channel DDR400 SDRAM is the fastest you can get right now, beating out consumer-level PC1066 RDRAM rather handily.

I prefer Asus P4 motherboard over MSI and Intel over either of them for stability.

The P4-2.4GHz is a fine processor and will do well. You can, of course, always get AMD, but it's trickier then.

CoolerMaster also has some pretty good heatsinks, and they're quiet too. The difference is that CoolerMasters are all copper--no aluminum there.

They're also pretty quiet, and mine has kept my Athlon around 55 degrees Centigrade...

The Alpha 8045 is a well known heatsink, but requires that you be able to use mounting screws.

Thermalright has some very beefy heatsinks as well, probably the best performing on the market at the moment.

My current heatsink is a ThermalTake 6Cu...I'll get a pic in a minute...

phongn wrote:The Pentium 4 3GHz/800MHz FSB coupled with dual-channel DDR400 SDRAM is the fastest you can get right now, beating out consumer-level PC1066 RDRAM rather handily.

But isn't there a PC2700 RDRAM or something like that out in the market?

Shinova wrote:

phongn wrote:The Pentium 4 3GHz/800MHz FSB coupled with dual-channel DDR400 SDRAM is the fastest you can get right now, beating out consumer-level PC1066 RDRAM rather handily.

But isn't there a PC2700 RDRAM or something like that out in the market?

Thats DDR.

Note: DDR400 = PC3200 PC2700 is 333MHz DDR.

Shinova wrote:If you're getting a P4, you might want to go the extra mile and get a mobo that supports RDRAM. I hear it's a lot faster in many cases.

If you go Athlon, then most suggest DDR.

The only thing Rambus has over DDR is available bandwith. Thing is, it also has a higher latency rate because of this, therefore its slower than DDR in many cases.