Compy Upgrade Time

its still a good board haha, don't depress me guys haha, but yeah, dual channel should work on any 939 motherboard.

also for the 6600GT make sure its in the new revision and supports opengl 2.0, they've also redone some things and fixed some things, like san diego fixed up and optimized the older core problems

 

I do belive that you'd be well served with Asus A8V-E Deluxe, that's supposed to be a very solid board and although it's nice to have some extra features I'd save money like Waffles said and perhaps get the 6800GT if it's offered, it's roughly twice as fast as the 6600GT in some tests so you'd see a major upgrade, it shouldn't be all that much more expensive, maybe less than $400 Australian funds?, which is good for how much more you get. Yeah definately go for the dual-channel kit, cheaper and more performance:good:

 

Wow, if I ever figured out that the guy at the local computer shop (I've never been to one, don't need them) got SLI and dual channel confused he would never get my business again. If you call yourself a professional and don't know that you're in bad shape. My money says he was trying to rip you off, but maybe not. And with the Deluxe, as people have said, you don't need it.

 

I'm not gonna go back to the shop, it looked pretty good, had a good range of hardware (it had 3 varieties of 6600GT's on offer), but either way, if he was trying to rip me off or didnt know what he was talking about, I don't want or need his business. I'll go back to the shop that gave me the $850 deal and ask for some better equipment on it and it'll hopefully be around the $1000 mark.

I'll look for the A8V-E Deluxe since I don't need the extra features so much. Maybe the Gigabyte K8NSC, or the Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 if the A8V-E isn't available. Those three all cost the same, and by the sound of it, none are going to be too noticably bad. They supports the superior (and cheaper) dual channeling. Its 939 so it leaves the door open to simpler upgrades in the future, and should work fine with the AMD 64.

Someone on another board said "first of all, u cant get the gigabyte board as its the nforce3 250gb chipset .'. is AGP not PCI-E." I'm thinking he means the K8NSC? nforce 3 boards are still good for what I want aren't they?

A single 6600GT will be fine for now. SLI isn't needed, and a 6800GT is too expensive, especially when I feel that the 6600GT will be more than powerful enough for my needs. My brother and I combined may play up to 20 hours a week on this thing, neither of us are in it for bragging rights with any friends about who can get the highest FPS or the best settings. I just want it to run reliably and smoothly to be able to enjoy games like Battlefield 2 online.

Thanks for all the help, you lot have been by far the best advice I've gotten. I'm back at uni this week so I won't be able to get a quote on my (hopefully) final set-up until probably the weekend. When I get it I'll chuck it up here.

EDIT: I just read on Tom's Hardware Guide that Gigabyte's nforce3 K8NSC is an AGP board whereas Gigabyte's nforce4 K8NXP is PCI-E. Is this the case for all nforce3 boards when compared with nforce4? I definitely want PCI-E.

 

I have a Gigabyte K8NS-939 AGP 8x and it's a nice board but yeah if you want PCIe which I suggest as it's the future after all, then most any nForce 4 motherboard will be good. Gigabyte and ASUS make some nice boards, if you like overclocking then a DFI Lanparty board will be you're best bet, if that store offers them of course. I can't recommend ASUS over Gigabyte or vise versa as they're both solid choices so whatever you can afford and looks good to you. The only determining factor for me would be the supported hypertransport bus, some say 2000Mhz which is what you'll want. The higher the better.

 

I agree, both boards are very solid decisions and it's hard to decide.

the nforce4ultra/SLI boards are more featured than the 3ultra. and PCIex16 and s.939 are solid choices for an upgrade path in the future, though amd plans to release the FX-59 and next line of X2 modules from what I heard and then move on, still providing upgrades for the next year or two

 

Ooooooooh FX-59. Me likey. That thing will definately be awesome. I wonder what the specs will be....

 

3.0Ghz and maybe a 2Mb L2 cache.

 

Niiiiice. Intel's dual core Extreme Edition bites the dust :good:

 

Yeah all the EE's are overpriced really, though I can't exactly say the FX and X2 line are chock full of cheap chips either, but cheap in comparison to Intels price/performance ratio if that makes any sence.

 

**** another post disappeared! If my posts are being deleted just tell me, but I don't think they are... Anyways, the AMDs perform much better than the EEs for less money, no question there.