Windows 64 Gold !

[TrinireturnofGamez]

Windows 64 is finally gone gold, expecting to begin sales by late april....  This should be followed by a ramp up in production of  64 bit chips, and the gradual phasing out of older 32 bit chips , we can expect to see :
 64 bit celerons
 64bit Sempron
  64 bit Via/othercompanynoonecaresabout CPUs

 This may be followed by price cuts, or price INCREASES .... either way it is time to start saving up pennies to move up to a 64bit platform with PCI-express.  Gamers will want an AMD system, in every game except quake 3 ( not including q3 based engines eg. COD, wolfenstein)  the Athlon64 murders any pentium within its price range ,  People who use their pcs do to 3d rendering also will want an AMD ,  all those who do encoding and heavy multi tasking, Intel will give you a *slight* advantage, though it will cost you alot more for the CPU itself, and the DDRII ram, BTX case that go with it .  
  What you need to go 64 bit :
AMD :
A strong ATX powersupply (400 watt +)  and an adaptor, or a new ATX 2.0 psu , the  new AMD boards have a 24 pin PSU  requirement ( +12 rail given 4 more pins for big video cards, and SLI )  .
DDR RAM , AMD still uses DDR RAM as DDRII is still too expensive and high latency, you can keep all your RAM .


Intel :
A new BTX case, with a BTX power supply , intel mobos need this.
DDR II RAM , unless you get a VIA chipset that supports DDR 1.


Prices
P4 64 bit : 2.8 ghz : 220 USD
                3ghz     : 250 USD
                 3.2 GHZ : 280~320 USD
Athlon 64 :
               3000 : 150 USD
                3200 : 190 USD
                 3500 : 250 USD

 notes on 64 bit : 64 bit does NOT give 2x 32 bit performance , it gives a decent performance boost of around 20-30% , but allows the CPU to access much greater amounts of RAM , and higher precision graphics .
http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2005q1/6...ts/index.x?pg=1

http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2005q1/6...ts/index.x?pg=8                    

[UltimateJed]

Hey dude, i saw a similar titled thread on your site forum.  Is your nick there Site Admin Paradoxxx by chance?                    

[TrinireturnofGamez]

Uh no  i have never been an admin in my Life , i have no idea what you are talking about .

  Here is an overview of my upgrade  , coming late this year , around november .
   DFI Nforce 4 ultra motherboard : 150 USD
   Athlon 64 3000 : 130 USD
   XXX video card : 150 USD ( whatever comes out in that price range at november)
   Thermaltake XP-90 : 39 USD
    GEIL 512mb DDR 400 RAM : 50 US ( plan to buy this in a month or two )

 Keeping my currant Hard/Optical drives , power supply and  case , this should only cost 3300TT after shipping ...   to raise money for this i plan to sell my 'old' 6600gt for 1200-1400 TT and my mobo + CPU + heatsink for 1200 TT , thats 2400-2600 TT  , meaning that this upgrade will only cost me 700-900TT , and almost double my overall performance .   I plan to overclock the cpu to  around athlon 64 4000 speeds , thats why i need the expensive ass motherboard and heatsink.....  
   Alot of your own upgrade configs will cost as much or less , start planning and saving in advance  !                    

[UltimateJed]

The DFI board is 140 someplace...Its one if not the BEST 939 board out there.  SLI without the price.

Hmm @ AMD64 price seems you may be purchasing a NewCastle or Winchester(prefered) OEM.. and I see you have included a 2ndary cooler (for OCing of course).

With respect you your Power Supply what do you got?  Dont forget that you will need a converter to change a std 20pins to 24pins if your PSU is older.  Fortunately all the video cards that require the standard 6pin power jack, ship a converter.  I advise checking out a truepower/purepower PSU its necessary.. There i go blabbing again and I dont even know what you got.

Aim for a Rev E or winchester dude, judging from the performance of the semprons (new ones) even with a lower level 2 cache the new memory controller more than makes up for it. 90nm is mandatory                    

[TrinireturnofGamez]

i know that the winchestors/Venices overclock very good,  they are phasing out all 130nm chips , so by the time november that  i buy my chip it should be a Venice ,  i know about the  PSU issue , 20 - 24 pin converter,  i'm pretty sure my PSU can handle it once i get an adaptor, its a generic PSU but a 450 watt  with 60 % efficiency , so thats roughly 230 watts true power , more than enough for a nice quiet A64 , and a fairly small graphics card.                    

[UltimateJed]

I strongly disagree with resepct to your PSU having enough juice.
Running a burner and how many hdds?  I dont mean to discourage...but...                    

[TrinireturnofGamez]

2 cd drives,  one 200 gb hard drive , a 90nm chip @ 2.4 ghz ( 4000+ ) only uses 50 watts of power under load ,  add another 70 watts for  a graphics card, 20 watts for the ram, and 50 for all the drives  i still only use 190-200 watts on my theoritical rig ....  it should work fine . If push comes to shove i have another 200 watt PSU i'm not using , i can use them in tandem , ( i'v seen it done)  with the 450 watt powering the mobo and graphics card, and the 200 watt my drives and fans  .                    

[UltimateJed]

Your wattages are accurate (75watt pci-x) but those wattages are only theoretical and the board itself takes some wattage, something that wasnt catered for.  In your current rig using some of those 'monitoring programs' have you noticed any drop in voltages?                    

[TrinireturnofGamez]

my motherboard monitor displays the following :
+12v : 12.850
+5v : 4.980
+3.3v : 3.328
  and it stay  at those readings , doesn't loose or gain more than .2 v at any time .                    

[UltimateJed]

Interesting indeed, Please keep me informed as to how stable your voltages are when you do the overhaul, im always interested in finding out how much  a 'brand' name PSU affect voltages and overall performance.

Whats the brand name on your PSU? (i know its generic but they still got some brand usually)                    

[TrinireturnofGamez]

its a Sunshine psu putting out 16a on the +12v rail