bits and pieces - is it worth it?

hi, i need help!

i'm going to buy a motherboard with with all the usual mouse, keyboard etc plus onboard 5.1 sound and lan, athlon 2ghz and 256 mb ddr ram. i'm buying off a friend for about £177 which is about $316. is this worth it, or can i get it cheaper anywhere else? bare in mind i live in uk!

thanks

 

Motherboard
Processor
Memory

All this from Newegg.com. Total is roughly $230
The motherboad has everything your looking at. The processor is 2Ghz, and you are getting 512MB of memory running in dual channel.

Of coarse shipping will add to the cost but newegg, has really good shipping rates (sometimes free). You could also find a simular setup out by you, on some UK Sites.



cooked

 

yeah 177 is good price for all that. but u could use somemore upgrades if u want a good relable comp

 

I dont know if you realized it or not but the 177 is in Euros, equaling around $316 American.

The few parts i put together was around $230. $86 dollars cheeper then what his friend is offering. Plus he will get more memory running in dual channel compared to his friends offer of one stick of 256. The extra money could be used to upgrade the processor, or put towards a video card.



cooked

 

o didnt realized euro's.

ya thats a good abit mobo and proccessor.. damn i should have bought that ^^

 

Hmmm in the UK its often worth checking out Novatech...

www.novatech.co.uk

They do some great motherboard bundles which are worth a look and you can pick up a decent system for quite cheap. If you want to avoid the shipping costs and just want that nice feeling of getting it in your hands then their show room is in Portsmouth (which is ideal for me - Im not a million miles away from there) but kinda the wrong side of the M25 from Hertfordshire...
Worth a look in anyway and a good comparison base for prices.

CHeers,
Greg

 

athlonXPs support dual channel RAM? are you sure?

 

Im 100% positive. Heck im running 2 sticks of PC3200 512 a piece in dual channel right now!



cooked

 

Not euros, guys. Pounds. The British haven't adopted the euro.

£ --> Pound. 1 £ ~= $1.80 US

€ --> Euro. 1 € ~= $1.25 US

 

LOL I cant believe i did that! I guess i should pay more attention to things. LOL





cooked

 

im sure you can stick dual channel RAM in a board that supports the same speed RAM ... but does it take advantage of it? or does it just treat it as normal RAM? i could've sworn i read somewhere that the only AMD chip that supports dual channel is the 64-bit FX series ... maybe they just didn't know what they talking about?

 

Well i do believe when it comes to the 64bit chips the only ones right now that support dual channel is the FX Series. Im not 100% sure on this one but i do know certain socket 64s dont support Dual channel, and another socket does.

With my computer i know for a fact it is utilizing the dual channel. It says so in my bios, in the system information just before POST, and in Aida32.

Hopefully someone can shead a little light on the 64 processors, and which ones use dual channel.



cooked

 

@pyrate

I did some reading and found that the anthlon XPs do support Dual Channel Ram. The socket 754 64bit AMDs do not support the Dual Channel, while its big brother the socket 939 does support Dual Channel.

I think that is what you where reading about.

Here is a good link to some info.



cooked

 

i guess i just assumed since the 754s didn't support it ... socket A didn't either ... but now it's all cleared up

 

As another perspective... my first machine was a Novatech.. and it was good for a while, BUT after about a month I found out the hard drive was broken (would make scraping noises occasionally and the system would freeze... hmm.) and then when I sent it back again a while later with another problem, they said there was "nothing wrong with it", and so charged me £40 for the privilage. However, later I found out the RAM had gone nuts, and they could have easily replaced it.

And their tech support sucks as well, considering they distribute OEM copies of windows they should have support equal to that of Microsoft, which it clearly isnt (I took up a complaint with them about this, and they said I should phone M$, and of course as it was an OEM copy they wouldnt support me ... so I complained to novatech about this, and guess what! nothing happened).

Also, they use ECS (PCChips) motherboards in their machines, which are rather unreliable and badly supported to say the least.

But thats just my experience, thought I'd pass it on

Oh yes, and Dual Channel is supported by all Athlon XPs (as they are all the same socket type) but not all chipsets. nForce2 chipsets (which have decent 5.1 surround, so that leads me to think that motherboard is nForce2) support Dual Channel, and I'm running it at this moment