Ultimate gaming pc?

I'm wanting to create a gaming pc, I thought I had figured out what to do, but posts in other areas have made me shaky about certain issues, mainly the cpu/motherboard.

First thing first, what's the best cpu out there for gaming?

Secondly whats the best motherboard out there for it? I personally like the AV8 for amd and P5AD2 Premium for intel both from asus and mainly because the built in wireless and the AI overclocking. not to mention the board I have now is a p4c800 deluxe w/ intel 3ghz p4 which it is oc'ing to 3.3ghz for me.

I've never OC'd anything manually and would need to get a lot of really good info and have a complete understanding of it b4 attempting to do so because I can't afford to blow anything up.

I'm also wanting to do the whole pci express if at all possible because well, gfx cards will run faster in it and be more powerful, if not right now then later on.

Intel board from asus has pci express, along with working with ddr2 533, which all the amd one can handle is agp and ddr 400.

Both intel and amd boards (P5AD2 Premium, and AV8) have AI overclocking but the intel also has what it calls AI NOS™ which is supposed to be like a nitrus oxide system for your car, giving even more OC boost when using intense applications.

So the question is between these 4 chips

P4 3.6 (90nm), P4 3.4ee, AMD 64, AMD 64 FX (socket 939)

and I would prefer AI overclocking on asus boards so

Asus P5AD2 Premium (http://usa.asus.com/products/mb/socket775/p5ad2-p/overview.htm)

or

Asus AV8 Deluxe (http://usa.asus.com/products/mb/socket939/a8v-d/overview.htm)


Keep in mind I'm leaning towards intel due to the specific asus board which has the AI NOS and PCI Express.



So, after reading all that, what do you think? Confused mainly about the cpu due to some threads I've been chatting in the cpu area saying the AMD proccessor is better for gaming, but is it better even when the intel can use ddr2 533 vs amd's ddr 400, and the intel board can use pci express vs amd's agp 8x?

Basically what I have seen amounts to this.

AMD does better in games
Intel does better with Multimedia encoding, multi-tasking.

I always stick with AMD no matter what the box though. Price vs. Performance can't be beat.

The only way you're gonna be able to go with PCI-E and DDR2 is if you go with the LG775 P4, but you already have a pretty good setup so upgrading now would do you little good since video cards aren't even using the full AGP bandwidth and DDR2 have high latencies.
The 3.4ghz EE is just a northwood with four times the cache, yes four times the cache is good, but for the money it costs you would be way better off with a AMD64-FX if your plan is gaming.

Wait until there is a PCI-E motherboard for socket 939 processors.

Then: FX-53, 1gb DDR2 RAM, 6800 Ultra or x800xt

that would set you up for awhile...

If we're talking 'ultimate' I'd go with two gigs(apparently there are some games where it's very noticeable) of ram, an FX-53, two Raptors in RAID 0, a 400GB sata drive, the rest is really debatable.

Right now the AMD FX-53 939pin processors are the best for gaming, second place goes to the Pentium 4 EE. If I were building a new rig I would use the FX-53 on the Asus board with the BFG nVidia 6800, two 1gig sticks of Corsair XMS series RAM, and an Audigy ZS soundcard. Oh yeah, and the Western Digital 'Raptor' 10,000RPM SATA drives will improve load times for your games(and windows), so at least one of those is crucial

Frankly it sounds like you have a pretty sweet rig already with a 3GHz+ Pentium 4 in there, if you really want to build a new PC you should see a good performance boost with the on-chip memory controller that the FX-51 and FX-53 both have.

Yea even with the lower clock speeds those 64 bit AMD processors will be better for gaming if thats what you are looking for.

Does the FX still out preform the P4's when considering ddr2 533 the p4's can use on the upper end asus board compared to the Fx's ddr 400, not to mention that the p4 board has the feature that when load peaks it oc's your board even more beyond it's AI overclocking, when the amd board has AI overclocking but not the extra boost when needed feature?


Edit: Am currently using 2 gigs of ddr 400, and have an SATA Raptor 10,000 (36gig model) Geforce FX 5900 OC'd to 500 clock speed and 910 mhz on the memory.

White Rain said:

Does the FX still out preform the P4's when considering ddr2 533 the p4's can use on the upper end asus board compared to the Fx's ddr 400, not to mention that the p4 board has the feature that when load peaks it oc's your board even more beyond it's AI overclocking, when the amd board has AI overclocking but not the extra boost when needed feature?


Edit: Am currently using 2 gigs of ddr 400, and have an SATA Raptor 10,000 (36gig model) Geforce FX 5900 OC'd to 500 clock speed and 910 mhz on the memory.

Click to expand...

It still benchmarks higher. That's why I love AMD.

Yea id defiantly go with the fx-53 especially if you want a gaming rig like you said.

Have you heard if/when Asus might throw a board out there that is socket 939 w/ pci express and ddr2 533+ compatile?

If you already overclock, Hardware (AI) overclocking is useless.

Go with a AMD FX, lots of RAM, RAIDed Raptors, a fast vid card, and some nice cooling.

9mmCensor said:

If you already overclock, Hardware (AI) overclocking is useless.

Go with a AMD FX, lots of RAM, RAIDed Raptors, a fast vid card, and some nice cooling.

Click to expand...

Well I don't overclock my ram/processor other than AI overclocking because I can't find a guide comprehensive enough to tell me how. It's something I'd want to have a complete understanding of before attempting so that I don't screw something up. With hardware so pricy I don't want to go with a trial and error method and really be off base and burn something up.

If you have a link to a couple of guides that could help me with the non-program doing it for me style of overclocking I'd be much more likely to go for a FX 64 939

i would soil myself if i got a fx-53 with 2 74gb raptors in raid 0 with a bfg 6800ultra OC with vga silencer with 2 gigs of corsair xms registered pc 4000 with a sick fortron PSU

Amrathe said:

Basically what I have seen amounts to this.

AMD does better in games
Intel does better with Multimedia encoding, multi-tasking.

I always stick with AMD no matter what the box though. Price vs. Performance can't be beat.

Click to expand...

this was true with the xp's, but amd is price-matching intel. saying "price vs. performance cant be beat" isnt valid anymore. granted, for gaming the A64 is a better chip, its not like your getting a chip for 50 bucks and only seeing 10% less performance (its prolly more than that) like with the xps.

White Rain said:

Well I don't overclock my ram/processor other than AI overclocking because I can't find a guide comprehensive enough to tell me how. It's something I'd want to have a complete understanding of before attempting so that I don't screw something up. With hardware so pricy I don't want to go with a trial and error method and really be off base and burn something up.

If you have a link to a couple of guides that could help me with the non-program doing it for me style of overclocking I'd be much more likely to go for a FX 64 939

Click to expand...

its not going to "burn up" even if you do manual overclocking, if you overclock too high, the asus board will set it back to stock. if your using stock cooling and your trying to oc a 3.0 chip, 3.4 is prolly all you can get with it. if your using something like an sp-94, 3.6-3.8 should be easy. overclocking really is trial and error and i dont know of anyone who has burned up their computer from trying different overclocks. as long as the heatsink is properly installed and you have good case cooling, your fine. just set it to manual, set the cpu frequency to 230, set the dram frequency to 333mhz, set the agp/pci frequency to 66.66/33.33, set the cpu vcore to 1.6500v, set the dram voltage to 2.85, set the agp vddq to 1.6, set performance mode to turbo if its available. then save the settings and it should work fine. what this will do is set the FSB to 230 (stock is 200). your cpu has a 15x multiplier if you have a 3.0 like you said. simply take the FSB x the multiplier to get your OC. 230 x 15 = 3450, or 3.4ghz. i told you to set the dram frequency to 333mhz. instead of running a 1:1 ratio of FSB:RAM (400mhz), you run it at 333mhz for a 5:4 ratio. this will run the ram at a lower speed than the FSB. so if you have pc3200 and your running 230FSB, the ram will be running at 184mhz, 32mhz short of pc3200 speeds. this is underclocking your memory, and it removes the ram as a possible bottleneck. you always want to set the agp/pci frequency to 66.66/33.33mhz. this is a "pci lock", if you dont do this, it can make your computer unstable after overclocking. setting the vcore to 1.6500v will eliminate the amount of vcore as a possible bottleneck. dont give it anymore than 1.6500v. setting the dram voltage to 2.85 will eliminate that as a possible bottlneck. the agp vddq voltage is your northbridge voltage as well as agp voltage, by upping it from 1.5 to 1.6 it gives the northbridge more voltage to make it more stable after overclocking. your chip should be able to handle 230mhz fsb no problem. if it does, then go back into the bios and try 235mzh fsb. if thats stable, try 240, 245 and so on. 250mhz may very well be your limit, you have to try and see though. if your running stock cooling, i wouldnt do more than 235mhz fsb.

dont worry, if its unstable, asus will revert to stock settings and you can go back into the bios and set things lower. if you have asus reporter (the female voice), it will tell you whats happening. if you follow my directions, everything should be fine.

OC'ing is not that hard. The only thing that will damage your PC is increasing voltage, so be careful and read up on this. Everything else like FSB and ram speed won't hurt your pc, it will just start to crash a lot, which means you messed up and need to change it back.

And if your going to buy a new PC, why not try and get everything out of your old one that you can? With good airflow your chip should do 3.6.

AMD's are always better than Intel's in gaming benchmarks. I would personally wait a while before going Socket 939. I just bought a socket 754 and love it, almost as fast and much cheaper. But in your case I would wait atleast a couple months, then get a 939, as their aren't any good Mobo's out at the moment. In the mean time, get a better heatsink for your P4 and get O/C'ing!