Gigabyte AM3 Board Opinion?

[fat jez]

Ok....so if someone had to choose....would it be better to go with lower latency or tighter timings if you had a choice?

I'd go tighter timings. Intel seems to like raw bandwidth, AMD likes tight timings. I compromised with the links I posted - good bandwidth and still with pretty good timings.

 

[Bigsmooth1081]

Ok....keeping that in mind and realizing the most expensive isn't always the best what direction would you put a guy in if all he wanted was 4gb of ddr3 and budget wasn't an issue for todays sake as well as later on down the road

 

[fat jez]

This one.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231303

The timings (latencies) are pretty good and it will clock up to 1600MHz if you ever switch to intel, where raw memory speed becomes more important. It's the one I would buy for those reasons (it's pretty much the stuff I'm running now, just my timings are slightly poorer).

 

[Bigsmooth1081]

I gotta be honest...I was always told, and it could be wrong but a person would want Mushkin if at all possible because they are hand picked

 

[fat jez]

So go with Mushkin? I doubt you'd see any difference, but how about this?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226103

Or better still, this?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226120

 

[Bigsmooth1081]

No I am just asking was I told wrong? I consider you folks the foremost experts and I would certainly take your words over a single other person, after all I figure everything has been tried here, so the proof would certainly be in the pudding

 

[fat jez]

Any of the big names should be fine - Crucial, Mushkin, G.Skill, etc. It's the no name stuff you want to watch. Go for the RAM at the tightest timings you can find, rated at the highest speed and at a price you want to pay. I've used G.Skill, Corsair and Crucial and all have been fine.

 

[ChanceCoats123]

Ok....so if someone had to choose....would it be better to go with lower latency or tighter timings if you had a choice?

Lolz sauce all over the place ^^^. Tight timings are directly related to the latency. Tight timings are low latency.

The possible choices are low speeds with tight timings, or high speeds with loose timings. I, personally, prefer to run low speeds with tight timings.

 

[Bigsmooth1081]

Id love to see what could be built if you take each one of these guys on the benching teams and have them do their thing in each one of their respected areas such as ram and so fourth, I would think NASA would be on the phone lol. So would you also agree with this chance?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231303

 

[ChanceCoats123]

I most definitely would!

I don't really have a "specialty" so to speak, but if you need an Amd rig built, I'm more than happy to find a few links for you.

 

[Bigsmooth1081]

Heres a question for you..my little brother got 340 dollars for his bday last week....Could a gaming rig/multimedia powerhouse be built for that price?...I just hate to see him go to best buy or something like that and buy a shelf unit...He has a very nice case that I bought him a few years ago but he would have to have everything else excluding mouse and keyboard

 

[QuietIce]

What kind of games are you talking about? And "powerhouse"??? Have you looked at the price of just video cards recently?????

But to halfway answer your question, you could probably build a similar rig to an off-the-shelf unit but with better quality components. $340 is doable but it's not going to be a "gaming rig/multimedia powerhouse" and neither is the one off the shelf at that price.

 

[Bigsmooth1081]

lol.. he plays the sim??? whatever the hell that is! he has a pentium 4 right now, so I guess my question should have stated a heck of a lot better than what he has now, he is running a 64mb video card right now ( it was called mx something) but don't recall exactly at this point in time

 

[ChanceCoats123]

Lol, like QI said, I wouldn't call it a powerhouse by any standards, but you could buy a decent computer at those prices.

 

[Bigsmooth1081]

....

Give me what the best thing you could do is? and I would assume it was AMD?

 

[QuietIce]

For comparison the last board I got with an IGP had 128 Mb of it's own memory (not taken from system RAM).

What do you need, exactly? CPU, motherboard, RAM, and video? Is that all?

What about HDD and DVD?

What PSU does he have now?

 

[ChanceCoats123]

Definitely list what can be reused. For a $350 build, odds are, you will want a decent psu, but a kilowatt power supply is not necessary.

 

[Bigsmooth1081]

I guess just come up with the fastest and best computer for that price...in regards to reused items he has a fairly good sized IDE harddrive, a raptor one I believe it is and the case, keyboard and mouse, he has 1gig of ddr memory but I told him I thought for that money he would be able to atleast move up to ddr2 if not 3 but I would ask. For the time being we will assume he will use onboard video, I will buy him a decent card for xmas or something later on.

 

[QuietIce]

So all you need is the CPU, motherboard (with on-board graphics), and RAM? Can't build a killer system with that but you can sure demolish a P4 with it.

 

[Bigsmooth1081]

well yes...and a power supply, as he only currently has a 350 or 400 at best....it was used out of a emachines one as his original took a poop on him