Sen's Ultimate Winchester Thread

[enduro]

Ohhh, very true. Sen has the AGP 6800. That sucks. That's what happens when you cheap out on your card Sen...... not future proof

jking man. NF4 probably isn't worth it for you. You'll have to wait and see if DFI comes out with a NF3 Ultra board along with the NF4.

 

[ewalk123]

Yup, I'm in the very same boat.

 

[enduro]

I'd say 5/6 of the forums is in the same boat most people are holding back for when pci-e cards use more of the bandwidth allowed. I'm waiting for a lot of stuff. SS for Winchesters, DFI NF4, good pci-e (considering 6600 GT), ocz vx memory to drop in price...... and the list grows. It will be several months before I spend any money on anything. The markets jumping around too fast right now.

 

[deception``]

I'd say 5/6 of the forums is in the same boat most people are holding back for when pci-e cards use more of the bandwidth allowed.

I don't think this is necessarily true. Rather, most people are looking to make the most stable upgrade possible. In other words, the majority does not care to upgrade to a platform that is likely to be superceeded in a fairly short period of time. PCIe cards, on the other hand, probably won't take advantage of their theoretical bandwidth for quite some time. Despite this fact, minimal increases in a card's bandwidth usage will mean very little in terms of real performance. If you care to disagree, just think about what difference AGP 8x made over the conventional 4x standard. So while we will see some increases over time, it is highly improbable that they will amount for much of a performance increase.

deception``

 

[gvblake22]

I'm waiting for a lot of stuff. SS for Winchesters, DFI NF4, good pci-e (considering 6600 GT), ocz vx memory to drop in price...... and the list grows. It will be several months before I spend any money on anything. The markets jumping around too fast right now.

Ditto

It'll probably be more like a year or something though instead of several months

 

[ap673]

I don't think this is necessarily true. Rather, most people are looking to make the most stable upgrade possible. In other words, the majority does not care to upgrade to a platform that is likely to be superceeded in a fairly short period of time.

Thats what i'm thinking. I'm getting 6600gt, winchester 3200 and some TCCD whenever we can buy nforce4 ultra boards. I know that PCI-E is here to stay, so I can always count on that, and AMD will likely build a little more on the s939 with some more advanced CPU's, so s939+pci-e looks like a safe bet to hold me a year.

 

[PhobMX]

quite a thread hijack but yeah

for me whoever waited this long for s939 AND with the need of a new video card also, made a mistake rushing for the neo having agp.

Im also for the SS winchester+DFI NF4+PCI-E X800XL... i just want the most future proof i can get.

heck if the industry didnt make this shift this quickly id be perfectly good with just an agp8x x800xl and my current p4, but i dont want this setup to devaluate anymore thus its on sale right now

sigh, ill have to rely on my lapy for internet and stuff and wait who-nows how much itl take for the SS winchester+DFI NF4+PCI-E X800XL trio to mature

i have to be strong

 

[geid3811]

Well, with Nforce4 emerging you guys might have more options opening for you. Sen, you can finally ditch that MSI junk board and try out a NF4. Granted it's Asus, but their quality was good about a year ago. Maybe they are on the rebound.

Is there something worng with ASUS? I'm thinking of upgrading.

ASUS A8V Deluxe
Amd 64 3500 Winchester

I'm in the same boat as far as agp goes so I can't really afford to upgrade to NF4. If there is a better board for ocing or if the ASUS board sucks I'd like to know.

 

[enduro]

No, I was refering to the fact that Asus nforce2 boards with a little weak on the overclocking. That was a certain series though. Many people have been happy with their Asus boards. Just do some research before you buy it, that's what I always do. See what other overclockers think. The A7N8X wasn't the greatest board, while the NF7 was. DFI is a great company, but their NF4 might suck. You have to do research on the board not the company, that's more of a bias.

 

[gvblake22]

I've owned both an A7N8X and my currrent NF7-S and stability of the Asus board was actaully very good after I got everything finally got everything installed and broken in a little but it was limited in overclocking like Enduro said; I could not get any higher than 210fsb. So I switched to the Abit board for SATA and the stability (in my opinion) is comperable (good), but overclocking on the NF7-S was much better. I can run my RAM atleast 220 now with the same 2-3-2 timings as with on the Asus board.

So Asus boards kinda got a bad rep from that but I think they're still doing a good job making boards and are kinda past that (hopefully)

 

[Rumrunner]

I,m against SLI! That is where I draw the line. Not even half the AGP bandwidth is utilized. A new cpu comes out, and the mobo industry waits until everyone takes a big bite, then they say "WE HAVE NEW TECHNOLOGY FOR THAT". Meanwhile, the video card industry is about to explode by selling two video cards (for only a 50% increase in performance). I tell you from all of my wisdom, the computer industry is nothing more than legal drug dealers whom are dependant on addicts. So what am I supposed to do with this board and video card?

 

[gvblake22]

Ok, first off, you don't HAVE to upgrade to PCI-Express if you don't want to. That video card and mobo in your sig are VERY nice and would be just as good as any PCI-Express solution available.

Second, the main reason for the PCI-Express switch isn't just to replace AGP, its also replacing the extreemly old PCI I/O.

PCI-Express offers the availablity of much more bandwidth than either PCI or AGP so just because the performance isn't quite realized right NOW, doesn't mean that it will be really fast in the future. PCI-Express is still an infant compared to the "oldman" PCI and AGP, we need to wait for hardware and more importantly software manufacturers (i.e. games) to be able to produce things that can take advantage of the bandwidth. Its not gonna happen overnight, but it will.

The only reason to switch to PCI-Express right now is for futureproof ugradeability, not necessarily for any type of performance increase over AGP because video card manufacturers (and soon sound card and network card manufacturers) will be switching too and eventually will not even be offering AGP versions of their new generation cards so at that point you'd be forced to switch if you wanted to upgrade to one of those cards.

I agree that it may seem like the industry is kindof holding us in the palm of thier hand and telling us what to do, but I hope that a few years down the road PCI-Express will have matured more and its performance vs. AGP will seem uncomparable and we will WANT to switch.

 

[Rumrunner]

Well yes you are absolutely right. I guess what I really am upset about is the timming of the release of pci express. It seems that the mobo and video card industry, pushed a MASS production of AGP mobo's and gpu's for 754 and 939 ( I don't even want to get started on the 754 idea). Then, they waited until everyone bought a agp board, then, they released video cards and mobo's in pci express.

New technology is great, but not when you are at the mercy of greedy capitalism.

I'm not mad though...

 

[Sentential]

New technology is great, but not when you are at the mercy of greedy capitalism.

I'm not mad though...

Heh its the only thing thats been driving this country for the past 300 years.

____

Heh you could fooled me on the mad part tho . Either way life goes on

 

[gvblake22]

Then, they waited until everyone bought a agp board, then, they released video cards and mobo's in pci express.

Well, there were MANY articles and news releases about PCI-Express even bofore s939. I did a 15 page report on PCI-Express for a computer science class a YEAR ago!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to get on your case at all, so please don't take this as some crazy flame fest fueled by me.

Just remember that its not the board manufacturer's fault if you upgraded with AGP... As Sentential said, new technology and innovation has kept the world advancing forward and developing so its not like its gonna stop anytime soon. And there's not really EVER a good time to switch to a new technology, someone is always gonna be pissed. You can please some of the people all the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time

And I wouldn't be too upset, you still have a very nice kick a$$ system on AGP

 

[Rumrunner]

Well, yes, AGP was around then, but...they only offered the 6600gt. Genius really, because then that left agp as the top dog, which gave room for savvy customers to invest in pci express, and trapped addicted customers into agp.

Do know I am just ranting...if I were CEO of one of those companies, I would do the same thing.

 

[gvblake22]

I do agree that switching to a new I/O standard is not something I look forward too because it involves an upgrade on many fronts. It about as bad switching CPU socket types. But unfortunately there's not a whole lot we can do about it except accept it and hopefully learn to love it.
The other problem is that we are still in the initial stages of the switch so its hard to get a hold of some PCI-Express cards that shuld be more widely available, making it even harder for the people who actually WANT to go PCI-Express to even do so with the card of their choice; eventually (as would anyone) they just get tired of waiting for nothing so go AGP instead and then will still have to upgrade everything again later when PCI-Express is more widely available. So yeah, I hear ya rob.

 

[Rumrunner]

Do winnie's run better when they are cold, or is the freedom of throwing on voltage generously the only gain?

 

[gvblake22]

Do winnie's run better when they are cold, or is the freedom of throwing on voltage generously the only gain?

I think some may argue that cooler temperatures actually make the electronics conduct better/quicker but the real/major advantage of having cooler temps is that it gives you more overclocking headroom; which we all know makes it run faster

Unless of course when you say "run better" you mean stability. In that case you could argue that with cooler temps you also have a more reliable/stable machine because there is less of a chance of overheating or having instability due to heat issues.

 

[Rumrunner]

Ahem...

Ahem... Am I the only one still holdin down the winnie?