Heh

[madad2005]

Hi,

I am looking into building my own system (well, upgarding initially).

I am looking for a motherboard that can support 3-4GB of 'SINGLE' DDR RAM (im trying to avoid dual ram), PCI-Express and SLI technology (preferably), host an AMD Athlon chip. Anyone know of such a card? So far, anything Ive seen has been dual-ram, which I dislike. Also, id be looking to host geforce cards on it. I'd also like it to be able to host 4 IDE devices. This has to be one of the toughest things to find initially when looking to build!

Secondly,is it worth buying a separate soundblaster, or is there not much difference between the onboard soundcard and an external one?

So far i have been given suggestions on the PSU, case, CPU, hard disk, the graphics card I have decided on already, and the DVD-RW will be getting transferred from my current comp.

Cheers,

Ad

[jlreich]

Well first off, you can go to Newegg, click on motherboards-AMD on the left side, the on the left side again, you can configure a search of almost all the features you want in a mobo.

Second, why are you trying to avoid Dual Channel ram? Dual Channel is a good thing. :)

With SATA starting to take over the job of IDE channels, sometimes mobo's have only one IDE channel, or up to two devices. But this is not the norm yet. There are still many boards with two IDE channels, or up to four devices. If you are looking for a mobo to support a Athlon XP, you shouldn't have any trouble finding one.

I could be wrong, but I think you will have problems finding a socket A (Athlon XP) mobo that will have PCI-X on it. From doing a quick search on Newegg, it looks like you wont find support for PCI-X on a AMD mobo until you get up to the latest socket 939 (AMD 64).

I recommend going to Newegg, doing some searches for the features you want in a mobo. If you have a hard time getting any results back, try changing some of the features around, and see what you can come up with. Even if you are not gong to buy from Newegg, it is a good starting point to search for models that have the features you want.

Then post back the results, and I am sure many will have comments and suggestions. :)

As far the sound card goes, many mobo's have onboard sound that is very good. So it is really up to you if want to go for a add on sound card. I would start with the onboard sound, then if you are not satisfied, pick up a add on card.

[saphalline]

why are you trying to avoid Dual Channel ram? Dual Channel is a good thing.I have to agree wholeheartedly here - why on earth would you try to avoid dual-channel RAM? If you really dislike it that much, simply disable it in the BIOS.

In any case, what you have here presented for your requirements can only be found so far in a single chipset: NVidia's NForce4 SLI. This is the only chipset to support an AMD chip, PCI-e, SLI vid card technology, and up to 4GB of DDR RAM. NVidia has the choke-hold on the new SLI technology (which no longer stands for "scan-line interleave" as it did in the 3dfx days, but is now "scalable link interface") both in the chipset and the vid card arena. Only NVidia supports the new PCI-e SLI technology, and it's so far only available in to AMD's latest Athlon64's. NVidia is currently in negotiation with Intel for a P4 chipset, and ATI is working on a compatible version of its own (or perhaps not compatible so as not to serve up royalties to NVidia) but these offerings are still far from being shipped as working products.

Also, standard fare for the NForce4 chipsets is support for the common 2 IDE channels, with NVidia's proprietary software RAID protocol dubbed "NV RAID" (for IDE-only or IDE/SATA combo RAID arrays). So your 4 IDE devices are well taken care of.

In defense of getting an audio card with a dedicated DSP (Sound Blasters) know this: onboard sound is merely codec-based and can use up to 8-10% of your CPU power to do audio duties. And while the onboard sound used these days is of adequate capability (24-bit production, EAX supported, etc) the raw 3D and multiple voice production leaves much to be desired among gaming audiophiles. Creative Labs' Audigy2, on the other hand, has the dedicated DSP to do everything better with less CPU utilisation (down to about 1-3%) even for the common variety. The Platinum version adds input/output ports but the core audio chip remains the same.

Still yet on the other hand (aren't we up to 3 hands now? :p), many of tomorrow's games are going the route of producing their own sound engines in-house, and skipping the use of advanced (but limited) audio effects specifically found in the Audigy1/2 chips, as well as other DirectSound-compatible audio chips. Doom 3 and HL2 already have such audio engines built-in, so the sound effects in these games sound the same on an Audigy2 or onboard sound, with the speakers being the only variable. Thus for future games it looks like your sound adapter will play a decreasing role in the games' audio quality, while for older games an Audigy2 beats the socks off onboard sound!

The idea of gaming companies to produce their own sound engines (in coordination with the game engine) is interesting indeed, as it represents the equivalent of "shaders" for audio. It seems that both id (makers of the Doom 3 engine) and Valve (makers of the Half-Life 2 engine) were dissatisfied with the loose requirements of DirectSound, even in DX 9.0c, that they made their own audio engines so as not to lose the atmosphere of the game, regardless of the audio adapter used. This also let them create complex sound effects that are, so far, out of the reach of audio chips - complex sound effects that are essentially audio algorithms. It makes sense because current audio chips in comparison to other processing units inside our powerful PC's are incredibly simple. I mean really, how powerful can they be if they don't require at least a heatsink on them!? They're pathetic! A lot of the work that now goes into them is to increase the sound-to-noise ratio and adding needlessly to the number of speakers :rolleyes: so they lag far behind in technological achievement. While 3D vid chips have been following or exceeding the rate of Moore's Law cubed, and CPU's have been more or less following Moore's Law, audio chips haven't moved much since the first Sound Blaster.

[madad2005]

I didn't realise you could disable dual-RAM in the BIOS. Why do you say it's a good thing? I personally see it as taking up more room than is necessary. Are they more efficient than having single-RAM modules?

I will check newegg.com to see what they have on motherboards!

I'll reprot back soon!

[jlreich]

I didn't realise you could disable dual-RAM in the BIOS. Why do you say it's a good thing? I personally see it as taking up more room than is necessary. Are they more efficient than having single-RAM modules?

I think you must have a misconception of what dual channel is. There is no difference in the modules. Dual channels are supported by the chipset on the mobo. It has nothing to do with the ram itself. You would buy the same stick of ram for a single channel mobo as you would for a dual channel mobo. There is no more or less room used on the mobo either way.

Dual channel allows two sticks of ram to work together in such a way, they effectively double the bandwidth of the memory. Making it twice as fast as the same two sticks of ram on a single channel mobo. :D Dual channel is a good thing. :D

[saphalline]

I think you must have a misconception of what dual channel is.Who's spreading these dual-channel lies? I mean, really, we've been going through this a LOT lately! Has anyone else noticed this? I almost think we should put an explanation on the forums' FAQ page! :p

[Paleo Pete]

I almost think we should put an explanation on the forums' FAQ page!

OK So what are you waiting for? Write me up a good one and drop it right here in Core Hardware, it fits here, and if it looks good we'll make it sticky.

[jlreich]

A sticky is a great idea. I think what is going on, is the OEM's are really starting to use dual channel in their systems, but not offering any explanation on how it works.

So we end up with the term "Dual Channel" out there just floating around, causing a lot of speculation. Also because 512MB is not at all uncommon these days, but the OEM's will put 2x256MB ram to utilize dual channel. Perhaps this is where the "waste of space" thinking comes from.

If I were to buy a OEM (I feel dirty even thinking about it :rolleyes: ), I would prefer to have one stick of 512, with the thought of getting a second one later. I know I would have less performance at first, not using the dual channel, but would much better off later, when I could pick up anther stick of 512MB.

DDR2 is probably something that needs to be addressed a well. People get googly eyed over "the new technology", and automatically think it is better. It isn't yet, but will be as the technology matures.