need to find sff barebones that is amd and ddr2

[Spazzo99]

I want to get a sff barebones that has PciE x16, and ddr2. this comp will be for gaming and as i am told, amd works best in that area, so my question is, how much better or worse would a intel pentium4 ht 3.2ghz and 1gb cache be than an amd athlon 64 3400+ 2.4ghz 512mhz cache and hypertransport support? and does any one know where i can get either the amd or intel barebone with the pcie and ddr2 capabilities?

[saphalline]

First of all, AMD doesn't support DDR2 yet. Only DDR. Intel supports both, but their latest chipsets favor DDR2 heavily. So if you want AMD, you're looking at DDR.

Secondly, a P4 @ 3.2GHz is going to lag far behind an A64 3400+ when it comes to gaming. Games just plain run better on AMD's K8 microarchitecture vs Intel's NetBurst microarchitecture. Depending on the game, I'd say the P4 in this case will be roughly 5-8% slower than the A64.

[Spazzo99]

Yeah gaming will be prime, so i think ill go with the sn25p shuttle xpc with 2gb of dual chan ddr, and a 68-7800 gt nvidia, the 34-3700+ amd athlon xp and other things. can u reccomend a nice brand of ram?

[saphalline]

Good choice for your barebones. Very excellent options and design. If I may make some suggestions, go for either a 6800 GS or a 7800 GT - these offer some of the best gaming performance per dollar. And you meant AMD Athlon 64, right? Not AMD Athlon XP? ;)

For the RAM, Corsair & Kingston are among the best, with Patriot quickly gaining momentum. Just keep in mind that you can get the basic DDR400 CAS 2.5 stuff if you won't be OC'ing. It doesn't pay to get high-speed expensive Platinum or Extreme RAM unless you plan to OC your system.

[Spazzo99]

My head is full of liquidy goodness, yes i meant 64 not xp. which manufacturer of nvidia's 6800gs would you most recommend? as far as i can tell PciE is strictly for video cards, will this change eventually? thanks for all the help Saphalline

[saphalline]

Which manufacturer for the vid card? The cheapest one, the factory OC'ed one, or the one with a ton of bundled games. There's no manufacturer I stick to, I just pick out a vid card with the set of features I'm looking for and find the cheapest one at the time.

PCIe x16 slots are strictly for vid cards. x1 slots are for low-end expansion cards, x4 are for more powerful expansion cards, and x8 slots are for high-end server-oriented expansion cards.