Maximum PC

How's this look for a sub $1500 system? I need a recomendation for ram, preferably the best 1gb (2x512) for under $230. Possibly ram that can be overclocked decently.

Processor: Athlon 64 3200+ winchester

Mobo: msi k8n neo4 platinum

Case: kt-424 silver

PSU: neopower 480

Video: x800 xl

Hard Drive: diamondmax 10 300

Burner: ND-3520A

Ram: ???????

nice system you got there. ram, always choose the brand name ones. good brands include crucial, kingston, corsair, patriot, OCZ ram.

since your going to overclock check out crucial's ballistix series ram, corsair XMS series, and kingston Hyperx series which are more for overclocking and still provides awesome performance. OCZ too specially OCZ since most of their ram is geared towards overclocking.

patriot ram is a young company i believe but ive heard nothing but good news about them, specially for overclocking and great performance. im tempted to try out their ram and see how it performs on my system.

Choose from the best:

Kingston HyperX Ultra Low Latency

Crucial Ballistix PC4000

Mushkin Black LII V2

Will the Crucial Ballistix PC4000 work with my motherboard? I'm guessing that it will just underclock to pc3200 speed. I guess also that the overclock will bring it to its "stock" speed, right?

How about this ram?

Great price and looks to be good performance.

Yup, the memory will keep up (or down) with your FSB. The memory is advertised to go up to 250MHz (500 effective), so it should definitely handle any speed under that.

I was originally thinking of this sata diamondmax 10

But now I found this in another thread.


Is there really any benefit of getting the SATA drive?

Just got the black kingwin of that. Love it already and haven't even powered it up.

That Crucial Ballistix PC4000 (ddr500) that OCNoob pointed out is what I would shoot for. And it has the black heatspreaders *drool*

Your reasoning?

Really it's personal preference. I know and trust crucial and I KNOW the performance will be off the charts, I have just used it for so long. Speaking of performance, the Ballistix he linked to is DDR500 which runs at slightly higher latencies but has more bandwidth. You will either be able to lower those latencies to 2-2-2-10 or you will not. If you don't want to risk it, stick with DDR400 (PC3200)-crucial ballistix-and you will be able to get 2-2-2-10 (1T) without any problems.

Is there any real benefit to going with SATA over PATA?

Yes, you increase your throughput to 150 MB/s with SATA or 350 MB/s with SATA II. With pata your stuck at ATA 133 -max but it's really more like ATA-66 at best (66 MB/s)

I'll be going with the sata drive then. Thanks.

Really sata adds almost no performance boost unless your motherboard supports ncq.

It should. Even though a 7200 RPM drive is a 7200 RPM drive, with advanced throughput you will achieve better speeds. I have ran HD Tach on PATA and SATA drives and there are speed differences. The addition of NCQ only adds to the fact that SATA is the best to go with. Throw in SATA II with 350 MB/s up to 6Gb/s...of course there is a performance improvement. No master slave jumpers to mess with...

From the internet:
"Initial implementations of Serial ATA will be made at 1.5Gb/s (150 MB/sec). Serial ATA also has a roadmap to 3Gb/s (300MB/s) and 6Gb/s (600 MB/sec), which is beyond the capabilities of Parallel ATA without increasing the cost of cabling, connectors, and silicon."

Source

You are reading press releases from a company? So since most hard drives that are pata don't even use pata 133 they just use ata 100 since it can't saturate it, what would the be the point of adding more throughput?

Oh right none.

PATA maximum right now is 133 MB/s whereas SATA is 150 MB/s with SATA II reaching 350 MB/s entry to 6 Gb/s max.

You can call it quoting from press releases, etc etc, but one thing you can't do is deny the facts. SATA and all of it's implementations are faster then PATA. That quote simply states facts. I mean it sounds to me like your trying to persuade him from going with SATA. Is that the case? Why? If not, what are you trying to do?



Are you kidding me? In your state of mind, so what's the point of adding Gigabit ethernet? Or for that matter, PCI-X. What's the point of moving from AGP to x16? I think you answered your own question. Just because PATA gets saturated dosen't mean SATA is. Different technologies there...

And just in case you still want to argue that there is no point to SATA, prepare to be pwned. Check out this hdtach benchmark (along with many others) that shows SATA pulling way ahead, especially in read speed.

.::Benchie::.

"So with Serial ATA making it's presence felt in mainstream solutions for storage devices the decision is being presented on whether to save couple of dollars and stick with PATA a little while longer or go for the extra advantages that SATA clearly offers above PATA
besides the extra performance increase as we have seen with the benchmarks."

For your sake, next time do some research before you spout.

There is something else your forgetting (sorry, when I want to pwn I pwn).

SATA DOES NOT have to share the ATA bus as the tradional PATA does (which is what limits it's throughput) and has a DEDICATED 150 MB/s.

"With today's parallel ATA implementation, pairs of devices share a common cable in a master-slave relationship. This interaction between devices results in the available bandwidth being shared between the devices. Additionally, since the devices on the cable interact, they must be jointly qualified, resulting in the substantial expansion of the system integrators' qualification matrix in order to comprehend all possible combinations of devices. By contrast, serial ATA is a point-to-point interface where each device is directly connected to the host via a dedicated link. Each device, therefore, has the entire interface bandwidth dedicated to it, and there is no interaction between devices. This means software can be streamlined, eliminating the overhead associated with coordinating accesses between the master and slave device sharing the same cable."

"The key to serial ATA's higher performance (at least compared to parallel ATA) is its point-to-point topology. SATA does not have to share the ATA bus as in the traditional ATA master/slave topology. Add to that Serial ATA's dedicated 150 MB/sec maximum performance per device, and it can be seen that the bus already has room to spare when today's best-of-breed drives are hard pressed to deliver 100 MB/second." ...-which was really your whole argument.

Source

Any questions? Thanks and have a nice day.