Aready have the stuff on order,the video card,i already have in this
system.I also have a RaidMax samurai case coming aswell. I also have the
sound card. but already orderd the harddrives and other things. and thats
1.25GB of memory,thats 2-512 and 1-256,Memory i have from another system
will work with the Asus board,i did check that out. Thanks for the Input
all.So the next question,whats a great card for gaming
The K8V is a S754 socket Athlon64. If you download the manual for
the board, before you buy it, you'll find a table of memory
configurations ("Table 1: Recommended Memory Configurations").
If you look at line 18 of that table, you'll find the fastest
memory configuration, which is two double sided DDR400 sticks
in slots 1 and 3 of the board. If you try to use your 256MB DIMM
as a third stick of memory, the memory speed will have to drop,
and that will reduce performance. As Roland suggested, it is
likely you'll be running a 1024MB system, if you want a good
gaming system.
I have a FX5200 in an A7N8X-E system here. The FX5200 is good,
in that it has nearly full hardware support for DirectX 9, it
is fanless (if the memory interface is 64bit instead of 128bit),
and makes a good choice for playing movies. But for 3DMark,
I got 5000 for 3DMark2001, which is anywhere from 3x to 6x less
performance than a real gaming system. My processor is overclocked
to 2200MHz, so the card is at fault in this case. (Some day, if
Nvidia can find a way to make the 6200 PCI-E available as an
AGP card, without needing the expensive bridge chip, that will be
the low cost card of choice. That is, if their marketing
department has a clue.)
To select a card, Anandtech and Tomshardware have jumbo video card
articles, where they compare benchmarks. The latest card mentioned,
is an AGP version of the 6600, which I think is only available right
now as the 6600GT. To compete with Nvidia, ATI has decided to flood
the market with a never ending stream of model numbers, intended
to confuse and annoy customers. It may take you some amount of
effort to find just the right card for your budget. As these
review sites have noted, the average price of video cards has been
rising over the past year or two, to the point that a decent video
card can do serious damage to the wallet.
Nvidia 6600GT, ATI 9800 Pro (if you can find one) might be good:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2277&p=7
There are plenty of other reviews that have charts comparing the
cards, so keep looking on those two sites.
HTH,
Paul
