LSMFT said:
GIGABYTE GA-770TA-UD3 AM3 AMD 770 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard
for $79.00 with $10.00 mail in rebate.
Add # AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz Socket AM3 125W
Quad-Core Processor Model HDZ955FBGIBOX for $159.00
Add # G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-4GBNQ for $105.99
And an SATA-3 6GBS of your choice.
Should be a fair system don't you think?
Located here:
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128419
There is a good selection of processors supported. The six-core series
requires updating the BIOS to F3 or later. The processor you're going to
buy uses F1 BIOS, so shouldn't cause a problem. It should work out of the
box.
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/support-downloads/cpu-support-popup.aspx?pid=3272
I tried finding info on the 770 on the amd.com site, and actually found
more useful info on Wikipedia.
"One physical PCIe 2.0 x16 slot, one PCIe 2.0 x4 slot and two PCIe 2.0 x1 slots,
the chipset provides a total of 22 PCIe 2.0 lanes and 4 PCIe 1.1
for A-Link Express II solely in the Northbridge"
That still isn't enough info, but gives me some feeling that the USB3
and SATA3 6Gbit/sec chips are connected to PCI Express x1 Rev.2 lanes.
That is important for those chips to run at closer to full speed. Some
boards run them on Rev.1 interfaces. Rev.1 runs at 250MB/sec and
Rev.2 runs at 500MB/sec max. (Rev.2 runs 500 or 250, and is backward
compatible with any older chip they might use.)
Other than that, check the reviews on Newegg, for incompatibilities.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16813128419
A SATA3 hard drive is that in name only. It isn't doing anything
for you, that a SATA2 disk would not do. (A faster "burst to cache"
will be hard to see, except in a synthetic benchmark.)
On the other hand, if some day you own a SATA3 SSD, then you may
actually be able to benchmark a difference, and see that difference
in a file transfer test. Right now, there are only a couple SATA3
SSDs for sale, and still too expensive by ordinary measure.
Fortunately, if you read from one SATA3 SSD on your new board, and
write to a second SATA3 SSD, that uses a different bus direction in
each case, and still doesn't get badly "pinched" by the restrictive
bus connection.
Since some SATA3 SSDs cost upwards of $600 a piece right now,
worrying about something like this is pretty far fetched
If you want to bandwidth test, this would be a start.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148349
With regard to your RAM choice, I can see DDR3-1600 with CAS
values available from CAS6 to CAS9. CAS6 is lower latency.
When I buy RAM, I look at both the CAS number, and also how
many people got DOA sticks. You might be able to improve
on the CAS number a bit. It probably doesn't make any
difference in the larger scheme of things though, if you've
already placed the order.
Paul
