Buyer's Guide: High End System - July 2004
by Wesley Fink on June 30, 2004 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Memory
Recommendation: 1GB Kit (2 X 512MB) OCZ PC3700 EBPrice: $340 shipped
One of the advantages of the new AMD Socket 939 is that it uses regular unbuffered dual-channel memory. This means almost any memory will fit in your new Socket 939 system. However, we have found that some memory performs much better in Athlon 64 systems than others, and the overall best Athlon 64 performance that we have found was with OCZ 3700EB (Extended Bandwidth) memory.
The EB takes a little different approach to memory timings, and runs at 2.5-2-2, at DDR400. This is still competitive with the best memory available, but by DDR433 to DDR450, the EB becomes the fastest memory that we have tested at that speed. Performance extends well beyond DDR500 and the performance at DDR500 is the best that we have tested. Many Athlon 64 boards are picky about memory, but every Athlon 64 board that we have tested so far seems quite content with either 3700EB or 3500EB memory.
In the past year, OCZ has raised their Customer Service standards to among the best in the memory industry. We often get emails reporting very positive Customer Service and quick problem resolution when customers have contacted OCZ directly. OCZ combines that excellent Customer Service with a Lifetime Warranty.
Alternative: 1GB Kit (2 X 512MB) Corsair 3200XL or 3200XL PRO
Price: $361 or $365 shipped
Corsair 3200XL roared on the scene in May with a return of 2-2-2 timings to DDR400. These fast timings were thought to be dead after Winbond discontinued their BH5 memory, but Corsair managed to return 2-2-2 to the market with a new generation of Samsung memory chips. The Corsair is an outstanding match to the alternate DFI 875B LANParty motherboard, and will provide the fastest DDR400 memory performance that you can currently find.
Corsair 3200XL also extends performance all the way to DDR500, so you will have incredible headroom when you select this memory for your system. The Corsair memory also works well on the AMD Athlon 64 platform when we tested it, but performance did not extend quite as far on the AMD platform. It is still a good choice for Athlon 64 machines where extremely high overclocking is not a top concern. While 2-2-2 memory based on Samsung chips is now available from both OCZ and Mushkin, Corsair pioneered the return to 2-2-2 and was the first on the market with new memory capable of 2-2-2 timings.
Corsair is the standard by which every Enthusiast Memory manufacturer is measured, and their Customer Service is among the best in any industry. Corsair also provides a Lifetime Warranty on memory products and their "RAM Guy" is a well-known resource for memory problems in many Forums.
Listed below is part of our RealTime pricing engine, which lists the lowest prices available on memory from many different reputable vendors:
If you cannot find the lowest prices on the products that we've recommended on this page, it's because we don't list some of them in our RealTime pricing engine. Until we do, we suggest that you do an independent search online at the various vendors' web sites. Just pick and choose where you want to buy your products by looking for a vendor located under the "Vendor" heading.
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kd4yum - Thursday, July 8, 2004 - link
Well! I guess so!regarding comment 28....
Now wait a minute. Why would RAID 0 cut the MTBF in half? Is this dice we are rolling?
Probably, the splay of i/o across mult disks would relax the work on the actuator arms.
'specially if 'elevator queueing' is active.
And don't forget about reduced fragmentation.
No, I think you'd get your 100K hours with either RAID 0 or RAID 1. It would just hirt more with RAID 0. my $0.02
kd4yum - Thursday, July 8, 2004 - link
Let's see. Do I still have a valid uname and passwd? uhhhthe5thgeek - Wednesday, July 7, 2004 - link
Ok my bad, it is not on the U.S. version of the msi web site. thanks!Wesley Fink - Wednesday, July 7, 2004 - link
#32 -The board is definitely on MSI's web bite at http://www.msi.com.tw/program/support/download/dld...It even has BIOS and drivers posted. MSI assured us the board would be available beginning last week, so it should be available very soon.
#33 - There will be an Overclocking Guide later this month. With all of the massive changes in Sockets, Chipsets, and Hardware, we decided to delay the overclocking guide until the new hardware was released and could be tested.
lazerasa - Tuesday, July 6, 2004 - link
what happened to the overclock system buyers guide? there hasn't been one in 3 months...?the5thgeek - Tuesday, July 6, 2004 - link
Why are you recomending a motherboard that does not exist? (at least for us poor mortals that must deal in the real world[that board is not even on MSI's web site, much less available retail])warath - Sunday, July 4, 2004 - link
I find it funny that in one article you recommend RAID-0, and in another, you say NOT EVEN Close to worth it :P :) Make up your minds Anandtech!TrogdorJW - Thursday, July 1, 2004 - link
Regarding RAID 0, it really isn't as "useless" as the other article portrays, depending on what you do with it. If you only play games and surf the web, then it certainly isn't that big of a deal. If you routinely copy files around on your hard drive (i.e. either compressing or extracting from archives), or in compiling code, there is a somewhat noticeable improvement in speed. There is also a definite improvement in performance when multitasking with a hard-drive intense operation running in the background. For example, try copying a file from one drive to another drive while surfing the web with and without RAID 0. It's something I do periodically, and I definitely notice an improvement. Video editing definitely benefits from the added hard drive performance.Maybe it's not worth the extra cost, but I really don't like dealing with three hard drive letters much. I have one drive setup as my C: drive, and then two drives striped as drive D:. So I have a 320 GB D: partition and a 120 GB C: partition. The cost of the D: partition was about $230 - only slightly more than a single 74 GB Raptor. Of course, I don't store any critical files on the RAID 0 array - it's all stuff that I would only be moderately irritated at having to reinstall.
Z80 - Thursday, July 1, 2004 - link
Regarding the MSI motherboard recommendation:"A hardware and software service company from Vermont filed a legal class-action suit against Microstar International accusing one of the leading mainboard makers in the world of intentionally using low-quality components on its mainboards. A report from Reuters claims that the suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court last Thursday by Electronic Connection Services Corporation claims that MSI has knowingly used capacitors, devices used to regulate the power supply to microchips, that can leak or even explode and cause mainboards to short-circuit. The suit, which seeks to cover any person or company in the United States who has made a wholesale or retail purchase of an MSI mainboard since 1999, seeks unspecified damages and restitution and other relief."
I wonder if I can get any money back for those two crappy MSI MB's I got stuck with!
qooleot - Thursday, July 1, 2004 - link
Ya..I was gonna say the same thing...In one article today you guys write:
If you haven't gotten the hint by now, we'll spell it out for you: there is no place, and no need for a RAID-0 array on a desktop computer. The real world performance increases are negligible at best and the reduction in reliability, thanks to a halving of the mean time between failure, makes RAID-0 far from worth it on the desktop.
And in another article:
Recommended: Dual Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000RPM SATA in RAID 0 Configuration
I guess you guys haven't gotten the hint by now...