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turtle1

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Oct 30, 2006
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Ok, so here it is. Yesterday I ordered my case (Silver Stone TJ-09B), power supply (PC P&C 750W) and a few extra 120 mm fans. My sister just gave me for an early (by 3 weeks) birthday gift, a new monitor (Samsung 226bw...S panel). That was the easy part, now for the questions...

Motherboards...I want something stable and overclockable. I am leaning toward the Asus Striker as its price has dropped to a level I am willing to pay. Have the bios and other issues been resolved for this board? Should I look at something else like the Asus P5N32-E SLI plus...650i chipset for instance? I like Asus and Gigabyte.

Core 2 Duo E6700 (good price now) maybe over clocked to 3.2. Later this year or early next when the quads drop in price I may pick one up (Quad 6700).

Video card... I am almost certainly going to get the BFG 8800GTX OC. I have always been a fan of BFG (lifetime warranty) and I like the 8800GTX.

Memory... 4 gigs Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400C4D. Yes I know that my system will only "see" somewhere over 3 gigs until I goto a 64 bit OS. I am fine with that. I also realize that the Dominator memory is a little over the top, but again, I am fine with the new reduced price range of it.

Hard Drives. I will buy a pair of 150 gig Raptors (again, I am willing to pay the price and I own a pair of 36 gig Raptors currently and love them) plus one large 7200rpm drive. Probably a Seagate 500 gig or so. Any suggestions?

OS... I am still up in the air...XP Pro or Vista Ultimate? I have two friends using Vista now with no problems at all. I would go 64 bit but there are too many driver issues still I think?

Suggestions on a good and fast SATA DVD R/W? Sony? Plextor?

I will use this rig for gaming (Oblivion, Farcry, etc) and some work stuff (Office Apps) and of course the net.

The system I am replacing is a 4 year old 3 ghz P4, 1 gig, 6800GT, 2x36 gig Raptors.

Any suggestions or comments would be appreciated. I will order the remainder by months end.
 
OS... I am still up in the air...XP Pro or Vista Ultimate? I have two friends using Vista now with no problems at all. I would go 64 bit but there are too many driver issues still I think?
Click to expand...

Well if you buy Vista Ultimate you get both the 32 and 64 bit versions.
I am running Vista 64 and have had no driver problems. Epson was a little slow at releasing a printer driver, that's the only problem I really had. This is on my current hardware of course and I am sure some people have their share of problems. For a short while I used the Asus P5W DH Deluxe mobo and I never got the Realtek audio working, despite downloading the lartest "Vista 64" drivers from Asus website.
 
Do you have any issues with Vista 64 and 32 bit applications (games and such)?
Click to expand...

I haven't played any games at all while on Vista, and I have not tried installing any, so I can't really say anything on that.

Apps I have had very few problems. Actually the only problems I have experienced so far are some smaller products like Core Temp and stuff like that that won't run, but if that is Vista or 64 bit specific, or both, I don't know.

Any specific apps you need verified post it here, perhaps someone here will be able to confirm they work....
 
Does anyone want to answer that question, will Vista 64 bit run:
Oblivion
Farcry
Civ IV
Office XP apps
Lock On
Photo Shop
Nero
ect?

Any issues?
Any apps that just will not run under Vista 64 (other than old stuff)? Should I just stick to XP Pro or Vista 32?
 
Over 110 reads of this post and most of my questions are still unanswered. Any offerings would be appreciated. I want to get this right when I order.

Arguments for a 965/975 chipset board over a 680i board? Again, I am looking for stability, mild to moderate over clocking (3.0 or 3.2 ghz out of a E6700), etc. I do like what I have read about the 680i's (except bios and raid issues). Not sure if I will ever use SLI.
 
I've been having a similar problem. I've got pretty much everything I want for my new rig picked out, and some of it already purchased. But lately, I've been second guessing the motherboard I was almost positive I wanted to get. This board is the ASUS P5N32-E SLI with the 680i chipset. It has all the features I want and looks like a solid choice on paper. However, I've seen some VERY mixed reviews on this board. A lot of people love it, some hate it, and some cant get the thing to work properly. I've been doing lots of research about it reading many reviews and forums, but I'm not any closer to making a decesion. My other choice was the EVGA 680i board, but after reading their forums and hearing some bad things (including several boards bursting into flames 4-5 seconds after booting) I don't think that would be a good choice either.

I want this board to be relatively future proof, able to overclock decently, able to support the 1333 fsb chips in the future, raid 0 capable at least, and SLI compatable so i can add a 2nd video card in the future if necessary. I'm still leaning toward the P5N32-E but would love to hear suggestions for/against it, and about other boards to consider.

To the OP - I'm not trying to hijack your thread. I believe we have a similar problem here and perhaps we can both find the answers we seek this way :)
 
MonocleCat, no problem with the hijacked thread. I agree. We are in the same boat to a degree. I also looked at the P5N32-E SLI and like it a lot (on paper anyway). I just want to hear from other readers who own the Striker or P5N32-E SLI if the various "issues" are resolved with the recent bios updates...
 
With current NVIDIA drivers, I couldn't even play a single 3D game on Vista with my PCI 6200! Damn Nvidia. Not sure abt ATI.



Anyway, to go back to your question

1. HOW much is your budget?

Suggested spec
-----------------------
C2D E6300
ASROCK CROSSFIRE E-SATA MOTHERBOARD
320 GB Single Maxtor HDD ( Why buy 2? Hard drives are very reliable these days. I never had a bad HDD on my 6 year old PC! Besides, you save elctricity)
4 GB RAM PC2-4200 or PC2-5400 : go for any good brand , such as HYNIX
LG DVDRW
ATI X1950 Graphics card
Btw, the Motherboard is CROSSFIRE READY

Look at some priices for these. These r the cheapest performance PC specs.
 
Thanks. I have no real interest in Crossfire as I like Nvidia products better (have had a number of ATI and Nvidia cards over the years). Just personal preference.

I have no set budget but am figuring around $2500.

Can anyone tell me from their personal experience with the Striker or P5N32-E SLI boards if they are still having issues or are they resolved with the recent bios updates? That is my main question.
 
Turtle - I found the official asus forum for this board:

http://vip.asus.com/forum/topic.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&board_id=1&model=P5N32-E%20SLI&page_size=10&page=1&count=476

The striker can be found by changing the motherboard at the bottom of the page.

Seems like a lot of issues, perhaps more than your ordinary board, but you should look for yourself.

Here is a thread i found on XtremeSystems.org about the p5n32-e sli

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=123227

And here is an oldish one from anandtech:

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=29&threadid=1957721&frmKeyword=&STARTPAGE=1&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear

Keep in mind the "plus" version of the p5n32 they refer to is really the hybrid 650i version, something that is quite confusing.

Hope this helps.
 
Thank you for the information. Very helpful. Both boards seem to have more positive than negative. Since I am not planning to overclock very much, I think either should work for me. I may even go with CM2X1024-6400C4 memory instead of the Dominator. 4 gigs either way.
 
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