newbie needs help with build

[karupt]

hi everyone.. this is my first post....
i am building a powerful gaming machine. i have decided to go with the socket 754 because the performance/price is really good. my question is which motherboard should i get? i was thinking maybe the albatron k8t800 or the MSI Neo board. also, should i wait on the processor to get the 3700+ or whatever is coming out soon? should i wait for the socket 939 board or is that just for the FX chip? i really need help or someone to point me in the right direction. i am building the entire computer from scratch and would like some pointers on motherboard selection. i have already got the hard drives set up, and a really nice cooling system for overclockability. i want this thing to FLY. thanks everyone.

 

[floccus]

What are you planning on adding into this system in terms of the HDs, RAM, video, etc.

 

[karupt]

i am planning on adding a radeon 9800 pro video card, 2 wd raptors running raid 0 (36GBx2), and two high performance DDR 512MB sticks of RAM.

 

[mechBgon]

Socket 939 is for both the next-gen FX models and for the next-gen standard A64's. Its claim to fame is that it will allow standard A64s to join the FX/Opteron in the dual-channel-memory-controller clubhouse, giving increased performance at a given clockspeed. There should be more forward upgradeability in S939 but I'm not sure it really matters as much as people think... you can sell your S754 board and processor later, it's not like you have to wear it around your neck for the rest of your life or something

S939 will also allow the FX's to use unbuffered memory instead of Registered memory, which may increase the FX's performance a few percent and will bring the price down a little. The biggest attraction of S939 to me is that with dual memory controllers on a S939 processor, I could run four PC3200 DIMMs at full speed (for the current C0 A64's in Socket 754, they max out at two, and fall back to PC1600 speeds if you add a third module).

 

[karupt]

ok so i should go with the socket 754 board, then go to the pci express and socket 939 after they have all the bugs figured out and stuff... does anyone have any suggestions for an excellent gaming board, and my other question was, if the board has really nice onboard audio, will i be able to turn on the soundblaster EAX or other soundblaster audio plugins for enhanced games such as raven shield or battlefield 1942, or will i need to get a soundblaster card as well?

 

[mechBgon]

Albatron makes a Socket754 board that has the very fancy 8-channel VIA Envy24 hardware-audio chip, I think it's the K8X800 Pro II? AOpen has an nForce3 150 board with that audio, too. It's said to be very excellent and you could run hardware-accelerated goodness to your heart's content The other boards out there are using plain-vanilla stuff as far as I've noticed, and I do look a lot

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