This motherboard should have 4 PCI slots (1x PCI-Express x16 slot; 1x PCI-Express x1 slot; 2x PCI slots - I'm not exactly sure what the differences are).
I also don't know why this excessively large empty space appears when I try to put an HTML table into a blog entry. So, um, here's a really big empty space, and then some computer-related information. :)
| Total: $991.67 | ||||||||||||
| Item | Price | Notes | ||||||||||
| MB / CPU | 247.31 | Link | ||||||||||
| Case / Power | 7.00 | Store of Tim | ||||||||||
| Widescreen 20" | 206.99 | Link | ||||||||||
| Vista Premium | 75.99 | Link | ||||||||||
| Wireless KB/M | 25.99 | Link | ||||||||||
| 2GB Flash Drive | 19.55 | Link | ||||||||||
| Headphones | 19.99 | Link | ||||||||||
| 500GB Drive | 86.00 | Link | ||||||||||
| 4GB RAM | 109.96 | Link | ||||||||||
| DVD/CD RW | 34.50 | Link | ||||||||||
| Dual DVI Video | 55.97 | Link | ||||||||||
| 15 in LCD | 79.00 | Link | ||||||||||
LotD: SpongeBob SquarePants Saves Sinking Boat. And you thought he wasn't a superhero.
12 comments:
On the PCI question: PCI Express and PCI are completely different beasts. Cards made for one will not work with the other. PCI Express is newer and faster than PCI. New graphics cards use the PCI Express slots.
You can use a PCI Express card rated for a slower speed in a faster slot, but not a faster card in a slower slot. So, a graphics card that uses PCI Express x16 can not be used in a PCI Express x1 slot, but a PCI Express x1 card can be used in either.
If you have any existing expansion cards (other than a graphics card), they are PCI. Your new graphics card will take up the PCI Express x16 slot, leaving you with one free PCI Express x1 slot and 2 PCI slots.
That's fine, although you will not be able to have 2 PCI Express graphics cards in the system later (similar to not being able to have 2 AGP graphics cards in your current system). There are motherboards out there (like mine), that have 2 PCI Express x16 slots. Then you can either have 2 graphics cards operating independently, or hook them together using SLI or Crossfire to work as one really fast graphics card. You can hook up two cheaper graphics cards this way and get really good performance instead of buying one really expensive graphics card.
I got the following on my motherboard, which cost about $97 a year ago:
2 PCI Express x16
2 PCI Express x1
3 PCI
4 SATA devices
4 IDE devices
Digital audio out
Here's the monitor I have at work (top link):Dell 2007FP. It's a very nice monitor, and not much more than the one you listed, plus you'd have about 14% more screen area (1600x1200 resolution). If it was me (and I know it isn't), this is what I'd get, since I know how good they are. I have a dual-head setup of these and they've been great.
Sweet! I had looked on Price Watch and hadn't seen a 1600x1200 monitor, which I would also prefer. I'll probably get that one instead.
One other thing to perhaps reconsider is the graphics card. If one of the reasons your upgrading is better gaming performance (both now and in the future), you might want to put a little more money into at least a mid-range graphics card. The X1600 you have listed is kind of old, and might be more of a stop-gap solution for you
I didn't know you could hook up two graphics cards to work as one fast graphics card. How does that work? What is crossfire? I've never heard of this. Will the performance equal the sum of the two or is there some loss? Tim should enlighten us with an example :).
Joel - you didn't have a graphics card listed (unless I missed it). Aren't you going to buy one?
There are two similar technologies, one for Nvidia cards and one for ATI cards. The one for Nvidia is called SLI and the one for ATI is called Crossfire.
When enabled, the system acts as if there is only one main graphics card in the system (meaning you can't have monitors hooked up to both) but both work together to produce the output. SLI has to modes, one where each graphics card produces have of each image, and the other where they alternate generating the entire image. Crossfire has these two modes plus a couple of others.There is a bridge chip for SLI cards that directly connects them, and similarly, for Crossfire, there is a cable used to connect the cards. You can even have a quad SLI setup if you so desire.
In theory, you get twice the performance of one card (and twice the memory), although there will be some overhead. The direct connection helps keep the overhead relatively small.
With SLI you need two graphics cards with the same chipset and memory size, and preferably the same manufacturer. The Crossfire setup is a little less strict, but you have to have a special Crossfire edition of the main card. I have two Nvidia 7600 GS cards that I bought on sale with rebates for two different computers that I have tried out SLI with. I don't remember the exact numbers, but the framerates of the games I tried did get pretty close to double (within 10%?).
Just to give you MORE options, I saw this tonight: 20 inch widescreen monitor for $150. I know nothing about the brand and will make no claims about it, other than it is pretty cheap. Knock on wood, the 19 inch LCD monitor I got for $100 after rebates have been working out great for both little sis and myself.
I was taking a look at NewEgg so see what I could find, and found this:
BIOSTAR TForce TF570SLI AM2 NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI MCP ATX AMD Motherboard: $68
AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Windsor 3.0GHz 2 x 1MB L2 Cache Socket AM2 Processor: $170
Total cost: $238
I like this board much better than the one in your combo. It has good customer comments on NewEgg, is a more advanced chipset, has 2 x16 slots and supports SLI, has 3 PCI slots, supports 6 SATA devices and 2 IDE, has dual gigabit ethernet, and supports 8 channel audio. Downsides include no Firewire ports (yours didn't either) and in SLI mode, the slots operate at 8x speed. In a higher-end board, both slots would still operate at x16, but you'd need 2 monster video cards to take advantage of that.
Whoa! Sweet! That definitely looks better.
A video card to think about:
XFX PVT84GUDF3 GeForce 8600GTS 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card: $140
Might be more than you're wanting to spend (which is fine), but might be a nice investment for a video card. Also supports Direct X 10 and SLI, although you probably won't be buying 2 of these for awhile... ;-)
Tom's Hardware guide has their take on the best video cards for the money for Sept 2007. Of note, the 7600GS is what I bought for my DVR and my cheap AMD computer, but I found it for about $50 after rebates a year ago. I wasn't as concerned about top gaming performance, but it's nice to see that it still makes this list. ;-)
My personal preference leans towards Nvidia (as you may be able to see from the Nvidia chipset on the motherboard and video card). Part of that reasoning was the poor quality of ATI drivers for Vista when I was buying (likely to be better now). You certainly don't have to buy a Nvidia video card, but if you think you may want to try an SLI rig in the future (when prices of the cards fall for instance), you would want to buy Nvidia now so you're halfway there.
For what it's worth, my DVR has 3 ATI tuner cards and the Nvidia 7600GS video card with a Nvidia chipset motherboard. I didn't want either company to feel left out... ;-)
Well, I was reading your post and links and formulating responses in my head.... then I read all the comments already here.
So, uh, yeah: Ditto on what Tim said. (especially the Nvidia preference)
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