Comments on my new System

Kao-Sama · TweakNOOB Joined: 08 Dec 2002 Posts: 11

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I just bought the GA-7VAXP mobo with Athlon XP 2100. I've heard a lot of talk about this board, a lot of it being very bad and other good. Heard that the board locks up and restarts randomly and is not stable....what do you guys think of this; i've just got the mobo, not even installed it yet, I hope that the board isn't that bad of a choice.
I also heard of the overclocking that can be done with this board as well but considering the 2100 athlon is locked (and is tricky to unlock), can only the fsb adjustments be enough to overclock the ahtlon consideribly. I'm also gettin a volcano 9 with it, so coolin isn't a problem. Since memory is going to be affected by this fsb adjustment, is their any memory chips that you guys may recommend; i took a look at corsair 333 512mb chip, but it's a tad bit expensive. I have western didgital 80gig ATA 100 HD; board can accept 133, are they considerably different in speed?. Any comments would be great, thnks

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[TN] Nathan · ALMIGHTY PWNER! Joined: 14 Feb 2002 Posts: 7406

Kao-Sama,

Welcome to the boards!

Now with your choice of motherboards, we here have not had the chance to review this particular motherboard, so, a search on the internet for reviews on the board are in order.

Now with your memory choice, if you are not the adventurous type to unlocking your athlon XP (which you should), getting top grade memory is paramount. Corsair are one of the best in the business and are an overclockers choice.

Now, seeing that you have a ATA-133 enabled motherboard, I would HIGHLY recommend that you get a ATA-133 drive. Remeber that the hard drive is the slowest component in your system and getting the most speed out of it would be best and anyways, ATA-133 hard drives are pretty well the industry standard now and are the same price give or take 10 bucks or so.

Now, with your system, update your motherboard bios upon installing everything to get the bugs out if any are apparent .

Any problems, come back and we will help you out.
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Kao-Sama · TweakNOOB Joined: 08 Dec 2002 Posts: 11

Sounds good, thanks. I've read reviews on the motherboard, thing is that some sites say it's really stable and other say it's not

Hrmmm, i was plannin on getting two 40 gig ATA 133 HD connected via Raid; i guess i'll still do that but what am i gonna do with the 80 gig HD, lol. I'm going home on wednesday so i'll power up my computer then. I'll post any problems then, thanks.

[TN] Nathan · ALMIGHTY PWNER! Joined: 14 Feb 2002 Posts: 7406

Well, I would install the 40gig ata133 as the operating system drive and the 80gig as the data and backup drive.

That way your OS will be on the fastest drive.

BTW, I wouldn't use a RAID config, just put the 40gig as master on the primary and the 80gig as the slave.

Remember, use the KISS method, (Keep It Simple Stupid)

The less complicated the system, the less problems you will have.
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jadison · Guest

I agree, don't setup RAID unless you need to, i.e. data backups, etc.

From what the members at the XPC Forums say HERE that board is a good choice. :)

Kao-Sama · TweakNOOB Joined: 08 Dec 2002 Posts: 11

Well, I started up the computer yesterday, it started up very nice.....it passed the smoke screen test, lol. I installed the OS and drivers, works nice. Had some problems with the lan that come on the board, but its working now, it just conflicted with Norton Firewall but now i have sygate on and its fine now. The darn side fan on my case (ATX 288 USB, Raidmax) is really loud. I want to get rid of it, lol, if i can find a quiter fan. Currently I have 256mb kingston ram, which i paid wayy too much for, I paid about $150 for it but thats because i bought it at home in Grand Cayman where think are naturally expensive. I'm gonna upgrade to the corsair as soon as i get back to the states. Also have a generic video card that came with my previous system. I have no idea what graphics card to get, anyone with any ideas I would really appreciate it; thinking of somethin around 150-250 price range. Radeon 9700 sounds good but too much, hopin price will drop with the release of Geforce FX.
Well, i'm happy with this system so far, GA-7VAXP board works just fine and i had no problems with the initial setup.

[TN] Nathan · ALMIGHTY PWNER! Joined: 14 Feb 2002 Posts: 7406

Good decision on getting rid of Norton Personal Firewall, what s***!

Videocard, I would have to say to get a ATI Radeon 8500LE with 128megs of memory.

Great card for the dollar and no slouch in the performance end either.
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Kao-Sama · TweakNOOB Joined: 08 Dec 2002 Posts: 11

Sounds a good price, hrmmmm, but i think i will put it to the pipper and get the 9700, lol. Have to wait till February tho when i save up the cash

and also when i get my mind passed the price

I tested my system with 3D mark and it scored a very dissapointed and poor as hell score of 817

, i just wanna max out mah ram and graphics card now to show that benchmark program who really gonna kick a$$. lol, neway, thnks for the help; i'll keep mah results posted.

jadison · Guest

I agree - u can score a GeForce4 Ti-4200 for a great price

Make sure you get 128MB DDR ram tho - 64MB isn't enough these days. :)

Kao-Sama · TweakNOOB Joined: 08 Dec 2002 Posts: 11

I just bought my Corsair 2700 512mb ram for around 150bucks. It installed no problem and compared to my 256 kingston that i had it in previously, man it just kicks that aside. But i've tried running 3Dmark2001and it just freezes and then restarts, this never happened before and i'm assuming that its my video card, that piece of crap tnt2, heh. I've decided on getting the geforce fx, i've already saved up the dough so i'm gonna get it, i've read it coming out next month so i can't wait for that.
I was wondering if i could use my corsair memory along with the kingston, would it affect performance? Or would it simply won't work? I'm just a lil curious.

ty

[TN] Nathan · ALMIGHTY PWNER! Joined: 14 Feb 2002 Posts: 7406

I am not impressed by the FX, all hype and very expensive seeing that it won't do much more than the 9700pro.
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Kao-Sama · TweakNOOB Joined: 08 Dec 2002 Posts: 11

well, if i was going to get the radeon 9700, which trust me i would but for only 60 bucks more i can get somethin about 25% better, I say why not get the fx. Hrmmm, well thats just my opinion, it's pretty logical and plus if you can put your money on the table, well then why not, heh.

jadison · Guest

Why not save the money and use it to buy something else for your system. :)

I personally wouldn't go out and buy the latest and greatest for THE most expensive price possible, instead I'd atleast wait until review sites have gotten a sample and see what they had to say about it. You never know what issues/conflicts might bestow your card until you see it going through the runs by someone else, IMHO.

Kao-Sama · TweakNOOB Joined: 08 Dec 2002 Posts: 11

I read the review on the Geforce FX on Toms Hardware. They put it up against the Radeon 9700 and not to my surprise, the Geforce FX is definiately better than the Radeon, lmaol, the only thing is that i'm not goon purchase the fx. According to the benchmarks, the FX bearly and I mean bearly beats the Radeon, so in my mind now Radeon kicks all ass.
So it looks like i'm gonna be getting the Radeon, i'm really dissapointed in the FX, it really isn't what they said it would be and Nividia, well, they are really pathetic, lol.

[TN] Nathan · ALMIGHTY PWNER! Joined: 14 Feb 2002 Posts: 7406

I told you so, hehe

Funny that something that is supposed to be that ground breaking is only marginally better than 3 month old technology.

Wait till the R350 to come out, the FX will tuck it's legs to cover its family jewels and will run away yiping!!

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Kao-Sama · TweakNOOB Joined: 08 Dec 2002 Posts: 11

Okay, you guys are not going to believe what happened to me today. Well, first off, I ordered my radeon 9700 pro for mah system and it came today, well at least i thought it did......i ordered it from amazon and it came in tha nice red box with the 3 vicious dogs on the front and also in the shrink wrap. Now, I opened the radeon box and all i see is a s-video and rca cable, I was looking and looking and i couldn't find tha dam radeon, so i looked under the cardboard layer that was in tha box and then relief past over me to see a video card laying there, but wait, thats not the end of the story. I noticed this card was not in a anti-static bag so i was wondering what tha heck, and then the green pcb board caught my eyes and I said ' what tha hell'........so i took up the stupid card and saw 3DFX printed on the back, not to mention the card was dusty and pieces were bent and/or broken. I said ' what tha f*** is this piece of s***....where tha hell is my radeon that i paid 345 for?' . I almost fainted, so i picked up tha phone and called ATI, they asked me to read the code on tha box but they confirmed that all contents were in the box fine when a bulk of those were ordered. So I had to call amazon and talked with a guy forever explaining this piece of s*** vodoo or whatever it is is in my sweet radeon box, and i asked him where tha hell is mah radeon.......ofcoarse he said that it wasn't tha first time and they will reship next week.

Anything like this happened to anyone here......oh gosh, i hope not, the stress and anticipation all yet to be fooled by someone's sick sense of a joke or rip off to make some serious cash from amazon.
Ohh well, looks like another couple of days b4 the i get my radeon.

[TN] Nathan · ALMIGHTY PWNER! Joined: 14 Feb 2002 Posts: 7406

new rumour in the mill is that the FX ultra wont be even hitting the shelves because it will be out classed in a month with the r350,, hehe, Nvidia is really feeling the heat.
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Kao-Sama · TweakNOOB Joined: 08 Dec 2002 Posts: 11

Yup, I read on couple sites that Nvidia may withdraw the FX, although it is not confirmed. Thats pretty sad though, lol, all that hype for nothing.....if nvidia did release the FX it would most likely be a big flop, lol.
Neway, I finally completed my system and got a very impressive score on 3dMark. Here are my specs:

GA-7VAXP mobo
XP 2400+ (upgraded from 2100+)
Volcano 9 Mod
Radeon 9700 Pro
Corsair 2700 512mb DDR
80 gig Western Digital ATA 100

I ran 3DMark2001 and received a very nice score of 13142

. The only thing that I found really weird was when I updated the catalyst drivers for the radeon I got a score of 9856!! But when I rolled back the drivers I hit my original 13142 score which i'm very proud of.
Planning on upgrading my case (Raidmax ATX 288 USB) since it only houses two case fans. Altough i've got one of those PCI slot fans running to dispose of the hot air. Give any suggestions on cases, i'm looking for cooling and ofcoarse the style factor.

jadison · Guest

Hey Kao-Sama - sorry to see you get burned like that ... that just plain sux man! Any updates on that? I haven't traded/auctioned/bought/sold on eBay before, but my Uncle is an eBay fanatic...he's had something like 250+ transactions thru eBay...

BTW, I'll have some more case suggestions for ya but for now I'll have to vouch for Antec cases like the one I own now... here's one you should take a look at:

->Antec Performance Plusview 1000AMG

Kao-Sama · TweakNOOB Joined: 08 Dec 2002 Posts: 11

Jadison, the funny thing about my radeon is the fact that it was bought from amazon!!!! It wasn't an auction nor did i even buy it from an amazon dealer (second hand), it was bought directly from amazon themselves. Good news is that they reshipped the radeon and it came fine, I have it in now.

That case I like, my bro has one, and couple of my friends, theyll think i'm copying them o something, lol, I wanna be unique if at all possible. True, the case do come loaded with fans, heh, led fans too is uppin the style factor. Anymore ideas.....hey, have you seen the new alienware predator case, ohhhhhh it looks sweet, I wonder if u can buy just tha case alone?

jadison · Guest

Well, Kao-Sama for a unique array of cases I'd give So-Trick Computers a check. They have some sweet cases and for great prices (and have a high ranking at ResellerRatings.com) - so you'll definitely be unique with a case from them...