Athlon 64 : Who's got one?

ReTrO

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Has anyone had experience with the Athlon 64 yet?

I'm looking at the moment to be building 3 systems based around the Athlon 64 3000+, 1Gb RAM, and a nice new mobo.

Does anyone have suggestions re motherboards, I'm currently swaying toward an Nvidia Nforce 3 chipset based one.

Also suggestion for quiet/ish hetasink and fan combos.

Cheers in advance.
 
Hi Richard

I'm going through exactly the same process as well.

I've bought an Athlon 64 together with the MSI K8T neo board as its a fanless design. As for other parts, I've gone for an ATI 9800 pro with Zalman replacement heatsink and pipe, a Zalman CPU cooler, Antec Sonata case with sound damping kit, and a Silenx PSU

The only problem is that I've been waiting 3 weeks for the Silenx as they're out of stock, so I've no idea how its all going to work together :)

The site I found most useful is www.3dgameman.com as Rodney (!) does video reviews, so you can actually hear the stuff in action, very useful

Good luck!
 
I currently run a quiet system with a set of Zalman coolers and a SilenX 300W PSU. The PSU is totally silent which is brilliant, I'd definately get another if needed.

I'm keeping my GF4 Ti4400 for now (Zalman heat-pipecooler heatsink set thingy attached) and the rest of my kit. Not sure what friends want to do, but they're not so bothered with the noise levels.

Keep me posted as to how it runs etc.

Cheers
 
I have an Athlon 64 in my laptop & you can download a (free for 12 months) beta version of XP 64 bit edition from Microsoft.

No real driver support or software yet but certainly nice to have for the official release.

Quite happy with its performance in terms of benchmarks/day to day use etc.

:smoke:
 
Good to hear Kramer.

Don't suppose you know of any mobos that use the Nforce 3 chipset that have the Nvidia Soundstream option for doing DD 5.1 from any source?
 
Afraid I don't at the moment Richard :(

Will keep an eye out though during my weekly "what can I buy next" internet session :D
 
I just built a PC for my dad with an Athlon 64 3200+, 1GB RAM, fanless Radeon 9600 and a Nexus NX3500 PSU.

I wanted a Via K8T800 based board, so I got the Asus K8V.

All the test I have seen show the Via based boards to perform better then the nForce ones - why do you want a nForce 3 board ?

Oh, and I use a Thermalright SLK-948U with a Panaflo fan, and it's very quiet ;)

/BJ
 
I was potentially looking at the Nforce 3 if I could find one with the Soundstream option, but since I can't my options have gone to recommendations.

I find the VIA based boards to be generally very good and will certainly be looking at them . :smashin:
 
I've had an Althon 64 for a few months now. The only issues I can think of are minor:
The Athlon 64 only supports 4 memory banks at DDR400, since 512MB sticks are usually dual bank that means >1GB configs usually run at DDR333.
On the MSI K8T-Neo FISR2, he hard disk LED for the Via SATA controller doesn't work - it only works for the Promise SATA and Via PATA controllers.
You will probably need a new PSU, I think AMD recommend at least a 350W PSU for the Athlon 64 and I've heard of the cheaper 400 and 450W PSUs struggling. I use an Antec 550W with no problem, but it's not the quietest.
 
What heatsink and fan combo do you guys use?

I need something quiet.

Ooh and what brand memory?

Are there any known compatability issues?
 
Hi, I just built a new PC running the Athlon 64 3200+ on the Mbit mobo. Also using the Zalman 7000 processor cooler. Works great, is quiet, however my soundcard seems to work better with an Intel P4 when using all 6 analogue outs so I will be building a new system over Easter :rolleyes: . I was going to advertise my mobo with processor and Zalman cooler for £320 next week if you're interested?

Cheers,

Steve
 
I use the stock AMD heatsink and fan, it works well but it's not particularly quiet.
The Athlon 64 has Cool'n'quiet, which means that the multiplier drops if the processor isn't being used fully - on the current processors they can drop as low as 800MHz. You need to enable it in the BIOS, install a special CPU driver for XP, and change the power settings in XP to minimal power management to get it working.
Not sure about other boards, but the MSI NEO will also adjust the CPU fan speed dependent on CPU temperature - even to the point of stopping it if the temperature is low enough.
I use 3x 512MB Corsair XMS3200LL Pro memory sticks, but because they are dual bank I have to run at DDR333. I haven't found a lot of difference between DDR400 and DDR333 though in real apps/games.
 
I've ordered up a SilenX 400W PSU and one of their 64 heatsink & fans sets. Cost me £150 for the set but going by past experiences well worth it.

I'm going to be ordering up the MSI board I think, probably in the next week or so. Looking at £400 ish for mobo, CPU & 2 x 512Mb PC3200 RAM
 
There is no Athlon 64 board with Soundstorm (which is what I think you mean). The new (and I would wait for these) nforce250 chipset boards for the Athlon 64 don't have the Soundstorm APU either. However, there are existing Athlon 64 boards that I have seen with the Envy24 chipset (7.1). Maybe not too good for gamin but for HTPC use would be useful.
 
Yeah Soundstorm, seems a bit odd that really, and a bit of a shame. I guess the 64 isn't aimed directly as gamers so isn't considered necessary to have the cool things like Soundstorm onboard.

Ahh well, it was just a nice idea, I'll live with my Hercules Game Theater XP 7.1 for now then. :D
 
Woo!

Motherboard, CPU and RAM arrived today!

Very nice mobo, lots and lots of connectors, and a very nice red colour.:smashin:

Good that the CPU comes with a stock heatsink and fan, not going to use it though, just need to wait for my SilenX heatsink/fan and 400W PSU to arrive now.

Time to build on Saturday!

Happy man!:D
 
All the parts arrived!

System is now up and running perfectly.

I had to reinstall my drivers for the soundcard (Hercules Game Theater XP 7.1) but otherwise woked well.

It's nice and very speedy now, brilliant!

Ooh, and dead quiet too.:smashin:
 
400W Pro, nice black case, not that you can see it. :D

The micro's are designed to fit in smaller cases, the Pro will fit perfectly into most ATX cases.
 

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