What you guys think of this system for FFXI?

[Guillotine]

Re: What you guys think of this system for FFXI?

Alright, took minimog's suggestion and here's the specs ver. 2.0:

ASUS A8N-E MOTHERBOARD ATX S939 NFORCE4 ULTRA DDR PCI-E16 PCI-E4 2PCI-E1 3PCI SATA RAID GBLAN SOUND
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Processor S939 Venice 2.0GHZ 512K L2 Cache 90NM Retail Box
Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 120GB SATA2 7200RPM 8MB 8.5MS NCQ Hard Drive

Using the same video card I mentioned before, but changed to that stuff. That motherboard will support the X2 processors as well so when they come down in price I'll have the option of making the switch. Plus when I have more money to spend I can drop in another HDD and raid them. I'm getting one of those Sonata 2 cases from antec as well so it should be a pretty sweet system. What kind of cases do you guys like? I think antec makes pretty awesome ones.

Of note is that I managed to shave off over 400 bucks too so I won't be as broke as I was going to before.

edit: oh, and this is the new ram

Corsair Value Select PC3200 1GB 2X512MB DDR400 184PIN DIMM Dual Channel Memory Kit

I was having some trouble matching the ram to tell the truth, I can't find any mention of the FSB speeds for the cpu or the mobo... i plunked the motherboard into corsairs system though and that's what it came up with. *shrug*

[bside]

Re: What you guys think of this system for FFXI?

sorry for the long reply;

1. motherboard

assuming that u r now considering the nForce4 based system, i'd recommend DFI's LANParty series of motherboards, namely NF4 SLI-DR.

as shown in many reviews such as this one by Tom's Hardware, DFI's LANParty mobo's r considered one of the best NF4 mobo's around, especially for gaming systems and overclockers. one factor that differentiates itself from other popular NF4 mobo's, like ASUS's A8N-SLI, is that DFI's board uses the high-quality components such as 100% japanese capaciators, thus resulting in the better stability, which becomes clearly noticeable when overclocked. even if u r not into overclocking, this board still provides great performance. i remember seeing one review concluding that DFI was about 10% faster in overall performance than the competitions. (forgot the link for this review, tho.)

ASUS's A8N-SLI Deluxe or Premium r also good choice, especially if it's ur favorite manufacture like u mentioned. ppl like myself sometimes make their decisions based on the manufactures, not the reviews or recommendations, and there's nothing wrong about that. i use ASUS's A8N-SLI myself, over the DFI's LANParty, simply because i like ASUS, and it's doing just fine.

as far as chipset goes, if NF4, go w/ either NF4 SLI or Ultra. while there r other models in NF4, such as x4 and x16, SLI and Ultra seem to be the best "balanced" models as of this writing. the "plain" NF4 and x4 models lack some of the features that others offer, of which the biggest "bottleneck" being the FSB being slightly slower (1000 v. 800). on the other hand, x16 is the newest addition to the NF4 line of chipsets, and offers 2 of the x16 PCI-E slots, but u don't really need this feature unless u'll go w/ SLI configuration. speaking of SLI, i don't think u really need this. if u can afford 2 6600GT cards, i'd rather recommend 1 card w/ faster GPU, such as 7800 series.


2. HDD

moving onto the issue of HDD, i understand that u r considering Western Digital's WD360GD for the purpose of speed, and maybe its reliability too. and let's just forget, for now, the capacity issue that others have brought up; i understand this isn't a problem u r talking about.

while the performance difference from the "standard" SATA2 HDD may not justify the price u pay for this drive w/ rather small capacity, it's affirmative that this one would provide the best performance among the SATA drives available in the market today. and i support ur choice for this reason, while like i mentioned the performace difference u gain may not be as noticeable as u might expect.

unfortunately, there r no other SATA or SATA2 drives that offer the features that WD360GD does, w/ the exceptions being WD740GD and WD800GD which r higher-capacity versions of WD360GD, and if u r not going to settle w/ 7200rpm drives, this pretty much is the only choice, unless u go w/ SAS drives, which of course is hell a lot more expensive.

assuming that u already made up ur mind, there's one thing u should know about this drive. WD360GD has at least 5 known revisions, identifiable by the "sub" model numbers, and each have big differences from each other. let me list them up so u can have better idea (where "X" being the unique digits);

a. WD360GD-00ELX1 - Ball Bearing, basically a BETA sample but some have gotton to the market in the very first stage, high performance among other revisions, actuall speed being about 63MB/s in outter disk and 45MB/s in the inner disk, made in USA, as far as i know this revision is currently not in circulation, sometimes referred to as Rev 32.

b. WD360GD-00FNA0 - Ball Bearing, w/ the above model being the BETA sample this one is actually the first mass-production model, LOW performance among other revisions, actuall speed being about 58MB/s in outter disk and 37MB/s in the inner disk, noise level slightly higher than other revisions, mostly made in Malaysia, no longer in circulation, sometimes referred to as Rev 34. AVOID this revision if u come across.

c. WD360GD-XXGHA0 - FDB, switched to Fluid Dynamic Bearing from this rev, but the performance is yet LOW, about the same actual speed as 00FNA0, noise level higher than other FDB revisions, made in USA & Malaysia, heard that this rev is firmware upgradable to the below mentioned 50GHA2 revision equivalent, but it's non-official firmware so it's at ur own risk, some may still be in circulation. just like the above one, AVOID this revision if u come across.

d. WD360GD-50GHA2- FDB, for some reason the performance got a lot better from this rev, about the same actuall speed as the very first BETA, made in USA and Malaysia, slightly higher noise level than the below mentioned newest rev, the bottleneck is this rev gets very hot, some r still in circulation.

d. WD360GD-00FLA2 - FDB, the newest rev and most of WD360GD in the market today r of this rev, from this rev the chipsets were changed to the same sets as WD740GD, resulting in the quieter performance and lower temparture, the actuall speed is about the same as the BETA. i recommend that u get this one.


3. CPU

unfortunately, the x2 line of Athlon 64, or the dual-core models, won't result in the great performance difference when it comes to ffxi, simply because it's not designed for multi-CPU platforms. FX series obviously is the winner when it comes to gaming on a single-core system, but they r bit pricy. but Athlon 64 isn't the only choice left in this case, u still have Opteron 1xx series for Socket 939. while Opteron is designed for servers, it's based on the same architecture as A64, has larger L2 Cache, higher overclock potential (if u care), isn't that expensive compared to A64, and of course works fine w/ ffxi. while the supply of Opteron 1xx is limited, u might wanna consider this if ur budget permits. and if u r considering A64 3000 or 3200, i'd rather recommend Opteron 144 or 146.

edit: as of today, 10/31/05, AMD is dropping the price on Opteron 1xx.


again, sry for this long reply, but hope this helps.



p.s. those of u who know me; i've been away from using english and currently trying to get as much occasions as i can in which i can use english. looking for the reading and writing practice, i've decided to come back to this forum, tho not as frequent as i used to.

[ibroyles]

Re: What you guys think of this system for FFXI?

Pretty good info bside. Thank you and welcome back.

[Guillotine]

Re: What you guys think of this system for FFXI?

Yeah i think I'm going to have to PM bside further about this. He sounds extremely knowledgable on the subject to say the least. lol