Intel D975XBX2 vs. the ASUS P5B deluxe….P965 vs. 975X

[Babrbarossa]

Oh-- yeah I was just wondering if you were planning on getting Vista 64-- it is realeased by the way

http://www.directcanada.com/category/?minorcatid=1469

129 for the oem version, 270 for the retail which contains both 32 qand 64 bit, I think.

and if you wanted four sticks of ram- I'm not sure what you're paying for your, but here's some 800Mhz stuff for 199 for 2X1 GB- and you'd save the taxes- but I do understand the desire to buy locally.

http://www.directcanada.com/products...ture=SMARTDISK

[Babrbarossa]

If this is the ram you're buying, I would guess you probably won't get it to go much faster- most ram won't overclock much, if at all-- sometimes you can find bargain overclocking ram, but I'm not sure if that would be it-- Have you (or anyone here) heard about any oc potential for this ram?

http://www.canadacomputers.com/index...93&cid=RAM.475

If you want to have more ram performance (and I would recommend it because it's kind of a shame to not have better ram with your setup), I would recommend buying a ram with a higher frequency or one that you know is overclockable (you may already know that this stuff is, I dunno)

You won't get much better than DDR2-667 out of those as far as I know...

[philmar]

Originally Posted by Babrbarossa

If you want to have more ram performance (and I would recommend it because it's kind of a shame to not have better ram with your setup), I would recommend buying a ram with a higher frequency or one that you know is overclockable (you may already know that this stuff is, I dunno)

Uh no, I DON'T know this stuff. I know how to take great photos with film. But the camera landcape has shifted and now I must learn digital cameras and thus digital computers.
I was under the impression the AMD boards could use DDR2 800 RAM to great effect but that DDR2 800 RAM saw little benefit on an Intel board with the 975x chipset. But my memory isn't that great and these are all alien concepts to me.

The Bad Axe 2 can fully utilize DDR2-800 at stock speeds.

[Babrbarossa]

You might want to check the new badaxe 2 review I posted in the review section (not the be all and end all, but another opinion on it that echoes what Deathstalker was saying about instability). And yes, I understand that you're a photographer, not a computer technician, but I just thought it would be best to put in that caveat in case you'd chosen that ram based on some google research or something. I'll omit it next time

[philmar]

Originally Posted by Babrbarossa

You might want to check the new badaxe 2 review I posted in the review section (not the be all and end all, but another opinion on it that echoes what Deathstalker was saying about instability). And yes, I understand that you're a photographer, not a computer technician,

Thanks for the link. Not the most reassuring read but it does confirm the anecdotal evidence I was getting from other photogs with recently built PhotoShop-dedicated PCs
The Badaxe was very good in photo-processing with Adobe PhotShop Elements. From the link:

"Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0
For our Photoshop Elements test, we used a selection of 400 3MP photographs taken in a variety of surroundings using the batch file processing function in the Elements Editor. We performed all of the auto fixes, including Auto Levels, Auto Contrast, Auto Colour and Sharpen before resizing the image to 640x480 and saving as a high quality JPEG.
Despite the memory being slower, the image manipulation speeds are faster than any other 975X or Crossfire board we've previously tested."

I guess I won't be playing Doom2 with it though. And it isn't the mobo for aggressive oc'ing. I'll be fine, just fine.

[Deathspawner]

Yeah, Doom 2 is one of the more hardcore games on the market, with all of it's software rendering 2D sprite action!

You'll enjoy the Bad Axe. I am surprised to see that Adobe renders faster on that board specifically... I should almost give this a try myself. Sometimes rendering a lot of RAW can be sluggish.

[Babrbarossa]

sorry deathspawner- I was calling you deathstalker

[Deathspawner]

Why ya gotta be like that? :(

I spawn death, not stalk it! Course, both would work ;-)