New PC upgrade

[Cobra]

Hi there,I ordered some pieces at directcanada.com and had some questions & wanted the opinions of some people.I'm curently on a P4 HT so I'm going to see big improvement there.

This is the PC I'll have:

Gigabyte EP35-DS3L
Intel E8400
Kingston HyperX 2x1GB PC6400 ddr2 800mhz
BFG 8800GT OC 512mb
Antec Sonata1
Antec Neo HE 550 watts
Maxtor 120gb 7200 SATA
LG DVD R/W drive

And now here's the questions:
Will the 8800GT OC will work nicely on that Antec Neo HE 550 watts?
Will the SATA HDD will work on the P35 DS3L?
I've heard of some problem with the BFG 8800GT OC running under Vista,should I still go with a fresh Vista install or XP?
Anything else could be wrong on the PC?


Thank you.

[DarKStar]

Originally Posted by Cobra

Hi there,I ordered some pieces at directcanada.com
and had some questions & wanted the opinions of some people.I'm curently on
And now here's the questions:
Will the 8800GT OC will work nicely on that Antec Neo HE 550 watts?

Yes it will - that power supply is SLI certified, comes with 2 PCIe connectors and it will run 2 of these, no problem. It supports a total of 54A on the 12V rails combined (3 rails) and if it reassures you even more, that is what I am running, an Antec Neo550 HE, with a 8800GT 512MB OC (BFG), a very good power supply and modular too. I have 2 of these on each system and they run 24/7.

Will the SATA HDD will work on the P35 DS3L?

Yes, it supports SATA-II 3Gb/s so I don't see why not. There is a jumper on your HDD that is likely defaulted to 1.5Gb/s, follow the instructions on your HDD to remove it to enable 3.0gb/s support, mind you you won't get anywhere close to those speeds for now ;)

I've heard of some problem with the BFG 8800GT OC running under Vista,should I still go with a fresh Vista install or XP?
Anything else could be wrong on the PC?

What have you heard and where, I'm interested to know ? I'm using the official 175.19 Vista32 drivers (you can also use the beta 177.79, those are good too). I'm running my BFG 8800GT OC 512MB under VISTA fine, haven't heard any problems. Whatever you read must be an outdated article relating to an old NVIDIA driver. I've run GPUCaps fur test and HDR tests for 3 hours under VISTA, and played a few games, it is rock solid - the only issue I had is with BIOSHOCK, but it's a known issue people are having and it's game related - I have no problems with other games.

[CanadaRox]

If you haven't ordered it all already, and if you plan on overclocking, I would recommend getting PC2-8000 or 8500 RAM. If you can spend a bit more you should get a 4850 over the 8800GT, as it will have a substantial gain most of the time.

For your questions:
The 550W PSU should have enough power for that rig so it should work nicely.
Any SATA HDD will work with any motherboard with SATA ports.
If you go with Vista or XP, you will likely have to do a fresh install, and if you don't have to, do it anways. Whether you go with XP or Vista is up to you. I use Vista x64 and it's a love/hate relationship, though I do recommend it.
Read my recommendations in the first paragraph if you haven't already ordered it all.

[DarKStar]

One thing to be careful with SATA and installing your OS. If you run your SATA controller in AHCI mode (which is native SATA mode which has support for hot swapping and NCQ) then you will need to install drivers during install using a special disk. If you run it in IDE mode (no hotswapping or NCQ) your OS won't require special drivers as it will recognise the drives as IDE drives. There are some exceptions for example my nForce 570SLI does not support AHCI, so the SATA runs in IDE mode anyways, BUT the driver has built-in support for NCQ anyways - to be honest, I'd recommend running in IDE mode - unless you are doing a lot of random access and small files.

[Cobra]

Thank you guys,look like the things I heard about the 8800GT was outdated(they were talking about 169.xx drivers).I'll go with Vista 32 then.Also,my memory will run as PC-5300 667 mhz(default) so if I just put manualy 4-4-4-12 800mhz & +0,2V(factory settings) will I have some problems or it'll work perfectly?

@You say SATA II 3 GB/s is supported but my HDD is SATA...you're sure it'll fit?Otherwise,I'm going to get one at the store.

[Supergrover]

Originally Posted by Cobra

Thank you guys,look like the things I heard about the 8800GT was outdated(they were talking about 169.xx drivers).I'll go with Vista 32 then.Also,my memory will run as PC-5300 667 mhz(default) so if I just put manualy 4-4-4-12 800mhz & +0,2V(factory settings) will I have some problems or it'll work perfectly?

@You say SATA II 3 GB/s is supported but my HDD is SATA...you're sure it'll fit?Otherwise,I'm going to get one at the store.

Yeah it will fit , my old 600mb hdd is the same size as todays SATA hdd's
SATA is just the interface used.

[Cobra]

Originally Posted by Supergrover

Yeah it will fit , my old 600mb hdd is the same size as todays SATA hdd's
SATA is just the interface used.

Good to hear.I'm happy to know that everything will be good now


EDIT:my memory will run as PC-5300 667 mhz(default) so if I put manualy 4-4-4-12 800mhz & +0,2V(factory tested settings) will I have some problems or it'll work perfectly?

[DarKStar]

Originally Posted by Cobra

Thank you guys,look like the things I heard about the 8800GT was outdated(they were talking about 169.xx drivers).I'll go with Vista 32 then.Also,my memory will run as PC-5300 667 mhz(default) so if I just put manualy 4-4-4-12 800mhz & +0,2V(factory settings) will I have some problems or it'll work perfectly?

@You say SATA II 3 GB/s is supported but my HDD is SATA...you're sure it'll fit?Otherwise,I'm going to get one at the store.

It is the same size as its IDE version - 3.5. Only difference is that you need a SATA power cable and SATA data cable - The ANtec Neo 550HE provides the power cable.

[Cobra]

Can anyone answer my memory question?

[FreqE1]

It should work just how you describe. Add the correct amount of voltage and adjust the timings. Set your FSB to 400 and the memory ratio to 1:2. This will give you an OC of 3.6GHz and your ram will be running a 1:1 ratio which is supposed to be ideal.