Building a new PC? Look here first.

[jamie1992]

You all are some lucky fuckers I would kill for a monster PC. Literally.

[ket]

Your PC isn't that bad now its got a HD3870 and 2GB of PC8500. Just need a good HDD and a PSU capable of powering that 3870 properly.

[3040Krag]

lol, now he tells me

Anyway, I have hopes the phenom will unlock, and the ASRock has a thread about it over at XS where it seems to be doing nicely. I like the underdogs, like to work'em up to run with the big boys. Was able to wring some great perf out of an Abit BP-6 and an ECS something or other (one of a handful to run 167 FSB back in the day), so it sounds more like a challenge I'd like to handle than anything faff

It will be a while before I wring the new system out, I can't find the HD cage for the case I wanted to use, so an old coolermaster mid-tower is holding all the bits until I decide on either building a cage or buying a new case. The coolermaster doesn't run air well, and the good Antec case I have I used for my son's build. I AM posting from the listed system, however. Truly impressive was a 33 minute cold start/XP install/7 Pro upgrade install. Sweet!

[3040Krag]

I must say, I H A T E UAC. Only got about 20 minutes of Stalker tonight because 30 minutes was spent finding out why I couldn't save an edited fsgame.ltx.

I was sputtering, cursing and blood pressurized until I found how to tame that idiotic POS called UAC!

[ket]

lol, now he tells me

Anyway, I have hopes the phenom will unlock, and the ASRock has a thread about it over at XS where it seems to be doing nicely. I like the underdogs, like to work'em up to run with the big boys. Was able to wring some great perf out of an Abit BP-6 and an ECS something or other (one of a handful to run 167 FSB back in the day), so it sounds more like a challenge I'd like to handle than anything faff

It will be a while before I wring the new system out, I can't find the HD cage for the case I wanted to use, so an old coolermaster mid-tower is holding all the bits until I decide on either building a cage or buying a new case. The coolermaster doesn't run air well, and the good Antec case I have I used for my son's build. I AM posting from the listed system, however. Truly impressive was a 33 minute cold start/XP install/7 Pro upgrade install. Sweet!

Underdogs are fine, but not when they cost around the same price as something thats proven to do a good job. You will be PISSED as well when that Phenom doesn't unlock Even if it does, unlocking is touchy stuff like that can get totally borked up with just a BIOS update.

[3040Krag]

Any reason to get pissed (King's English pissed) is OK by me

I hear you, ket, but it's all water under the bridge now. The PC isn't half empty, it's half-full!

[jamie1992]

Your PC isn't that bad now its got a HD3870 and 2GB of PC8500. Just need a good HDD and a PSU capable of powering that 3870 properly.

Yeah, but my Mobo and CPU is fucking whack, plus to do somethings I'd like to do I need a monster I wanna learn animating but none of my pc's have enough resources, even my Quad, guess it need a new card and some more ram.

[ket]

Animating isn't that hard on a system. My Quad sits around doing CAD work all day and it handles it fine. You just need to learn how to overclock your CPU

[3040Krag]

Great news! All four cores unlocked. Very easy with this MB. BTW, jmke of madshrimps wrote a warm review on this ASrock - actually on the 890 but the 880 is different only in the slower-clocked IGP. http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=getarticle&articID=997 Not the B E S T MB but a solid performer.

Less good news, only the third core is stable. Fourth won't let 7 boot, locks up at the splash screen.

[jamie1992]

Animating isn't that hard on a system. My Quad sits around doing CAD work all day and it handles it fine. You just need to learn how to overclock your CPU

Uh...Bro CAD and Max Animating, 2 totally different sports homie. Tryed on the Quad downstairs, thats a 2.5GHZ Q9900 or a 9600, either way.

Quad is above CPU
2GB ram.
8800GT something its a 326Mb thing, runs fast as hell.

Eitherway, max just goes, there isn't enough resources and asks if I wanna backup before the program closes. Its a known error for pc's that aren't powerful enough, makes me a really sad panda.

[ket]

Computer Aided Design is WAY more taxing Quad core or not, its friggin S.L.O.W. Clock it to 3.6GHz+ and the difference will be like night and day. I won't go into full details as it'll take ages but you will think its a whole new pc. Go on, let the mad scientist at it..

[ket]

Great news! All four cores unlocked. Very easy with this MB. BTW, jmke of madshrimps wrote a warm review on this ASrock - actually on the 890 but the 880 is different only in the slower-clocked IGP. http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=getarticle&articID=997 Not the B E S T MB but a solid performer.

Less good news, only the third core is stable. Fourth won't let 7 boot, locks up at the splash screen.

For the money, the board should be better eitherway, I hope ur happy with the new system and try to get that 4th core stable

[jamie1992]

Computer Aided Design is WAY more taxing Quad core or not, its friggin S.L.O.W. Clock it to 3.6GHz+ and the difference will be like night and day. I won't go into full details as it'll take ages but you will think its a whole new pc. Go on, let the mad scientist at it..

I've done CAD myself, not that much, but everything I did, wasn't to taxing to be honest. Although maybe we used dif techniques, besides, If i knew how to OC I would, AND you need to get your ass down here. >:D

[ket]

Th proof of a PCs meat is in scientific calculations it can perform. My Quad can chew through seti tasks like sweets. One task it done yesterday was supposed to take 30 hours to complete, my pc finished it in about 90 mins. A good scientific banchmark only program to test is sciencemark 2.0. Any score under 2000 is considered pretty crap.