So I'm back. Been gone for almost 4 months now, training with the Army. Just got back a few days ago... hopefully some of you remember me. And hopefully someone here got the qc'08 on video for me (I'll be looking for it soon).

Anyways, I came home to a dead motherboard, which with all the other outdated components on my computer, means buying a new computer.

I got a setup ready to go and order, but I only have a few things left to decide, so if you guys could help me out here, that'd be great, and then i can catch up on everything i've missed this summer.

First, is MOTHERBOARD

Quote:

(3-Way SLI Support) EVGA nForce 790i SLI Mainboard FSB1333 DDR3 PCIe x16 SATA RAID w/ USB2.0,&7.1Audio

Quote:

(3-Way SLI Support) Asus Striker II Extreme nForce 790i SLI Mainboard FSB1600 DDR3 3 x PCIe X16 SATA RAID w/ USB2.0,IEEE1394,&7.1Audio((3-Way SLI Support) Asus Striker II Extreme nForce 790i SLI Mainboard FSB1600 DDR3 3 x PCIe X16 SATA RAID w/ USB2.0,IEEE1394,&7.1Audio)

Those are my two choices for DDR3 memory. I want to go ahead and go ddr3 because in the future, if i have a ddr3 board, i'll be able to go ahead and buy/upgrade more ddr3 memory, whereas if i have a normal ddr2 compatible board, once ddr3 takes over, i won't be able to upgrade.

But the latency is the main thing holding back ddr3 right now, from what I could tell from the little research I was able to do. Basically, anything less than the 1333 is (almost) slower than ddr2. But once 1600 hits the market, ddr3 will start it's takeover. SO.

Do i need to worry about the whole fsb1600 thing on my motherboard, or will i be fine with the first one, the 790i with fsb1333.

The next thing I want to know is which version of Vista. Ultimate, or Home Premium. Like I said, I've been gone for 4 months, so I'm way out of the mix as far as being up to date with the current technology goes.

From what I can tell so far, Ultimate just comes with additional desktop-bloating software (made by microsoft) that I don't need to worry about. So are they pretty much the same, or are there extra features that I should worry about? Right now I'm leaning towards the 64-bit version of Home Premium, just because I don't see any major reason to go with Vista Ultimate. It only makes about a $150 difference, but my budget is within the $1200 range, so I wanna keep it low if I can.

So anyways, ddr2 vs. ddr3, and Vista. Any help would be great.

And once again, HI to all the guys that knew me on this board before I left; it's good to be back in the civilian world. Friar better still have his damn goats...

It will probably be 1 or 2 years before DDR3 for the desktop gets into a good price for performance range like DDR2. It's really already begun dropping significantly but DDR3 is also not as overclock friendly due to a very specific, lower voltage (don't forget, if it asks for a higher than 1.5v, the manufacturer is suggesting you overclock the memory to reach that module's performance potential) and it gets really expensive to break into the region above 1333mhz. Personally I'd go with the 1200mhz DDR2 because it's very cheap, easy to come across and performance-wise (unless you have a limitless wallet) you aren't going to see any significant performance improvements but you will also be able to overclock to that 1600mhz range with the right parts and cooling and blow away any DDR3 you might have purchased for less cash. DDR2 also has better support for overclocking due mainly to it's age and people's experience with it.

As for Vista Home vs. Ultimate...get XP and wait 1-2 years for the next version of Windows. Don't torture yourself with Vista, it's just not worth it. You can get XP full for about $150 or less and the only thing you won't get with XP that you would find useful in Vista is DX10...oh yeah, you'll get DirectSound in XP. MS pulled DirectSound from DX10 release which caused a whole slew of problems and made the high end Sound Blasters nearly useless as they perform marginally better than an Audigy SE in many cases in Vista. Even if you don't experience those, you'll end up running most extended audio features (think EAX or OpenAL) in software which can be a pretty big hit to the CPU depending on the game.

If I made any inaccuracies, I'm sure someone will correct me so let me know and I'll make some corrections...I haven't had enough coffee to be awake yet.

Overclocking aside, I'm talking about right now, for today. If I were to go ddr2 or ddr3 memory/mb, which would be better. I'm not going to OC/SC my RAM, ever.

What I'm worried about is in the future (since I plan on having this computer for a while and being able to upgrade it), if I have a ddr2/800 compatible MB, I won't be able to upgrade to ddr3 when it starts taking over the market. I'm not sure if getting ddr3 memory would be a good idea right now because I don't know how much they're going to change the memory in the future, and once 1600 hits, I might not be able to upgrade to it anyways. Also, I'm not really sure if ddr3 is actually faster than the current high-end ddr2 out there, and I know it's expensive, I just want it to be worth the cost in the future.

And as far as an OS goes, I already have a computer running XP, so I'm getting Vista regardless, I just wanted to know the quirks about the different versions, but it looks like I'm going with Home Premium, because Ultimate has nothing better to offer than a bigger whole in my bank account.

DDR3 is going to be better performance-wise and use less juice to do it. It will likely take over the memory market for a few years before DDR5 (if they bring that to the desktop outside of video memory) takes over however DDR2 isn't going anywhere any time soon so it's a safe, less expensive bet and is really only marginally slower. DDR2 is easily the best bang for the buck when you buy the right brand, speed and board to stuff them in.

As for Vista's quirks vs. XP...

Vista is entirely a quirk. Everything you get you will likely want to turn off (UAC anyone?) Speaking of UAC, you'll find that a lot of older programs and games will simply cause UAC to throw fits. You'll find that it'll want you to "This program could be dangerous blah blah blah, are you sure?" so often you'll want to scream. I've had games freeze rock solid because it wants to write to a configuration file or make an adjustment to a key in the registry but the UAC confirmation can't get on top forcing you to accept a full restart of the computer.

That's just one example and probably the biggest complaint ever about Vista. Other quirks is that it loves to non-stop pound on your hard drive while it constantly works to defrag your drive. If you're like my wife who can move, copy, download, uninstall so frequently that the defrag utility will literally never stop.

One caveat though is that nearly all of these annoyances can be disabled but then all you end up with is XP with DX10.

I agree with everyone else on DDR3 vs 2. It's not worth the extra $$ & there's no "real world" performance gains. IE if you have the exact same righ with DDR3 you won't get every day apps any faster vs DDR2. The HD is still one huge bottleneck & even if it weren't the CPU would be.

So I'm back. Been gone for almost 4 months now, training with the Army. Just got back a few days ago... hopefully some of you remember me. And hopefully someone here got the qc'08 on video for me (I'll be looking for it soon).

Anyways, I came home to a dead motherboard, which with all the other outdated components on my computer, means buying a new computer.

I got a setup ready to go and order, but I only have a few things left to decide, so if you guys could help me out here, that'd be great, and then i can catch up on everything i've missed this summer.

First, is MOTHERBOARD

Quote:

(3-Way SLI Support) EVGA nForce 790i SLI Mainboard FSB1333 DDR3 PCIe x16 SATA RAID w/ USB2.0,&7.1Audio

Quote:

(3-Way SLI Support) Asus Striker II Extreme nForce 790i SLI Mainboard FSB1600 DDR3 3 x PCIe X16 SATA RAID w/ USB2.0,IEEE1394,&7.1Audio((3-Way SLI Support) Asus Striker II Extreme nForce 790i SLI Mainboard FSB1600 DDR3 3 x PCIe X16 SATA RAID w/ USB2.0,IEEE1394,&7.1Audio)

Those are my two choices for DDR3 memory. I want to go ahead and go ddr3 because in the future, if i have a ddr3 board, i'll be able to go ahead and buy/upgrade more ddr3 memory, whereas if i have a normal ddr2 compatible board, once ddr3 takes over, i won't be able to upgrade.

But the latency is the main thing holding back ddr3 right now, from what I could tell from the little research I was able to do. Basically, anything less than the 1333 is (almost) slower than ddr2. But once 1600 hits the market, ddr3 will start it's takeover. SO.

Do i need to worry about the whole fsb1600 thing on my motherboard, or will i be fine with the first one, the 790i with fsb1333.

The next thing I want to know is which version of Vista. Ultimate, or Home Premium. Like I said, I've been gone for 4 months, so I'm way out of the mix as far as being up to date with the current technology goes.

From what I can tell so far, Ultimate just comes with additional desktop-bloating software (made by microsoft) that I don't need to worry about. So are they pretty much the same, or are there extra features that I should worry about? Right now I'm leaning towards the 64-bit version of Home Premium, just because I don't see any major reason to go with Vista Ultimate. It only makes about a $150 difference, but my budget is within the $1200 range, so I wanna keep it low if I can.

So anyways, ddr2 vs. ddr3, and Vista. Any help would be great.

And once again, HI to all the guys that knew me on this board before I left; it's good to be back in the civilian world. Friar better still have his damn goats...

It will probably be 1 or 2 years before DDR3 for the desktop gets into a good price for performance range like DDR2. It's really already begun dropping significantly but DDR3 is also not as overclock friendly due to a very specific, lower voltage (don't forget, if it asks for a higher than 1.5v, the manufacturer is suggesting you overclock the memory to reach that module's performance potential) and it gets really expensive to break into the region above 1333mhz. Personally I'd go with the 1200mhz DDR2 because it's very cheap, easy to come across and performance-wise (unless you have a limitless wallet) you aren't going to see any significant performance improvements but you will also be able to overclock to that 1600mhz range with the right parts and cooling and blow away any DDR3 you might have purchased for less cash. DDR2 also has better support for overclocking due mainly to it's age and people's experience with it.

As for Vista Home vs. Ultimate...get XP and wait 1-2 years for the next version of Windows. Don't torture yourself with Vista, it's just not worth it. You can get XP full for about $150 or less and the only thing you won't get with XP that you would find useful in Vista is DX10...oh yeah, you'll get DirectSound in XP. MS pulled DirectSound from DX10 release which caused a whole slew of problems and made the high end Sound Blasters nearly useless as they perform marginally better than an Audigy SE in many cases in Vista. Even if you don't experience those, you'll end up running most extended audio features (think EAX or OpenAL) in software which can be a pretty big hit to the CPU depending on the game.

If I made any inaccuracies, I'm sure someone will correct me so let me know and I'll make some corrections...I haven't had enough coffee to be awake yet.

Overclocking aside, I'm talking about right now, for today. If I were to go ddr2 or ddr3 memory/mb, which would be better. I'm not going to OC/SC my RAM, ever.

What I'm worried about is in the future (since I plan on having this computer for a while and being able to upgrade it), if I have a ddr2/800 compatible MB, I won't be able to upgrade to ddr3 when it starts taking over the market. I'm not sure if getting ddr3 memory would be a good idea right now because I don't know how much they're going to change the memory in the future, and once 1600 hits, I might not be able to upgrade to it anyways. Also, I'm not really sure if ddr3 is actually faster than the current high-end ddr2 out there, and I know it's expensive, I just want it to be worth the cost in the future.

And as far as an OS goes, I already have a computer running XP, so I'm getting Vista regardless, I just wanted to know the quirks about the different versions, but it looks like I'm going with Home Premium, because Ultimate has nothing better to offer than a bigger whole in my bank account.

DDR3 is going to be better performance-wise and use less juice to do it. It will likely take over the memory market for a few years before DDR5 (if they bring that to the desktop outside of video memory) takes over however DDR2 isn't going anywhere any time soon so it's a safe, less expensive bet and is really only marginally slower. DDR2 is easily the best bang for the buck when you buy the right brand, speed and board to stuff them in.

As for Vista's quirks vs. XP...

Vista is entirely a quirk. Everything you get you will likely want to turn off (UAC anyone?) Speaking of UAC, you'll find that a lot of older programs and games will simply cause UAC to throw fits. You'll find that it'll want you to "This program could be dangerous blah blah blah, are you sure?" so often you'll want to scream. I've had games freeze rock solid because it wants to write to a configuration file or make an adjustment to a key in the registry but the UAC confirmation can't get on top forcing you to accept a full restart of the computer.

That's just one example and probably the biggest complaint ever about Vista. Other quirks is that it loves to non-stop pound on your hard drive while it constantly works to defrag your drive. If you're like my wife who can move, copy, download, uninstall so frequently that the defrag utility will literally never stop.

One caveat though is that nearly all of these annoyances can be disabled but then all you end up with is XP with DX10.

I agree with everyone else on DDR3 vs 2. It's not worth the extra $$ & there's no "real world" performance gains. IE if you have the exact same righ with DDR3 you won't get every day apps any faster vs DDR2. The HD is still one huge bottleneck & even if it weren't the CPU would be.