Need advice in trading my system off for my brother's

[btarunr]

Check my specs. I've kept her like a wife. My brother offered to trade his rig for mine. I need your hoo aah with this. I've nobody else to ask to so I leave it to you guys, please vote well, be good choosers and not fanboys, please.

This is his setup:

CPU: 2x AMD Athlon64 FX 70 (LGA 1207, OC'ed to 3.00 GHz each on stock volts, stock coolers)

Memory: 2x 1GB G.Skill memory doing 5-5-5-15/16 at 2.2v

Board: ASUS L1N64-WS (with the optional coolers over the heatsinks)

Video: 2x Leadtek WinFast GeForce 7900 GTX (Using the first 2 slots (2x PCI-E x8 :banghead:))

Sound: Creative SB X-Fi Xtreme Music (OR an Audigy 2 ZS, I can pick either)

6x WD Caviar 320 GB 7200 rpm 16MB cache (in RAID 0+1 :wtf:)

ABS Tagan 700W PSU (same as mine)

Thermaltake Armor (Quad FX edition) chasis.

Same crappy Samsung IDE DVD-RW drive

Windows 2003.

----

That's just the rig he wants to trade, nothing else (monitor/spkrs, etc)


Deal or No Deal? Please people, provide valid arguments. A friend suggested that I could flash the board with an unofficial BIOS from XtremeSystems that allows me to use two AMD Barcelona units. It looks risky but if I can take it off, sell the AFX chips and even buy two $400 AMD Barcelona 1.7 GHz units amounting to ~$800, I'll have a badass 8 core system.

Your call

[exodusprime1337]

i would stick with your rig because i feel that yoru quad will outperform the 2 barcelona's. Second your one video card is roughly twice the speed.
if that motherboard of yours supports sli i'd rather see you spend less and get a second 8800gts 640
you should just trust me cause an amd fanboy is telling you that you're better off with your intel rig

[pt]

if you need 8 cores HELL YEA! (or just for bragging rights :) )
and in games like sup com and multi thread apps i bet the barcas win (8 cores x 4 cores)
also sell both 7900 on ebay, and get a 8800gts 512 ;)

[Hawk1]

I wouldn't. Pretty much all your hardware is superior to his, asside from the 2GPU's vs. 1 (and even that can be argued). If you want to go for the 8 core bragging rights, thats fine, but I would stick with what you got.

[cdawall]

how would one intel quad beat dual amd quads?


oh and the FX70 sells for around $370 on ebay stores

http://search.stores.ebay.com/FX-70_Computers-Networking_W0QQ_trksidZp1638Q2em118QQcatrefZC12QQd fspZ1QQfromZR40QQsacatZ58058QQsbrexpZWD1SQQsifZ1QQ sofpZ4QQsspagenameZWD1S

so you shold be able to get at least $330 on regular ebay off them

[btarunr]

$330 of each of them? Hmmm...so if I add $70 each I'd get an OEM Barcelona for ~$400 each

I.E. the 1.7 GHz variant, they're returning to stock 20th Jan

[zekrahminator]

No deal, Core 2 Quad + 8800GTS = pwn.

[AsGStorm]

Barcelona X2 + 7900GTX X2 (or get a 8800GTS, GT) = pwn.

How much would the 7900's roughly sell for :/ look at that HDD space maaan too. And the memory is better. I'm not too sure about the mobo, never heard of it but I'd take it as it's worse. But that does look like an immense deal tbh.

[JC316]

Not a chance. A Q6600 and an 8800 is the way to go.

[pt]

i would real like to see 2x amd quads vs a 1x intel quads, both overclocked without crazy ass shit (ln2, cascade, etc,) in games and apps

[tigger]

I think yours is better.The q6600 is better than the fx70,however much hdd space there is in his,your 4x WD Raptor 10K 150G SATA150 (RAID 0) are better i think.And your 8800 is imho better than the two 7900's.

[hat]

stay with yours

[b1lk1]

I'd do it. Mostly because I prefer AMD, but mostly because I prefer AMD. I sold my quad Intel rig and went to this one and can't really feel the difference in 90% of what I do. I'd love to get my hands on one of those dual CPU AMD systems......

[ShadowFold]

Well honestly I would stick with yours. If your feeling lucky and think you could sell the 7900's get a 8800GTS(G92) and trade.

[btarunr]

Ok the good news (awesome news) is that the price at which a sucker (dumbass from Delhi) is willing to both of those 7900 GTX units, I can buy two 8800 GT 512M units from the US. It all boils down to me willing to swap my system which means:

I lose my 8800 GTS (G80) and its badass cooler
The Auzen X-Fi Prelude !!!
4 Raptors

[zekrahminator]

Ok the good news (awesome news) is that the price at which a sucker (dumbass from Delhi) is willing to both of those 7900 GTX units, I can buy two 8800 GT 512M units from the US.

Wanna ship one my way as a late Christmas present :roll:.

[btarunr]

http://img.techpowerup.org/080101/390059zy4su.jpg

BTW your Ironman theme was badass!!!! Kewl

[quasar923]

why dont you just run 3dmark or somthing like that and which everone is higher go with that. thats what i would do ;)

[btarunr]

I lose a lot of things with the swap. My Raptors, a well-oiled 8800 GTS and an Auzen X-Fi Prelude. My brother, a cunning b**** made this offer and I'm stoned in dilemma.

[quasar923]

well then you should buy 4 other hdds for cheep and keep the raptors and buy other parts that look the same such as a 320 mb gts and then give it to him and sell the parts you dont need. thats what i would do to my brother. :))))

[btarunr]

No, all my parts are thoroughly inspected. :shadedshu I can't trick him. He's a cyber-demon from Doom. Obviously he has something to gain from my system.

[quasar923]

when hes not around steel some parts. say someone else did it

[quasar923]

see my bro is 12 and im 15 so its prolly a bit easier for me i stole 20 bucks from him last week. i do that on a regular basis. just wish he got more money for allowence

[btarunr]

I'm 22 and he's 24. It's not sane. lol. Besides he lives in another part of the city now.

[quasar923]

oh ic. well then i still wouldnt do it. i use amd and i wish i went intel. will be doing so next build. and even if his comp is better it would only be by a hardly noticable amount i bet. so just stick to what you got. its like changing that answer on the test and when you get it back your first guess was right.:banghead::cry:

[Paulieg]

If you could part out and sell his system and make enough to build something even better than your system, I would do it. If not, I think it's not worth it. You've got a fairly high end system, and he's got a bunch of older tech.

[xubidoo]

id stick with your own system tbh,imo he`s tryign to take advantage of you by saying "you could do this and do that" maybe u could but itll cost ,obviously your system is better ,if it wasnt why would he want it... ?

instead of telling you how u could upgrade it ,id tell him to do it himself.

I think if u go ahead and swapped ud regret it shortly afterwards

No Deal

[btarunr]

^ He doesn't know about the L1N64-WS being able to support 2x Barcelona using the unofficial BIOS. The sucker knows nothing about the awesomeness of tech-forums and looks upto ASUS support sites every month looking for a BIOS update. Actually I'm taking the advantage of him and the ignorant people here, for example, selling the two 7900 GTX cards to pool enough dough for two 8800 GT 512 (something he doesn't know). And Using his two ponies (FX 70) I can attempt to flast the BIOS, Buy the two Barcelona units for ~$800 from the US and sell these ponies here for about the same price. Get the picture?

Again, technically my only losses would be my system which is as well-maintained as in a museum, and my Auzen card >.<

The bigger loss would be the risk involved in flashing the "unofficial" BIOS where I'll be screwed if the update fails the board as the L1N64 is the rarest board in this country.

[xubidoo]

calling ppl ignorant is a good way to not get any help ,was just stating my opinion.

u asked ,i replied.sorry if u think im ignorant ,but if thats the case why bother to ask.

[btarunr]

NO no I'm not calling you ignorant. You got me wrong! I was referring to the Ignorant Indian people who aren't as smart as us, to whom I'll sell these 7900 units

Actually I'm taking the advantage of him and the ignorant people here.

here = India

[xubidoo]

sorry ,but it did sound at least to me like u was having a dig at some of us.

anyway ,i still stand by my original post,i think ud regret it ,so much could go wrong,beta bios may or may not work ,u may not get enuff selling the old stuff etc etc ,is a risk

hardware is expensive enuff imo without taking a gamble on something that might not pan out the way u hope. (not to mention even if it does it still might disappoint performance wise)

obviously if u want to do it ,u will do it regardless of wat i or others might think,but imho its a risk not worth taking.

good luck if u do decide to go ahead tho.

[btarunr]

Thanks, I buy your opinion completely. Actually he was after me all this while and I kept shutting it off thinking the L1N64 is a dead platform with a dead-end upgrade path but this struck my just last night when I was discussing with one of the other TPU members about the board in the "favourite motherboard" thread. Then it came up that XtremeSystems came up with a modified unofficial BIOS that makes this board run the quad-core Opteron processors and since then I'm elated because it's becoming a steal deal if I sell the right stuff at the right price to the "wrong" people. :laugh:

[cdawall]

you should get it and sell the whole damn thing as a whole on ebay and buy all new parts hahaha


give you bro that B3 revision Q6600 and buy all new parts you could get a G0 chip or something!

[btarunr]

Sure, but I want to go into our next sibling-rivalry LANparty telling "I've got more cores than whores in this city".

All this while it's like "Shut up my FX is better than your Q6600"

Then I got to show him his place at the LANparties, with clinical precision. :)

And ofcourse I can pit my rig against a Yorkfied too, if some chump shows that off. Imagine people saying "Holy shit! AMD is back!! 8 cores !!!"

[cdawall]

hmm that sounds fun why not sell it all and get one of these boards

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813151089

4X4=16 cores :D

[btarunr]

Nice, but $700 is steep, Just the one PCI-E x16 slot. No sound :/

Smarter thing would be that I sell this board + CPU + RAM + 2x 7900 GTX off at Indian rates and buy this from the US:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131038

plus the two cheapest AMD Barcelona chips + ECC UB memory + 1x 8800 GTS (G92)

[JrRacinFan]

btarunr that is a real b*tch of a dilemma, points made in the thread plus this is what gets me:

6x WD Caviar 320 GB 7200 rpm 16MB cache RAID 0+1

Thats one hell of an array he's got. I think that right there kind of CLOSELY overthrows the raptors.

The Auzen is one hell of a card tho .... Maybe talk your brother in to letting you keep it?

[cdawall]

bah you should hav some cash left over just get a ne one

@bta there are some open box of those 700 boards for 400 and you could just pick up a 8800GTS 512mb to go with it our pick up an elcheapo 8600GT and wait till the dualie cards are out!

[btarunr]

He's a stiff asshole with Gorilla glue dripping from down there. No negotiations, once deal fixed cannot go back. performance-wise I dont think his Caviars run over my Raptors. Remember that's 0+1 which means it combines the speed of three drives and mirrors data into another three whose speeds are covered. End-result: I get the performance of three 7200 rpm drives. My Raptors sprint at 10000rpm, four in RAID 0.

[cdawall]

He's a stiff asshole with Gorilla glue dripping from down there. No negotiations, once deal fixed cannot go back. performance-wise I dont think his Caviars run over my Raptors. Remember that's 0+1 which means it combines the speed of three drives and mirrors data into another three whose speeds are covered. End-result: I get the performance of three 7200 rpm drives. My Raptors sprint at 10000rpm, four in RAID 0.

i have an idea take those 6 sata drives and set them for raid 0 :D

[btarunr]

cda, check post #36. what do you think?

Even if I buy that tyan board, I have to spend on four Barcelonas (not that much dough). The TYAN board has no audio nor can I add one. USB audio is too much downhill for me from Auzen >.<

[JrRacinFan]

I knew what 0+1 was, how painful would it be to pull them out of 0+1 and put them strictly in 0?

EDIT: about 1.8 Tb of space in RAID 0..... Hmmm .... one hard drive fails and ... kerplunk, scratch that idea

[btarunr]

EXACTLY that's my point. 6 huge drives (maintained by my brother) into a RAID 0 is risky business.

[cdawall]

cda, check post #36. what do you think?

Even if I buy that tyan board, I have to spend on four Barcelonas (not that much dough). The TYAN board has no audio nor can I add one. USB audio is too much downhill for me from Auzen >.<

thats true didnt think of that yea the board you showed in the non sli version has taken those quads up to 2.4ghz so this one shouldnt be very different, but notice that the 2nd slot is only 8x...shouldnt be any issue but just saying

[btarunr]

Amusing, ASUS comes up with a server board that does SLI. Who would need SLI on a server. But it looks tempting, I must say.

http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggImage/productimage/13-131-038-04.jpg

And is very affordable. If I sell this black goose L1N64 here I'll get the exact money to buy this board, I can use the first PCIE slot for a G92-GTS and use the Xtreme Music on the PCI

[DanTheBanjoman]

Don't bother, unless you wish to spend time replacing the CPU's and GPU.

[cdawall]

Don't bother, unless you wish to spend time replacing the CPU's and GPU.

he is read the whole thing dan ;)

Amusing, ASUS comes up with a server board that does SLI. Who would need SLI on a server. But it looks tempting, I must say.

http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggImage/productimage/13-131-038-04.jpg

And is very affordable. If I sell this black goose L1N64 here I'll get the exact money to buy this board, I can use the first PCIE slot for a G92-GTS and use the Xtreme Music on the PCI

you could find one of those pci-e 1x cards sound cards to...

http://www.techpowerup.com/?27489

[Ripper3]

SLi on a workstation, maybe, but server is just a little weird.

I'd keep your current rig, I've heard bad things about AMD's Quad-FX system, to the point that in some tests, an Athlon X2 would beat them... not good me thinks.
The graphics you currently have are better.
The CPUs in that system are two dual-cores, not two quads (and I do think you can change to quad Opterons, but you'd need, if it doesn't use it already, ECC RAM, and that's just going to slow it down even more)

Keep your Q6600 and 8800GTS.

Yeah, yeah, shoulda read the whole thing, someone's said it, but who cares, just my 2 cents.

[btarunr]

Dan, your take? Should I step into using these server boards? Should I take the deal at all?

[DanTheBanjoman]

It's a workstation board, not server. Main difference here is slot configuration and onboard options. A serverboard has onboard video 9 out of 10 times and would prefer x8 slots over x16. Besides many server boards offer SAS.

Plus I think the slots really suck, expansion options are very limited. There are way better boards out there.

[btarunr]

Dan, I'm talking about the deal in post #1, poll question? need your guidance.

[cdawall]

how about a tyan mobo wit a couple pci slots

http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggImage/productimage/13-151-059-04.jpg

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813151059

[btarunr]

It lacks Barcelona support. So does the ASUS WS board. Wild goose chase.

[btarunr]

Gee, it's heartening to see AMD offer so much in the server/workstation segment. Good job AMD.

[cdawall]

Gee, it's heartening to see AMD offer so much in the server/workstation segment. Good job AMD.

now if they would just offer some damn barcelona support

[btarunr]

The Quad-socket board with four-Santa Rosa chips is an alternative. The SR chips are cheap.

Or maybe I should stick to the L1N64

[cdawall]

The Quad-socket board with four-Santa Rosa chips is an alternative. The SR chips are cheap.

and those are proven ocrs 3+ghz is normal on the 1.8ghz chips

[pt]

The Quad-socket board with four-Santa Rosa chips is an alternative. The SR chips are cheap.

Or maybe I should stick to the L1N64

the quad socket isn't compatible with quads?
if not, keeo the L1N64 and wait for barcas rev2 :)

[cdawall]

hmm you could keep the L1N64 and wait for the new 65nm dual cores ;) get some of those and oc the holly hell outta them

[btarunr]

Yeah but AMD isn't working on a Phenom FX (LGA). The only 65nm chips are those Santa Rosa Opterons and they're like $500 for a 3GHz chip. Not that bad, if you ask me because for $1000 you get a pair. But there imply aren't ANY aftermarket LGA 1207 coolers >.<

[pt]

Yeah but AMD isn't working on a Phenom FX (LGA). The only 65nm chips are those Santa Rosa Opterons and they're like $500 for a 3GHz chip. Not that bad, if you ask me because for $1000 you get a pair. But there imply aren't ANY aftermarket LGA 1207 coolers >.<

custom one? :rolleyes:

[btarunr]

Nah Santa Rosa is the core-name (like Barcelona, Windsor, Conroe)

[pt]

i meant the cooler for it ;)

[btarunr]

I'm not that much of a genius making a custom-cooler for LGA 1207. That's a really weird socket design compared to the Intel LGA 775. The size of the socket is huge.

[DanTheBanjoman]

Google says the board does have a Barcelona supporting BIOS.

@CDAwall. When using the PCIe slots for high end graphics you can't use 2 of the PCI slots. And a single PCI slot is rather pointless. Even with just one card you'd have 2 PCI slots a PCIe, not really expansion freedom. Can use the secondary PCIe slot for some RAID controller or something, after that you're stuck with low bandwidth PCI. They should have made those slots PCI-X or PCIe x4/x8 or something.

[cdawall]

but all he is going to need is one PCI slot for a sound card correct?