bit of personal PC advice dual core intel and ASUS P5ND2 SLI

[ranj]

I think I have made a mistake without actually thinking it through. I have decided to move away from my xp1800 machine as it's been causing me problems so decided to go with the competitior Intel.

From reading the verdicts in terms of performance I wish i had gone with an athlon dual core but its too late I have brought a motherboard and cant return it and I might as well take the risk and give intel a try.

So i purchased myself a ASUS P5ND2 SLI (Nforce 4 sli chipset, Intel LGA775, FSB 1066, Dual DDR-2 667, sata 2 3gb/s)

and was interested in getting a Intel Pentium D 930 Socket 775 3GHz 2x2MB FSB800

http://www.dabs.com/ProductView.aspx...7024&InMerch=1

I just want to know if these two are compatible with each other. I presume because I have brought a LGA775 motherboard. the two are compatible

I also brought a Maxtor Maxline III 250GB sata 2 HDD. I presume this will all be compatible as well.

If someone could give me a simple idea whether its all good. That would be great.
Also i have a Geforce 4 FX5200 AGP card. WIll this be compatible with this. I realise now that there is a more funky version called the PCI-E.

thanks

[Geoff]

It will work. However the Pentium D runs hillariously hot and doesn't perform anywhere as near as well as the Althon64.

The HDD is fine.

Replace your Graphics card.

[gcheeseman]

As above - your graphics card will not fit, let alone work. You'll need to order a PCI Express graphics card (NVidia based, not ATI - because the motherboard is NVidia chipset based, should be more stable). Get the best you can afford and your system will fly...

[CyberNerd]

(NVidia based, not ATI - because the motherboard is NVidia chipset based, should be more stable).

I've got an NVidia chipset and ATI card and have not noticed stability problems, infact its one of the best setups I've ever run. - I don't see why there would any more compatibility problems than with any other combination.

[Geoff]

Yep, I also have an Nforce1 + Ati Radeon 9700 Pro setup for a good 18 months. I had no problems on the graphics front. Although getting the memory timings right so the machine was stable was hell.

[gcheeseman]

Fair Point .... about Nforce chipset and ATI (I'm bit too enthusiastic about nVidia)

But ....

He's got a NVidia SLI based motherboard, so it makes sense to buy a NVidia SLI certified graphics card. Future upgrade path to buy a second graphics card, link them together and WOW!!!

Check it out here ...
http://www.slizone.com/page/slizone_faq.html#g1

[ChrisH]

Not worth getting two cards. I have two 7800 GTs in my rig and the performance increase over 1 card isnt as much as you would expect.