Motherboard: Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe
This board replaced my older Gigabyte Pentium 4 E7205 Chipset motherboard. It features the new (bought January, 2005) NForce4 SLI Chipset.
My old Gigabyte board was pretty fast and a good board (with some quirks), but I upgraded it because my processor just wasn't cutting it. The P4 system was fine for pretty much everything I threw at it EXCEPT UT2004 Assault. Assault is a gametype that's a system killer....and my P4 system wasn't spared.
At the time (January 2005), the Socket 939 Athlon64 was the king of gaming processors. So, I started looking at which motherboard best suited this platform. There were several choices for chipsets: VIA, nVidia nForce 3, nVidia nForce 4 Ultra, and nVidia nForce 4 SLI. VIA, for me , was pretty much excluded from the get-go (I don't care for VIA products). So, the choice for me came down between the various nVidia offerings. At the time, the latest-greatest was the NF4-SLI. My opinion regarding upgrades always been to spend the money on the motherboard and not the processor or video card. So, rationalizing a relatively more expensive NF4-SLI was not that hard. I figure I will keep a given motherboard for roughly 2 years or so, and at the time, the NF4-SLI offering was the best and most future-proof.
Also at the time, there were not very many NF4-SLI motherboard choices. There was a Gigabyte option, an Asus option and MSI had just introduced theirs. Of all options, the Asus had the best availability and also the most reviews (all being positive). So, I chose the Asus. Given the name, I didn't think it was that big of a gamble.
This is the first Asus board I've owned and it's been what I expected: fast and reliable. Asus has historically had some of the uglier motherboards available, but this one uses a black / dark blue PCB that makes it look quite a bit better than their older products.
Probably the coolest thing about it was the fact that the onboard nVidia SATAII controller had built-in WinXP support. Anyone who has installed an operating system on an SATA controller without this, you know you have to screw around downloading the drivers, putting them on a floppy drive (assuming you even have one), and "pre-load" them for WinXP installation. This is not so with the NF4. WinXP recognized the hard drive without any third-party driver installation.
What stands out the most to me about this board and its performance is the hard drive performance. I had the same hard-drive in my P4 system, and it was not nearly as fast as it is now. The CPU related speed is also significantly faster than my P4 sytstem....but I expected this. I didn't expect such a easily noticeable speed difference in the hard-drive performance.
All in all, I can easily recommend this motherboard. It doesn't have any of the weird quirks of my old Gigabyte P4 motherboard, and it was a breeze to setup.
Video Card: MSI NX6600GT-TD128E nVidia 6600GT PCI Express
This card replaced my 9700Pro card...which was a good card. To be honest, the only reason I changed from the 9700Pro was because my new motherboard will not work with AGP cards; it's PCI express only.
The reason I bought this card over the 6600GT competition (I never considered ATI as I have an SLI board, and the 6800 series cards were incredibly overpriced) was because of the cooling. Its heatsink covers the GPU and the memory. It runs very cool and also is surprisingly quiet.
It's been a smoking fast card and also rock solid. Also, MSI includes a shipping overclocking utility that's very simple to use.
Sound Card: Creative Labs Audigy 2 Platinum
To be completely honest, the ONLY reason I bought this card was for the front mount "Live Drive". This puts a IEEE1394 port, Microphone jack, Headphone jack, MIDI jacks, and a whole bunch of other stuff on the front of the computer case...where it belongs. I was tired of having to work through a rat's nest of wires to switch between speakers and headphones. The only complaint I have with this card is what's I've seen as being typical with Creative products: bloated software.
Processor: AMD Athlon64 3500+ (Newcaste)
This was the only reason I upgraded. Wow..what a difference!
I can play UT2004 assault at full settings without any lag at all. It's a slower clock speed than my old P4, but runs circles around it in real-worls performance. When I upgraded, there were faster processors to be had. This was what I figured would give me the most bang for the buck. I may look at an Athlon FX-55 in a year or so.
RAM: Four 512MB Sticks Corsair TWINX1024-3200C2PT
This is the same RAM I had in my P4 system, but more. I cannot say enough good things about it.
Case: Antec Plus 1080AMG Server Tower
I cannot express how much I love this case. It's easily the BEST case I've ever had. It has everything:
- (4) 5 1/4" removable external drive bays
- (2) 3 1/2" external drive bays
- 430W Antec True Power power supply
- (2) 3 1/2" removable internal drive bays
- Side cooling
- Back cooling
- Washable front filter
- Front USB/IEEE 1394 Ports
- (2) Auxiliary LED lights on front
- Active HDD cooling (optional, I'm using it)
- Lockable swing-out side panel
- Lockable swing-out front panel
There is NOTHING I find fault with in this case. I cannot recommend it enough. Good job Antec!
Mouse: Logitech MX 510 Dual Optical (red)
I recently changed to this mouse from my MX700 wireless mouse.
Ergonomically, it's identical to the MX700. And, as far as I can tell, it tracks no better than the MX700. I've read many places that the MX700 has lag, but I have never noticed any. I think that any lag people see in this mouse is either environmental (i.e. interference in their room) or imagined.
The one thing that I can say I do like better about the MX510 when compared with the MX700 is the weight (or lack of). The fact that it's lighter allows this mouse to glide over my mousepad (C4 Hyde N-Gen) with less effort. I think this does result in a slight improvement in my aim.
I also like the fact that the buttons are not pseudo-painted like the MX700. Now, I can't wear out the surface.
Keyboard - Logitech Cordless Elite
I bought this corldess keyboard so I can move it when I want to write on my desk. It works flawlessly and had a fine feel. I have had it for quite some time and have not needed to change the batteries. Also, this keyboard has one feature I really like: the F-Lock is ON by default. This is one thing I hated about the Microsoft Multimedia keyboard. The one this it lacks is a calculator quicklaunch button. But, I remapped another button to the calculator and it works fine.
It's ironic....the one and only special shortcut key I have ever actually thought was useful is missing on this keyboard.
Monitor - NEC MultiSync FE2111SB 22" DiamondTron SuperBright CRT
This monitor is literally totally flat in all directions. This results in flawless geometry. It has a feature that makes the display super bright. It is indeed brighter than anything else I have seen monitor wise, but the resulting lack of clarity and bluriness makes me opt to run in standard mode. The huge size allows me to run in very high resolutions without having to squint.
But, as with all DiamondTron and TriniTron monitors, it has two horizontal gray damping wires that run across the screen. You can only really see them on a white background, and even the they're barely noticeable. But, I'm more than willing to live with these lines considering the improved geometry and loss of moire when compared with my old Philips 109S monitor.
Speakers - Altec Lansing ADA305
These are a holdover from my first Dell system. They perform fine, but have no software support for anything using the WinNT kernel.
Drives and storage
- Western Digital Ratpor 74GB 10,000 RPM SATA Main Drive (AWESOME!)
- Hitachi HDS722512VLSA80 120GB 7200 RPM SATA Storage Drive (AWESOME!)
- Plextor PX-708A Combo Drive (AWESOME!)
- Plextor PX-W1610A CDRW
- Panasonic 3 1/2" floppy
Operating System - Windows XP Pro
I've been using WinXP pro now for about 2 years. I can honestly say it's a damn good operating system.
I used to have to format and re-install Windows 98 every 6 months as it would get flaky. I can honestly say that XP doesn't suffer from this "bit-rot". It just works. It does everything I want and doesn't slow down.