After almost two weeks of reading, of browsing, and of shopping I've finally placed in the order for my parts. I'm pretty happy with the choices I made and it falls pat on my budget. I think its the first time I build a computer I like for the budget I've set myself. I was at first torn between the 6800GT and 7800GT but after testing it out in games, I was more than satisfied with the 6800GT. (for a while at least)

So here are the parts :

TT SHARK W/WINDOW *ALU* NO PS (SILVER)
Asus A8N SLI
CPU AMD Athlon 64 3700+ S939 (San Diego Core) (1mb L2 Cache)
2x - 512 Megs DDR400 PC3200 Kingston
Leadtek NVIDIA (PX68GTTDH) GF6800GT PCIX 256DDR T+D+H (RB) HDTV Ready
SATA SEAGATE 160 GB HDD (7200rpm) 8MB NCQ

- The 6800GT was the best buy at the moment, with the 7800GTX about 200$ more expensive. This is most likely for the next year, and as new cards come out, I will look into getting a better one. I tested this card this weekend on a computer less powerfull than this one, and I could run games like Call of Duty 2 on EXTRA with all features on at 1600x1200 without lag. (Of course the card was overclocked through the application) (I may go SLI for a while, depending on whether my father buys himself a new card and sells me his 6800GT for a low price)

- Will add another gig of RAM over the next year

- Will buy another SATA SEAGATE 160 GB in the upcoming months to build a RAID.

- I'm unsure still whether salvaging my Audigy 2 soundcard or using the A8N's internal sound card. I will be testing both though I've only heard good comments about the A8N's.

Get the 7800GT, not the 7800GTX--Only 100 more.

Youre getting (already have) a Power Supply... Right?

I got the 6800 GT myself, since my motherboard doesn't have a PCI-Express slot (Which the 7800 (any version) needs)

Didn't feel like replacing motherboard and video card just to make games look somewhat better

It's not so much looking better as it is performing better.

Make sure you get a Power Supply. That case doesn't include one (that's why it says No PS)

Salvage the Audigy 2, onboard sound is crap, even on the A8N (its better than other onboards, but not THAT good)

Everything else looks good to me.

[QUOTE=Cool Matty]Salvage the Audigy 2, onboard sound is crap, even on the A8N (its better than other onboards, but not THAT good)[/QUOTE]
Do not salvage the Audigy 2. When I attempted to use an Audigy 2 in my new system (which is - again - very similar to yours) it caused Windows to fail on bootup. I repeat: Do not use a Creative sound card. The drivers will most likely disable your computer or make it unstable.

And go for the 7800 GT. It's the better buy. It's around the same price as a 6800 GT but it's much faster.

Isolated incident, I assure you.

My audigy 2 works fine, as has by SB Live. Same with my friend's SB Live and Audigy.

If it always made windows fail booting... there would be an uproar.

Plus, the nvidia onboard sound chipset is very, very, VERY annoying. Surround sound only SOMETIMES works, and doesn't have decent support for any EAX stuff.

[QUOTE=Cool Matty]Isolated incident, I assure you.[/QUOTE]Edit: Wait yeah, he's right. Use the Audigy 2.

The only time I've had a Creative card cause problems with my machine is with the really old VIA chipsets, which you aren't using.

Also, the nVidia onboard isn't that great, go with the Audigy

Oh, and get the 7800GT, it's sex.

Where did you order the parts? NewEgg?

Oy, sadly, in Canadian price, the 7800 GT is 490$ and I'm getting the 6800 GT at 355$. Like I said, its only for the next year until I see what's going on.

The canadian pricing differs too much from the U.S. The damn canadian distributors pack more in their pockets and a hefty load of that cash goes into shipping and into our huge taxes. (Approx. 15% of price).

And yes, I've got a power supply, I just didn't figure it was worth mentioning

Nonetheless, this is more of my budget dive into the PCI-E world. I decided to build a good computer for my means. It will most likely be up to par only in a year or so.

The reason I'm not dishing out an additional 150 (again, canadian) for the 7800Gt is that in the upcoming year, I will be able to check out what new cards come out, and once I'm ready, I will buy a bigger and badder card (at the time I'll be able to throw in as much as 600$) and my father will buy my 6800GT from me and work it in SLI with his current one. He won't need stronger than that as he's got plenty of games ahead of him to play and he hardly plays more than 2 per winter. On the other hand, I'll get *most* of my money back to dish it out on another card it allows me to remain in my budget right now.

If I really can't stand my 6800GT in a few months, I'll just change it. I'm getting a huge raise at work over the next year (3$ more an hour) and that will definatly help. 'till then, I'll run with this as there is no way I'm gonna borrow money from the bank for a computer.

Alas, when money has you by the collar. :p

Most likely is hardly right. You probably had IRQ issues, which can happen with any sound card. And even if it is Creative, it happens to mabey .001 percent of people who use them.

Yes, because I have no idea how to diagnose an IRQ conflict. hurr.

Just in case I run into it (and me being the big ol know nothin' of computers).

What is and how do I resolve an IRQ error? :p

Well, you don’t have any idea how to avoid generalizations.

You won't encounter it. But if you do, you can find a plethora of tutorials on google.

If you have a problem you can boot up Windows in safe mode, open your Device Manager, go View -> Resources by Type and then open up the "Interrupt request (IRQ)" item.

My system is perfectly stable with the Audigy 2 in it as long as I don't install the drivers. The hardware isn't the problem, it's the software. And don't even try to tell me that Creative makes good drivers. This isn't relative: They're world-renowned for shoddy software development, and instead of fixing their own issues they always blame it on the motherboard vendor.

Edit: Here are some fun facts you probably don't care about. Remember the SBLive and its BEAUTIFUL driver package, Liveware? One night Creative was feeling a little grumpy and decided to remove all SBLive driver downloads -- so they could charge people to order a CD. A CD of drivers you need in order to use the product you already paid for.
Here's something else fun. In order to install the latest drivers for the Audigy 2 you're forced to install the drivers on the bundled CD first. Yeah, that's right. In order to get recent drivers you have to muck up your system with 3-year-old ones.

But that's perfectly alright, isn't it? After all, Creative makes good soundcards and drivers that don't have a proven track record of causing noise on the PCI bus. (I tried to find the full text of the article, but it appears to have been removed from VIA Arena. The FAQ entry can be found here. Creative refuses, to this day, to fess up to or correct their mistakes. Have an older mobo that doesn't get frequent BIOS updates? You're ****ed).

I'm sure my experiences with Creative's drivers are completely isolated because apparently I'm biased against Creative in spite of the fact that I was a customer of theirs until I discovered that it's impossible to get it working in conjunction with an X1800. Strange that the X1800 works without the drivers installed though, isn't it? I bet it's also just a strange coincidence that the X1800 fails miserably if you have the Creative software on your computer at all, even with the card removed... hmm.

Or could it possibly, even in the slightest way, that ATI's drivers are to blame? They don't exactly have a great track record either (Hey look, I can do google search links too!).

I also find it hilarious that you rely on VIA for any sort of information, considering how crappy their motherboard chipsets are in general. I mean, issues with VIA aren't exactly isolated (Amazing, double the results of creative! Shocker).

[QUOTE=Cool Matty]Or could it possibly, even in the slightest way, that ATI's drivers are to blame? They don't exactly have a great track record either (Hey look, I can do google search links too!).[/QUOTE]
No, it's not ATI's drivers. With an X1800 in the machine, at all, while the Creative drivers are installed, the machine fails on booting to windows. And it isn't a hardware issue because PCI Express is isolated from PCI. And it isn't a motherboard/chipset issue because the soundcard and drivers worked fine with another ATI card in it, an X300. The combination of Creative drivers and a X1800, even without drivers, fails to boot.

As for VIA's track record - it isn't just their problem. nVidia has had a "spotty record" for PCI as well. And Creative? While nVidia already offers a PCI Express AC'97, Creative is unable to make a PCI Express part - apparently it's "terrible for audio" in spite of the exponentially larger bandwidth.

But even assuming ATI is somehow at fault here: How is it possible that a PCI Express video card is behaving poorly in the presence of a software driver? Is the PCI Express video card somehow accessing the software on my computer, seeing the string "Creative" and then bombing? What's that, it's not possible?

Oh. Must be the driver then.

And by the way, Captain Brilliance, the first link in your "ATI drivers suck" search leads to a page on Anandtech titled "ATI drivers suck... (actually they don't, and they haven't for a long time)". Which is true. ATI's driver quality is now actually better than NVIDIA's, largely because of the enormous number of driver developers NVIDIA lost to ATI. In fact, the 4th result in your search has the title "Nvidia drivers suck?".

Get a 7800 GT instead of 6800GT

*smacks forehead*

You missed the entire point of the google links (in that, they cannot be used as evidence of something being good or bad).

And in this little rant, you went on to admit that NVidia, ATI (earlier, at least), VIA, AND Creative have sucky drivers. Am I noticing a trend, here?

Q.F.T. Big Q.F.T.

What does Q.F.T. mean :p

[QUOTE=Cool Matty]And in this little rant, you went on to admit that NVidia,[/QUOTE]Yes

Earlier, yes

Nope.

Yes. Creative is also predatory and - as mentioned before - has even attempted to make people buy driver updates from them.

NVIDIA hardware = good.
NVIDIA drivers = used to be good, now faltering.

ATI hardware = used to be bad, now okay.
ATI drivers = used to be bad, now good.

VIA hardware = always been mediocre
VIA drivers = have actually been quite good.

Creative hardware = very good, creative cards are godlike while using opensource drivers and Creative is one of few companies to give open specifications on how to support hardware mixing.
Creative software = terrible. just terrible. always has been, always will be.

I've confirmed: Linux, with the opensource EMU10k1 drivers, works absolutely flawlessly. It is a problem with the Creative-made Windows drivers.

VIA's issue wasn't a problem with the actual card hardware and it wasn't a problem with their chipset. A certain driver update caused the SBLive to put noise across the PCI bus. All major hardware vendors needed to patch it - including nVidia and Intel - but Creative actually made a special effort to single out VIA as the cause of the problem (even though they weren't).

Oy, my Audigy 2 needs to use Compaq drivers (dad gave me the card and has been trying to explain why i can't use Creative drivers but I just don't get it. But I guess I'll have to test it when I get the card)