Latest revision to my proposal for AMD64 entry

I "think" I have found a supplier of winchesters! Below is the order I am thinking about placing - comes in around the £700 mark, which allows me the budget for my case extra and maybe a PSU if I need it or am too lazy to move my current Tagan 480 around !

Abit AV8 3RD Eye (Socket 939) Motherboard (MB-053-AB)

AMD Athlon 64 3500 Winchester 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (CP-101-AM)

Zalman CNPS7000B-Alcu Ultra-Quiet CPU Cooler - Retail (HS-008-ZA)

Crucial 1GB (2x512MB) DDR PC3200 Ballistix Dual Channel Kit (MY-033-CR)

Sony CRX320E 52x32x52x16 CDRW/DVD Combi Drive (Black) - OEM (CD-025-SO)
NEC ND3500 16x DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-012-NE)

Samsung SpinPoint P SP1213N 120GB ATA-133 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-008-SA) (two off)

Any comments and critiques most welcome, but it is starting to feel about right for me now....

right now I think that the 3000+ and 3200+ are the only winchester cpus but I could be wrong...you might want to do more research on the 3500 winchester you are buying cause I don't think it is right

I may be wrong but make sure before you buy

I'd recommend this over the AV8 http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/ki.asp?sku=300872&cks=PRL as Via chipsets are very buggy still and have conflict issues with alot of hardware.. or if you prefer the abit brand see if they have an nforce3 250gb ased board

HMMMmmmmm /me likes!

Has wi-fi bundle so for a few extra squids I distance myself from VIA and get some of the goodies I had planned with the ASUS originally.....

only downside is I miss out on the 3rd eye thingummy that allows you to O/C on the fly, but I guess that is a bit gimmiky anyway and I would never know where to put it either

Tuffgong4... check this article... I hope that the winchester 3500+ is real.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2242

/me hopes it is real too! Have an email query in with my potential suppliers presently to verify.... I would take a 3400 equally - it is the Winchester 90nM die size I seek....

I just wanted you to make sure cause I haven't been able to find one on the net yet at the bigger etail stores but I know they are coming. I just hope you get the right one cause some places don't really know and will just tell you it's what you want

Yes, the 3500 is real, and will be released within the next few days. ALTHOUGH, you should request the company that you are buying the board from, to update the bios so that it will recognize the 90nm chips, as there has been a recent problem of the boards not recognizing them until the bios is updated. You'd have to either put in another 939 chip to update the bios or do a cold boot on the memory and update it that way.

I personally like the MSI K8N Neo 2 Plat. motherboard.

Tuffgong4 said:

I just wanted you to make sure cause I haven't been able to find one on the net yet at the bigger etail stores but I know they are coming. I just hope you get the right one cause some places don't really know and will just tell you it's what you want

Click to expand...

I know what you mean... I'm wanting to get an AMD64 3500+ this xmas. However, it's not me who is actually making the purchase, so kinda worried that I'll be receiving the wrong product.
Does anyone know the full code that's printed on the cpu for the Winchester 3500+?

wasn't there a pic in the ATOT article link? Not sure if you can see it from that.... otherwise I would just mention that overclockers.co.uk seem to know what they are offering and claim stocks with a few days lead time (selling like hot cakes no doubt)...

Anyway I plan on using them for my order so will post back with my experiences when I have summonsed the courage to get out my credit card :ekk: *gulp* Their sales team certainlky knew their stuff when I emailed an enquiry - right down to compatibility of the MSU mobo.

I have revised my order plan to take on board the MSI mobo and also added a Arctic VGA silencer cooler because I think that is going to work better for my 9700 pro in the Nexus case.... Also upped the drives to 160GB but sticking with ATA for now.

Hopefully once I'm brave enough to place the order it will be shipping next week or thereabouts - I'll no doubt post on my build and experiences, esp with the case/PSU temps and noise.

Just out of interest.. if money wasn't an issue, would anyone get an Opertron processor for a home PC?
Some of the older one are cheaper than the 3400+ athlons

Well - the orders are in now and my credit card will not be playing anymore until Christmas! I am not sure an opteron would suit my needs - and I am hoping with this combination I can get a really nice cool and quiet system with the 90nM chip and later in it's life if I feel the need even overclock it a bit (although that is not really my thing).

Anyway that will be me maxed out on my techno fix for a while - just have to try to work out where I am going to put the old rig when it comes out now and how I am going to keep them all networked!

So the list at the top is what you're going with?

not quite Sheps - changed to the MSI mobo (although I think I did away with wireless, not sure I would use it since I have my CAT5 right there)

Plus added an Arctic cooler for the 9700 pro I am slotting in (to save some cash).... other than that it is basically the same.... I had some level of reassurance from my etailers that they had stocks of Winchesters, although they were going fast and so there was a few days lead time as there was also on the HD's....

Anyway, feels sort of a relief - I held back and listened and at least I have an order in - no way could I have waited for Nforce4 plus that may have led to buggy BIOS and all sorts of headaches - so hopefully I have struck a happy medium.

Well, good choice on the MSI board. It's the one I'm getting. And personally, NF4 didn't sound like it was all that great. Plus they'd be revision 1 boards, and then you'd have to deal with the bugs like you said.

I am debating on going with the 3500 in 939 90nm flavor, or just staying with my original choice of the 3200 939 90nm and overclocking it.

Exciting times ahead for next week - I got the email telling me my order hs been packed in warehouse today!

So my guess is if I do not have it Monday it will be here Tuesday for sure - hopefully built by Wednesday or Friday latest, then just have to make a few plans about moving around between systems etc etc

Talking of which, if I cram them both under my desktop does anyone kinow if I can run the VGA cable into one machine and the DVI into the other and then switch modes on my TFT to use it with both machines powered up? It's just I have spare keyboard and mouse, but would have to pinch a monitor from another machine - so this would really suit me....?

Unless you have a ghey LCD I dont see whay you couldnt.

Hehe - the TFT was not ghey - running both rigs in parallel now as I swap out various bits and pieces (last one to go will be the Winfast PCI card....).

Anyway along the way the rig changed quite a bit - final configuration is something like this:-
MSI k8n Neo Platinum 2 mobo with Winchester AMD64 3500+
1 GB Crucial Ballistix 400 DDR
Radeon 9700 pro minus stock fan with Arctic I cooler instead
Zalman 7000 cooler for CPU
PSU that comes with breeze case (Nexus 3500)
Seagate 200GB SATA HD
Samsung Spinpoint 160GB (ATA 133)
Seagate Barracude 80 GB (ATA 133)
Sony CRX320E 52x32x52x16 CDRW/DVD Combi Drive (Black)
NEC ND3500 16x DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black)

I have everything up and running - but a few issues remain. Most urgent is lack of expected HD speeds (I am going to try changing primary IDE cable, but really not sure if there are driver or other issues). Second urgent is lack of compatibility with my Maxtor external one touch dive - where I suspect Maxtor dirve issues with this mobo, but do not understand why still ocurring with external drive? Last but not least I am sometimes getting weird and unexpected/unexplained temp "surges" of as much as ten degrees C (enough to trigger the MBM alarm where I set it around 66 oC )

Anyway - the rig is there and happily running alongside my old one for the changeover time - fun fun fun

disable MBM, the sensors it read from are iffy at best, for accurate and reliable temperature reading you need a custom setup

IDE speeds, get a new 80 conductor cable, or reseat the one you have, also remeber people cheat you and use multiples of 1000 for data transfer rates

PS Fixed external drive issue - there was like 7GB unformatted and when I made an extra logical partition there it did ot kick the drive out as invalid format anymore, wierd huh? But hey it works

Presently making drive copy from Master IDE drive to SATA and next challenge will be to make that my bootable HD