Hi, I'm upgrading my PC as the motherboard is broken and I need power for graphics applications etc.

I have sourced these parts, and would like some confirmation that they are all compatible.

AMD Phenom II X6 1055T 2.8GHz /3.3GHz Turbo Core 9MB cache Socket AM3 125W TDP
Asus M4A87TD EVO AMD 870 ATX Socket AM3 DDR3-2000 RAID , USB3.0 & SATA3 , 1394 , Crossfire

Patriot Extreme Performance Viper Series DDR3 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC3-12800 Low Latency Dual Channel Kit, CAS 7-7-7-18

2x*Sapphire Radeon HD5750 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 DX11 HDCP HDMI Display Port Eyefinity CrossFire Support 700MHz / 1150MHz

Aywun 650W MEGA POWER ECO Series Power Supply, 80 PLUS, 140mm Fan

I already have a HDD and Optical drive.

So I am running XP, do I need to reinstall Windows once I install the hardware? Or can I just put it all in and away I go? I think I might need to download drivers for the new hardware etc????

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Actually, it is likely you must buy a new license of Windows so you might as well go for Window 7 64-bit. If your current version of Windows XP is an OEM version that came with, or was bought for your broken PC, you are not allowed to use it on this new PC - and note a new motherboard is, in effect, a new PC. Remember, XP was designed to support DOS era hardware which is 20 years old. If you want to take full advantage of this new hardware, run with an OS that was designed to support it.

And 64-bit is here to stay too, at least until 128-bit takes over.

Also, 2Gb of RAM is not very much RAM - especially with that 6-core CPU. Note that is just 333Mb per CPU core. I would want at least 4Gb, and preferably at least 1Gb per core (which again requires 64-bit Windows).

Thanks for the reply, with regards to the RAM.

I was told that Memory choice is important as latency is one of the most important things with DDR3:

So for my budget I could found these options, which would you recommend I go with?

Patriot Extreme Performance Viper Series DDR3 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC3-12800 Low Latency Dual Channel Kit, CAS 7-7-7-18 (faster 2GB)
or
OCZ Intel Extreme XMP 4G DDR3 PC-12800 (1600MHz) Dual Channel Kit (2 x 2GB), CAS 8-8-8-24 (slower 4GB)

Thanks

I would definitely go with 4Gb. They are both 1600MHz. Having 4Gb over 2Gb will make any timing differences totally insignificant. Understand that with a smaller amount of RAM, you force the OS and CPU to use the hard drive's very slow (compared to RAM) Page File much more often which makes those timing differences even less significant.

OK that sounds like a plan then, two more questions.

With the above mentioned motherboard, could I run 2 of these; EVGA GeForce GTX 460 SuperClocked Video card , 1G DDR5 , 763 MHz GPU / 3800Mhz , EVGA Ext
if I wanted to?

Does crossfire work with any two compatible graphics cards?

Also, like the original message, are all components compatible?

Thanks very much, anybody feel free to reply, this thread has had over 70 views to date and only three replies.

Cheers.

Crossfire works with AMD/ATI based graphics cards. SLI works with NVIDIA based cards. Your motherboard supports Crossfire.