How's this for a new computer of mine?

[raymondlin]

Been thinking about upgrading my current AMD2200+ to something better, especailly for gaming and video encoding and photoshop. Went a bit crazy with the window shopping in ocuk's site at first but after a few adjustments like dropping Raptors, i think i got a reasonable spec...

What do you guys think?

What i wanna know is that apart from the GF 6800, will the other parts work together? I know the graphic card need to be PCI-E. OR is the DDR 2 not worth the money now? what other mobo would you suggest?

I got 2 TFT coz it's good for multi-tasking, and the DVDRW isn't set as the pioneer 108 is out soon. And i want to do RAID0, hence 2 80G HDs.

I made this little table in excel so any changes will be easy and give me the price pronto

.

The price is a bit much thou, it's £1547.59/$2891 without the TFTs, do you think this PC is worth £1500/$3000 ? How would a £1000/$2000 PC match up to this? if it's not that much slower i wouldn't mind losing a bit of speed if it can save a lot of money.

Got to point 1 thing out thou, i am not one to upgrade PC every other month to keep up, i'm a get a new system every few years kind of person. Had my current one for 2 years now with the same spec, except added RAM and DVDRW.

Thanks for any suggestion you might have.

The Total is in £ Sterling, it is about $4000

Damn exchange rate really make this look what is already expensive to ULTRA expensive in $Dollars.

 

[skitlets]

the vantec stealth fan is a poor choice for a cpu fan, as it has very bad air pressure and will not cool well. As a case fan, it is fine, but is not made for cpu heatsinks. I'm not too sure how reliable those OCZ psus are as well. Antec makes very solid power supplies, even their lower end budget models. I hope that thermal paste you picked isn't for your heatsink/cpu, as its epoxy, meaning it's adhesive. Get Artic Silver 5 for your cpu. I'm also not sure your heatsink will fit your cpu, as the sp-94 was made for the older socket, not Intel's new LGA. You might want to look into that. As for the platform choice, it is entirely up to you. The other platform to consider is AMD's socket 939, or Intel's older 865/875 "Canterwood". The older Intel platform still performs well and is much cheaper, but if you are worried about the new pci and video card platform, the LGA motherboard is your only option which features both new technologies. If you are worried about 64bit, only AMD currently offers it, but Intel will soon adopt it, though I'm not sure if it will be on you chosen LGA platform. If it is not, you may have to upgrade again, that is, if you even care for 64bit. AMD will move to ddr2 and the newer pci later on.

 

[enzoferrari650]

whoa whoa whoa 6800's for 250 bucks? where? and why did u get 2 monitors...... thats where all your money went. Nothing in that computer is super expensive.

edit.... forget what i said. read the currency wrong.

 

[enzoferrari650]

u shoulda got the 64fx .... heh.... better for gaming.

 

[wallijonn]

http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-208-1.htm
http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-219-1.htm
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...oc.aspx?i=2091
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...oc.aspx?i=2088
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...oc.aspx?i=1956

You couldn't give me that combo.

CPU: 135 pounds = $245 US
Mobo: 156 pounds = $284 US
Mem: 232 pounds = $422 US

You paid 523 pounds or $952.

Your ideal would be:
CPU: P4 3.0C (Northwood), $220US = 120 pounds
Mobo: Intel D875PBZLK, $100US = 55 pounds
Mem: Kingston KVR400X64C3AK2/1G 1GB kit, $168 US = 92 pounds.
Total: 267 pounds.

To be honest the Kingston goes for $199 on their website instead of $168 ( www.zipzoomfly.com )

My ideal:
3.4C, $416US = 228 pounds.
2 gig of Kingston Value RAM PC3200 mem, $400 = 220 pounds.
mobo = $138 (Intel D875PBZLK Prescott ready RETAIL BOX) = 75pounds.
Total: 523 pounds.

Now you have one of the fastest PCs going which will blow away any 530/775 . It's a 3.4 instead of a 3.0, 2 gig instead of 1 gig. No contest. You don't really need a "Prescott Ready" PBZ because they (Prescott 478) only went up to 3.2 before they came out with the 775 pinout. You may be able to find a "Northwood Only" PBZ for 55 pounds. If not, you're stuck buying the obsolete Prescott Ready board (more obsolete than the Northwood only board). There's no way I would pay $285 US for a mobo board unless it is a dual processor server board. The typical enthusiast mobo goes for about $200US.

if you pay 219 pounds for mem, that would come out to: 529 pounds, total. You can probably bring it down if you pay less for the mobo. Besides the D875PBZ, there's the ASUS PC800E-Deluxe; stable and overclockable. The Intel doesn't really overclock, but if it is gaming speed you want, then just buy the fastest possible video board out at the present time.

The 775 is a dud. Basically it is behind the 478 in performance - until the Prescott 1200MHz processors come out. The Prescott 800 Mhz procs are a dud. Northwoods beat them out. For gaming you are not likely to use Hyperthreading. Hyperthreading is a dud.

Northwood Intel Dual Channel works best with 4 Double Sided DIMMs. I have 2g of Crucial mem. I paid a little over $400 US (220 pounds). You're paying more for DDR2. One gig for $422??? Noooo way, Jose, ntyvm.

You would have been better putting an AMD64 machine together, either a 754 single channel for gaming or a dual channel 939 for workstation. The 939 is comparable to what you just bought - but it is much faster. (A 939 mobo will cost about as much as a 925x/775 mobo).

an AMD64 3500+ is going for $350, or 192 pounds.

ANAND SAYS (from above links):

Quote:

Comparing a fast current 875 system with a 3.2 Northwood to a comparable 925X with a 3.2 Prescott, Winstones, PCMark 2004, and Media Encoding all show only about a 1% performance advantage to the 925X with all the new technology.

Quote:

Comparing an 875 Northwood system to the new 925X, we once again see Northwood providing better gaming performance despite having only half the cache of Prescott. In virtually every gaming benchmark, the 875 Northwood is faster, ranging from 1% to 15%. Overall, Northwood averages about 5% faster gaming performance at the same speed. This is offset by the fact that 3.4 is the fastest Northwood that you can buy. There is not a 3.6 Northwood, only the 560 Prescott in Socket 775 at 3.6GHz. As new speed grades are introduced, there will be fewer reasons to hold onto Northwood chips, but for gaming, Northwood is still a better performer at the same clock speed.

Quote:

There is no performance advantage at all to current DDR2 533 compared to fast DDR400 memory.

Now, you may think that if you buy into the new 775pinout Prescott it will buy you something (non-obsolesence). It will NOT. The 1200 MHz Prescotts will be out sooner or later. The present Prescotts are just as limited as Northwoods at 6.4GB throughput. DDR2 has 8.5GB throughput. Therefore a new Prescott will have to come out that can do 8.5GB throughput. 'Bet you by then that there will be a new pinout. Can you say "423"? The new math is 775 = 423. It's RAMBUS all over again. The new thing will be dual cpu cores, or 2 real cpus working on one die to give twice the performance.

I bought the 3.0C, PBZ and 2 gig of ram. I wish I had bought the 3.4C instead. Wanna buy a month old 3.0C? I'll throw in an AKG 401. Throw in a few more bucks and I'll throw in a DT831.

I hope you haven't pulled the trigger yet.

 

[ayt999]

RAID 0 generally doesn't do too much good so get a single fast drive instead. (storagereview.com put out an article about this a few weeks back)

why not go for a dual CPU setup? I think it would be a lot better for the video encoding / photoshop especially if you do multiple tasks at once. prices are not too bad either if you don't go for the top of the line models. check out the forums at 2CPU.com for a lot of useful info. they are very friendly there.

 

[Edwood]

My workstation is based on the Intel 875 mobo. My favorite mobo thus far.

Definitley go with dual channel RAM mobos. There is a noticeable improvement.

-Ed

 

[raymondlin]

Did a few window shopping in Newegg for the same spec, here is the price, the ones in red i couldn't match the same product so i use the UK price.

 

[ayt999]

I have a computer based on the springdale chipset with a 3.0C P4 myself (didn't go for the canterwood since I don't use that computer too much being that it is in japan and I am in the US most of the time) but compared to my SMP systems it is less responsive and not as smooth. also, it generally is slower at computational tasks (unless at times when the program needs a lot of memory bandwidth... then it is almost on par with the SMP systems with less memory bandwidth.) and given that a dual CPU system is most likely going to be only a few hundred dollars more (although you may have to go for slower processors) it is a good investment for a system you'll be keeping for a while.

of course, if gaming is what you are more interested in a single CPU system is preferable.

 

[wallijonn]

Why would you pay more for an 80G than a 160G? (I think you have the prices reversed).

Why would you have to buy SATA cables when the mobo comes with 2?

Why would you want 2 DVDs?

Why would you need another heatsink? If you buy a retail CPU it would come with a heatsink and a fan.

Get a case with 120mm intake holes, 120mm exhaust holes, and a 120mm blowhole.

Get Panaflo fans. Or SilenX.

 

[raymondlin]

Why would you pay more for an 80G than a 160G? (I think you have the prices reversed).
Not reverse, i want 2 so i can RAID 0 it

Why would you have to buy SATA cables when the mobo comes with 2?
Didn't know it did, will drop 1 from the list

Why would you want 2 DVDs?
One is a DVD-Rom, one is DVDRW.... Ahem.............copy on the fly...........ahem..........norty, slap wrist

Why would you need another heatsink? If you buy a retail CPU it would come with a heatsink and a fan.

So it's cooler


BTW, I haven't bought it yet. I am just researching, by the time i am ready, the new prescott might be out !

 

[wallijonn]

http://www.motherboards.org/reviews/...ds/1438_1.html

ayt999,

what dual P4 cpu slot mobo? tyan? the p5ad2 is a single cpu slot mobo.

Ray,

it'll be a year before the 64 bit Prescotts come out and WXP64. The 939 dual proc boards should be out soon.

Ray, I'll say it again, I think you're making a mistake.

[edit]

PS:
You forgot the Logitech MX510 and this Logitech keyboard:

http://hardware.earthweb.com/periphe...le.php/3387521

 

[raymondlin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by wallijonn Ray, it'll be a year before ...i'd get a totally new AMD/mobo combo instead.

 

[ayt999]

Quote:

Originally Posted by wallijonn ayt999, what dual P4 cpu slot mobo? tyan? the p5ad2 is a single cpu slot mobo.

I'm pretty sure I never said anything like that, I'm usually the one that goes after people on details like that over at the 2CPU forums.

first, there are no motherboards that support SMP operation of the P4... you'll have to look at the intel xeon line for that. (the xeon shares the same architecture as the P4) if you want to go with AMD processors in SMP, you should look at the opterons. (basically an athlon FX with SMP capabilities turned on. you cannot use any of the 64-bit AMD CPUs designated for single CPU use in SMP either) as I've said, you can go with athlon XP / athlon MP CPUs in SMP but that is an old technology that AMD stopped production on so it isn't future proof at all.

usually, CPU companies make a workstation / server level chip such as the xeon or opteron first then use that technology to develop their new desktop chips. just some random fact.

 

[wallijonn]

Ray,

You should read the links I provided, buddy. I went through a lot of trouble to break it down to the pound. Why not buy PC6000 mem?

It's your money. But I figure that your setup will be slower than the faster 3.4C or AMD 3500 in a 939.


ayt999,

I always wanted dual PIII 1.4s. Anything beyond that is out of my financial range.