1st Time Self Built PC (Guide Suggestions)

[Terrapin]

Originally posted by: busmaster11

Originally posted by: Terrapin

No. Bang for the buck is one thing, but being able to buy two XP setups that are arguably superior, at the cost of one P4 mobo/cpu/ram, goes way past bang for the buck.

I would welcome hearing the system configuration that is arguably as fast as what I have outlined, at half the cost.

Do tell.

Terrapin

From pricewatch: No shipping considered for both

Asus P4T533-C ~160
Intel CPU 2.4b ~383
512 Kingston 1066 Rdram no list, but the lowest price for a stick of PC800 is 179, s
Total price for mobo/cpu/PC800 RDRAM - 720

Look...
Asus A7N266-C ~94
Athlon XP 2100+ ~177
2 sticks of 256 megs PC2100 DDR (performs better than one stick 512) ~64
Total price - 335

Cost - less than half - for that I'm sure you can forgive the slight performance difference. And thats if you buy PC800 RDRAM which you won't.

Thank you for taking the time to post that. P4 system is 533fsb, Athlon is not. P4 system has much higher ram bandwidth then the Athlon (even with the 800 rdram).

Just feels like you are comparing an apple to an orange. Fact of the matter is I prefer Intel to Athlon. I want the 533fsb Board/CPU/Rdram; and I can afford to have what I want. Even if I were to agree these were comparable, which I don't, I'd still spend the few extra hundred dollars to have what I want. Please don't take that the wrong way. I am careful not to waste my hard earned coin, but in this comparison, I feel the few hundred dollars difference is justified in increased system performance, and having the components I am most comfortable with.

Respectfully,

Terrapin

 

[busmaster11]

Originally posted by: Terrapin

Thank you for taking the time to post that. P4 system is 533fsb, Athlon is not. P4 system has much higher ram bandwidth then the Athlon (even with the 800 rdram).

Just feels like you are comparing an apple to an orange. Fact of the matter is I prefer Intel to Athlon. I want the 533fsb Board/CPU/Rdram; and I can afford to have what I want. Even if I were to agree these were comparable, which I don't, I'd still spend the few extra hundred dollars to have what I want. Please don't take that the wrong way. I am careful not to waste my hard earned coin, but in this comparison, I feel the few hundred dollars difference is justified in increased system performance, and having the components I am most comfortable with.

Terrapin,

I respect your convictions and wish you the best of luck.

But I just want to remind you that what you have posted in comparison, the FSB, and the memory bandwidth are specifications inherent to the architecture. They may be true, but you might as well mention that the P4 runs at 2400, and the XP runs at 1766 or whatever it runs at. To which I can say, the XP chip does much more per clock cycle, that DDR has much lower latencies than RDRAM, and it has four times the bandwidth per cycle than RDRAM - which are all true.

But we'd be missing the point. Everything you or I just mentioned culminates into one thing - performance, which is easily quantifiable through benchmarks. To that end, I observe the P4 is marginally faster on most apps, but only because we're not comparing a P4 2100 to a XP 2100+.

My personal convictions will agree with you in part. While I see RDRAM as an evolutionary dead end on the PC platform, and I would never want to support a company like RAMBUS, Intel does make a very solid and stable and reliable platform. But their brute force method of gaining performance by focusing on die shrinks and clock cycle increases is very CISC-styled, and at some point they may hit 3-4GHZ while performing only as well as an AMD chip running at half the speed.

Finally I ask, where in the world can you get PC1066 RDRAM?

 

[Terrapin]

Busmaster:

Last week, Newegg had some 1066, but appears out of stock currently. I suspect it will be another week or so before it can be easily found.

You make excellent points, although I am not knowledgable around the company RAMBUS to understand the feelings expressed.

Just to give you some insight. This is the first system to not have a scsi hard drive, and related scsi components in 10 years. For me to give that up and accept that a WD JB HD would do just fine, was a big deal, as silly as that may sound. I have become extremely comfortable with the seagate cheetahs. Their speed and reliability has been awesome in the four systems I've used them in over the past 10 years. So what's my point?

It wouldn't surprise me if when I build my next system in 3 years, I don't go the Intel route. I try to remain open minded and I hear what your saying. In certain aspects of my life I'm conservative, and I suppose where PC's are concerned, it's difficult for me to move outside of my comfort zone.

Thank you for your input. It is much apprecicated.

Terrapin

 

[herbage11]

Just built my first PC this weekend. The best advice I got was. Make plenty of room, take your time, work slow, ground yourself, and read read read before starting. Get familular with the motherboard. Start w/ minimum then work your way up. Good luck and have fun.
herb