A few n00b questions...

[bluedeviltron]

I'm building my first PC, but I still have some things I need to clear up:

1. Is it necessary to get an SLI motherboard? What other features does the board have besides the option to put two video cards in? Why is it worth buying it over an ordinary motherboard?

2. Which is a better video card: GeForce 6600 GT or the Radeon x800?

3. I'm going to be doing a lot of video editing and gaming, so which is better for me? Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon 64?

4. What is the Pentium equivalent speed of an Athlon 64 3200+?

5. Should I get a PCI-Express or an AGP based motherboard? What are the advantages of each? Would I be better prepared for future upgrades if I got the PCIe?

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: bluedeviltron
I'm building my first PC, but I still have some things I need to clear up:

1. Is it necessary to get an SLI motherboard? What other features does the board have besides the option to put two video cards in? Why is it worth buying it over an ordinary motherboard?

2. Which is a better video card: GeForce 6600 GT or the Radeon x800?

3. I'm going to be doing a lot of video editing and gaming, so which is better for me? Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon 64?

4. What is the Pentium equivalent speed of an Athlon 64 3200+?

5. Should I get a PCI-Express or an AGP based motherboard? What are the advantages of each? Would I be better prepared for future upgrades if I got the PCIe?

1. usually the sli boards are the top the company has to offer and has all the bells and whistles like extra lan, extra sata connectors, etc. pesonally i would get the same board, just not the sli version as they are still really nice. take the msi k8n neo4 platinum vs the sli version. i think you get a couple more sata connectors, more 1394

2. somebody else will need to answer this one, or look at the video card test in anandtech

3. i would go with the amd because since you would probably be going with nf4, when the dual cores cpus come out all you will need is a bios update. the current nf4 boards are going to last quite awhile, in terms of computers

4. ~3.2GHz, but i am not sure how those correspond with all the new gen pentiums, but that is a rough estimate

5. go pci-e, agp is going by the wayside and most pci-e grahics cards are cheaper than their agp counterpart. also, pci-e is going to be more futureproof

 

[meltdown75]

1) It is not necessary to get an SLI board. IIRC they were designed only to accomodate extreme gaming machines that would benefit from drawing GPU power from 2 cards instead of 1.

2) no idea.

3) IIRC AMD machines are superior for gaming while Intel surpasses AMD marks in other (office) applications.

4) Check the Athlon 64 3200+'s speed rating and your question will be answered. My Athlon XP 2800+ runs @ 2.17ghz.

5) Not sure. I'd probably go with PCIe myself, if I were purchasing this very second. Although I'm sure AGP will be around for a while.

 

[imported_miahallen]

Originally posted by: bluedeviltron
I'm building my first PC, but I still have some things I need to clear up:

1. Is it necessary to get an SLI motherboard? What other features does the board have besides the option to put two video cards in? Why is it worth buying it over an ordinary motherboard?

2. Which is a better video card: GeForce 6600 GT or the Radeon x800?

3. I'm going to be doing a lot of video editing and gaming, so which is better for me? Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon 64?

4. What is the Pentium equivalent speed of an Athlon 64 3200+?

5. Should I get a PCI-Express or an AGP based motherboard? What are the advantages of each? Would I be better prepared for future upgrades if I got the PCIe?

1) No, but you say you're going to do "a lot of gaming", so SLI would benefit you, but it comes with a big price.

2) Do you realise that if you're going to utilise SLI, you'll need two? Only nVidea cards work with SLI (for now). Also two 6600GTs are approx equal to on 6800 Ultra, and the price is about the same too. So unless you want to fork out the $ for two 6800GTs, forget SLI and just get one 6800GT or Ultra.

3) Athlon 64 for sure.

4) (see question #4)

5) PCIe (it's newer, and theoretically it's faster).

 

[chrisralston]

Originally posted by: bluedeviltron
I'm building my first PC, but I still have some things I need to clear up:

1. Is it necessary to get an SLI motherboard? What other features does the board have besides the option to put two video cards in? Why is it worth buying it over an ordinary motherboard?

2. Which is a better video card: GeForce 6600 GT or the Radeon x800?

3. I'm going to be doing a lot of video editing and gaming, so which is better for me? Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon 64?

4. What is the Pentium equivalent speed of an Athlon 64 3200+?

5. Should I get a PCI-Express or an AGP based motherboard? What are the advantages of each? Would I be better prepared for future upgrades if I got the PCIe?

1. No not unless you are going to do heavy gaming, ou you want some future proof ability (add the second card later). Also features depend on manufacturer, but the nForce Ultras have a lot of the same features as the SLI (except of course the SLI part)

2. Not sure. I went with the MSI NX6600 VTD (in between vanilla 6600 and 6600GT). But I don't do a lot of gaming either.

3. I got the AMD 64 San Diego 3700. I have heard that nowadays, both are really good. I thinkgenerally people say that AMD is better for gaming and Intel better for video editing (especially with Hyper Treading). But a high frequency CPU from either will do the job.

4. Not excatly sure, but I think around a 3.0 to 3.2.

5. Go PCIe.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: chrisralston

Originally posted by: bluedeviltron
I'm building my first PC, but I still have some things I need to clear up:

1. Is it necessary to get an SLI motherboard? What other features does the board have besides the option to put two video cards in? Why is it worth buying it over an ordinary motherboard?

2. Which is a better video card: GeForce 6600 GT or the Radeon x800?

3. I'm going to be doing a lot of video editing and gaming, so which is better for me? Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon 64?

4. What is the Pentium equivalent speed of an Athlon 64 3200+?

5. Should I get a PCI-Express or an AGP based motherboard? What are the advantages of each? Would I be better prepared for future upgrades if I got the PCIe?

1. No not unless you are going to do heavy gaming, ou you want some future proof ability (add the second card later). Also features depend on manufacturer, but the nForce Ultras have a lot of the same features as the SLI (except of course the SLI part)

2. Not sure. I went with the MSI NX6600 VTD (in between vanilla 6600 and 6600GT). But I don't do a lot of gaming either.

3. I got the AMD 64 San Diego 3700. I have heard that nowadays, both are really good. I thinkgenerally people say that AMD is better for gaming and Intel better for video editing (especially with Hyper Treading). But a high frequency CPU from either will do the job.

4. Not excatly sure, but I think around a 3.0 to 3.2.

5. Go PCIe.

hyperthreading is only advantageous if you encoding app is smt/smp. i have sorenson squeeze 3.5 and it will only utilize only 40% where windows media encoder will utilize 100%.

 

[theMan]

1. no, not unless you want to spend the same amount on video cards that you spend on the rest of your computer. If you want something really good, get the highest end non-sli mobo a manufacturer makes

2. thats hard, no clue

3. AMD for sure, just look at benchmarks, and the p4's get really hot.

4. It should be about 3200mhz, but in some gaming benchmarks, the 3200+ beats the P4EE 3.73ghz, so if you game, get AMD.

5. PCIe. you will be able to get an NF4 board, which is good, and also, you can upgrade cards without a new mobo.

 

[Chosonman]

1. SLI is unequivicably a waste of money.

2. Get a 6800 128MB if you want to be safe.

3. Pentium is faster for video editing but you pay more. AMD is faster for games, it's a 64Bit CPU, and you pay less. Advantage goes to AMD.

4. As rating systems go. An AMD 3200 should equal a Pentium 4 3.2GHz in performance. (AMD is slight better in most cases)

5. PCI-e or AGP the choice is up to you. PCI-e will enable you to buy PCI-e graphics cards and AGP will enable you to buy AGP graphics cards. As of right now those are the only differences between the two. Maybe a year or 2 from now you might start to see a difference in performance, but honestly there are other bottlenecks that need to be addressed before that'll make a difference in graphics capability.

 

[Ike0069]

1. I think SLI is a waste. Go with a non-SLI board.

2. 6600 GT would be a much better card for the money. But I suggest a 6800 GT for a gaming machine.

3. AMD

4. 2.8-3.0 for video editing, 3.6 (maybe higher) for gaming

5. PCI-e ... No real speed difference right now, but AGP is now last generation.
I would only suggest getting an AGP MB if you already had a good AGP VC. Since you need both, go PCIE-e.

 

[JBird7986]

To answer the OP's Number 2:

X800/X850 Pro=6800
X800XL=6800GT
X800XT/X850XT=6800Ultra

X800 Pro is the equivalent to a vanilla 6800. (i.e. 12 pipes to 6600GT's 8 etc.)