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A few (newbie) questions regarding the FX-55

R

RahulM

Member
I'm soon going to purchase a PC from Microbytes here in Montreal, and had a few questions.

I'm thinking of going for the FX-53 at the moment, but I read about the FX-55, and was wondering if I should wait for its release. Will the performance be much greater than the 53? Does it have any other advantages over the older model? Also, should I be aware of some other hardware that goes hand-in-hand with the 53/55, I don't exactly know how to pick a motherboard and other components, so please help me out.


I'm really ignorant when it comes to hardware, so I'm sorry if this stuff is elementary to some of you. 🙂 Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Which video card is the most powerful right now? Will there be one that will come out soon that is better than the current ones?
 
Thanks.

I read that article earlier, but it doesn't make any comparisons to the FX-53 chip, I just wanna know if it's worth it to buy the latest chip. If the performance hasn't dramatically increased (or if the price has), I think it's better to go with Fx-53.

I've been running this p3-600 MHZ for like 5 years now and I need to upgrade. So basically, I want a machine that'll last me a loooong time without having to upgrade once again.

EDIT: The 6800 Ultra isn't listed in their online inventory, what is the next best thing? What is the difference between ADP, PCI and PCI Express.... oh God, I have a headache
 
from the article
But it turns out that their caution was not simply from a PR standpoint; today with an Athlon 64 4000+ in our hands AMD didn't release a 2.6GHz Athlon 64, they just re-released an Athlon 64 FX-53 - a 2.4GHz, 1MB L2 cache part, as a regular Athlon 64 4000+.
Click to expand...

so in all thoes benches the 4000+ = FX-53

next best thing is a Nvidia 6800GT, the 6800 ultra shoudl be available someplace

anyway if you can find teh Ganward 6800gt golden sample, its prob the fastest one out there and you can overclock it to 6800 ultra speeds

AGP is the normal bus for video cards
PCI is what stuff liek network cards and sound cards go in
PCI Express - is a nrwer version of the PCI bus that can carry a ton more data, even more then AGP and is going to be teh new standard for video cards and such, however only like 2 video cards support it currently
 
Thank you very much. 🙂

So, a system with the FX-53 processor, a top-of-the-line vid card and a gig+ of ram (which kind is the best?) should be able to last me for a long time, right?

EDIT: What about heatsinks and raid controllers? I have no idea what those are, but I have the option of getting them on my new PC. I want to build a monster gaming machine, and not much else.
 
yea it shoudl last you awhile

you will have to check and see if the FX-53 needs ECC ram or not i do not remember, but go with one of the major brands, Crucial, Corsair, Mushkin, Kingston or Micron,

Get PC3200 or PC4000 ram if you want to overclock, and i woudl get 2x 512 meg sticks , i use crucial because of their lifetime warrenty
 
if you dont plan on over clocking just the stock retail heatsink will be fine, if you want to over clock you will have to find a aftermarket one, there area bunch

raid IMO isnt needed for a gameing rig, it also depends on what else you plan on doing with this thing, for best preformance going with the 10000RPM Raptor Drives is best but they are loud, and only go up to 76GB, the new maxtors are almost as fast and they are 200+ GB

all depends on what you want, and how much space you want

however something like this woudl be good

FX-53 + mobo
Gig of ram
Audigh 2 ZS sound card
76Gb raptor for OS /programs
250GB normal HDD for storage
~450w Power Supply
nice case, Antec, Coolmaster, Lian Li
16x DVD burner
dvd rom
floppy
 
Thanks so much, you've been EXTREMELY helpful.

EDIT: Ok, so assuming I get the Raptor drive, where would the games and apps be installed?

EDIT2: A store clerk was talking to me about his Athlon pc, he mentioned splitting the data to two hard drivers (or something like that) and the fact that his pc boots to windows in around 3 seconds, how is this possible?
 
forgot to add 6800GT to that list
gonna need a video card

you do realise this is going to cost you a ton of money
 
Sure, I'll mail you pics of my PC, and you can feel proud of this thing you helped create. 😛

So what is raid exactly anyway?

From my other reply : A store clerk was talking to me about his Athlon pc, he mentioned splitting the data to two hard drivers (or something like that) and the fact that his pc boots to windows in around 3 seconds, how is this possible?
 
there are different kinds of raid

Level 0 -- Striped Disk Array without Fault Tolerance: Provides data striping (spreading out blocks of each file across multiple disk drives) but no redundancy. This improves performance but does not deliver fault tolerance. If one drive fails then all data in the array is lost.
Level 1 -- Mirroring and Duplexing: Provides disk mirroring. Level 1 provides twice the read transaction rate of single disks and the same write transaction rate as single disks.
Level 2 -- Error-Correcting Coding: Not a typical implementation and rarely used, Level 2 stripes data at the bit level rather than the block level.
Level 3 -- Bit-Interleaved Parity: Provides byte-level striping with a dedicated parity disk. Level 3, which cannot service simultaneous multiple requests, also is rarely used.
Level 4 -- Dedicated Parity Drive: A commonly used implementation of RAID, Level 4 provides block-level striping (like Level 0) with a parity disk. If a data disk fails, the parity data is used to create a replacement disk. A disadvantage to Level 4 is that the parity disk can create write bottlenecks.
Level 5 -- Block Interleaved Distributed Parity: Provides data striping at the byte level and also stripe error correction information. This results in excellent performance and good fault tolerance. Level 5 is one of the most popular implementations of RAID.
Level 6 -- Independent Data Disks with Double Parity: Provides block-level striping with parity data distributed across all disks.
Level 0+1 ? A Mirror of Stripes: Not one of the original RAID levels, two RAID 0 stripes are created, and a RAID 1 mirror is created over them. Used for both replicating and sharing data among disks.
Level 10 ? A Stripe of Mirrors: Not one of the original RAID levels, multiple RAID 1 mirrors are created, and a RAID 0 stripe is created over these.
Level 7: A trademark of Storage Computer Corporation that adds caching to Levels 3 or 4.
RAID S: EMC Corporation's proprietary striped pairty RAID system used in its Symmetrix storage systems.

your friend was prob doing raid 0 because it adds speed but isnt the most stable
if you are going to do raid do it right and do raid 5
 
Heh built myself that system over the summer (minus the floppy and with klipsch 5.1 speakers). Ended up costing me around $2600 so around $2250 for the computer itself. Working nicely so far, but a few mobo issues (using the MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum). The nvidia ethernet controller kinda died recently and it doesn't like ram in channels 3+4 so I might end up RMA'ing it when I get the chance.
 
Boots to windows in 3 seconds? That means as soon as he presses power windows is up and running. I can see 8-10 secs, but not 3.
 
even 10 seconds is puching it, on a raid 1 array it woudl be REALLY DAMN fast nut it takes at least 8 seconds to get through the bios
 
Is this your MicroBytes? If so it looks like their prices are sky high!!!


product --- MicroBytes --- Newegg

6800 Ultra --- 760-790 --- 535-600
ATI X800 XT --- 830-909 --- 455-685
FX-53 --- 1200 (on sale) --- 820
3.2EE --- 1429 (on sale) --- 899
FX-55 --- not available --- 925


Don't know if this is the place you are looking, but if so you can buy an Alienware for these prices and save money!!!

kd
 
if you wanna go raid 5 you will need a raid card, and 4 identicial hard drives, say you go 4x 200gb HDDs you would get 600GB of useable space out of it because the 4th is used for teh backupinfo so if one dies you just replace it and it will rebuild the array, so no data lost

raid cards are not cheap and its harder to get working then you might think
 
so with raid 1, how many drives are required as a minimum? i'm assuming only 2. so with raid 0+1, you get the added benefits of raid 0 AND 1? what are the problems with raid 1?
 
also I noticed that no one mentioned a motherboard yet. Also if money is no problem (and it seems like it isn't) how about SLI? Sorry to be driving up your costs but I am living vicariously through you🙂
 
raid 5 offers has built in data redundency so if a drive fails you can replace it and not loose data raid 0+1 does not have that
 
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