Advice &/Or recommendation needed

[clarinetxkid]

Hi, i'm usually a carforum person, but my friend and I are soon gonna start new build for me...right now i'm running a celeron 700mhz on Intel815 board, everything stock, don't know what brand HDD is, 512 mb pc133 ram from who knows what company, etc etc. basically the computer i have now was built from some crooneys i'll never go back to again. I'm doin this next system with my computernerd friend this time.

anyways, considering a/an

• ASUS P4C800-E DELUXE

• P4 2.4c Northwood

• 512 mb or 1 gb RAM

• WD 74G Raptor HDD

what would you guys recommend for video? I nearly got my head bitten off when i suggested the onboard video..i think that's what i've got right now. oh well. I'm probably gonna use the comp mostly for non-gaming stuff, more video editing, and the like.
Budget-low $100's, max 130

thanks guys,
-Jonathan the noobie

 

[Sonic587]

Welcome to AT!

First off, what is your total budget for this new PC?

As for a videocard, I would suggest looking at a cheap 128-bit Radeon 9200, 9550, 9600. Which one you go with depends on if you want DX9.0 or not.

If you're not against buying used, have a look at the FS/FT forum. There are some great deals on Radeon 8500/9000/9100 and Geforce TI4XXX series cards.

 

[zakee00]

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-131-227&depa=0
i used to have this very same card, and it was great. that is still a farily good card, if you are looking for something even cheaper maybe you should look at this: http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-170-041&depa=0
that is by NO means a gaming card, you will not be able to play any game that was made in the last 2 years smoothly. its for 2D windows use only pretty much.
HTH,
Nick

 

[zakee00]

oh, and by the way
i hope you realize that while that raptor is one fast drive, 70GB will get you nowhere video editing. you should be looking at 200GB+ HD's for that.

 

[clarinetxkid]

wow you guys are fast...0_0

the budget is just $800, i think there's a bout 600 gone just from CPU, Board, hDD, and board alone...probably need ~$100? for drives

thanks for the suggestions, the $124 one seems pretty good; is that probably the best valued one available?

zakee00: it's strange...with my bro's 80gb on his sony laptop , we've only filled up about 15 so far, and it's still looking pretty good, though he's in college right now. i think i'll be okay with just the 74 gb one, or else, would it be right to get a secondary mass storage hdd?

thanks guys, keep it coming! i'll check again tomorrow morning.

-Jonathan the noobieee

 

[clarinetxkid]

oh yea and about the gaming thing..with my current computer, 700 mhz celeron i was able to play CS online with 56k! ping at 300's. hahaha , hey, it worked!

 

[zakee00]

Originally posted by: clarinetxkid
wow you guys are fast...0_0

the budget is just $800, i think there's a bout 600 gone just from CPU, Board, hDD, and board alone...probably need ~$100? for drives

thanks for the suggestions, the $124 one seems pretty good; is that probably the best valued one available?

zakee00: it's strange...with my bro's 80gb on his sony laptop , we've only filled up about 15 so far, and it's still looking pretty good, though he's in college right now. i think i'll be okay with just the 74 gb one, or else, would it be right to get a secondary mass storage hdd?

thanks guys, keep it coming! i'll check again tomorrow morning.

-Jonathan the noobieee

keep in mind that once you get your HD formatted, windows and drivers installed, you will prolly be down to 65GB if that. a quick google search said that an hour of DV footage takes between 11 and 13GB. you do the math, figure out what works best for you space wise.

my laptop has an 80GB hd too, and it didnt last me long before I had to buy a 160Gb external HD. 80GB just dosnt cut it when i want to have games, movies, music library, etc AND video (plus 7GB of space for when i need to burn a DVD).

 

[Sonic587]

Originally posted by: clarinetxkid
oh yea and about the gaming thing..with my current computer, 700 mhz celeron i was able to play CS online with 56k! ping at 300's. hahaha , hey, it worked!

Are you planning on doing any overclocking with this system?

Also, have you looked at AMD?

I'll try and throw up a config to give you an example of what you can get for your money.

EDIT: Ok, bare with me as I have not tried to build a system in a while. Here's what I'd suggest...

Antec Sonata

Retail 90nm A64 3000+

CHAINTECH NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra Chipset Motherboard For AMD Socket 939 CPU, Model "VNF4/Ultra" -RETAIL

1GB PQI 3200 RAM

SAPPHIRE ATI RADEON X600 PRO Video Card, 128MB DDR, 128-Bit, DVI/TV-Out, PCI Express, Model "587L" -RETAIL Lite Box

NEC 16X DL DVD burner

Seagate NCQ 160GB SATA HDD

Comes to about $822 shipped. Slightly over budget, but you can cut a few corners if need be.

 

[clarinetxkid]

wow thanks sonic and zakee;

i initially wanted to do movie editing by just putting everything on DVD's, then deleting them off the HDD. For the camcorder we have (JVC GR-DVL315u), it hasn't been a problem editing those videos on my bro's laptop, probably the quality isn't as good as you're putting it, haha

Would getting a 7200 rpm HDD bottleneck the build? that's what i was concerned about, and why I looked into the Raptor..then again you guys know a lot more than me, i'll see what you have to say

Sonic: that build looks pretty nice, but does it kinda lean onto the gaming side? oh and the first AMD we owned was an AMD K6-2 processor @ 350 Mhz...and it wasn't a good experience(crashed every other day) ...so that's why i havn't been looking in AMD, but it is a lot cheaper! how does the clock speed match up with the P4 northwoods? I saw the review on the hard drive comparisons..and the raptor really walks the rest, just not sure if getting a slower hdd might hold back the system or not. i'll consider that build though, thanks Sonic
-keep it coming!

-Jonathan

 

[Sonic587]

Originally posted by: clarinetxkid
wow thanks sonic and zakee;

i initially wanted to do movie editing by just putting everything on DVD's, then deleting them off the HDD. For the camcorder we have (JVC GR-DVL315u), it hasn't been a problem editing those videos on my bro's laptop, probably the quality isn't as good as you're putting it, haha

Would getting a 7200 rpm HDD bottleneck the build? that's what i was concerned about, and why I looked into the Raptor..then again you guys know a lot more than me, i'll see what you have to say

I doubt you'll notice much of a difference in real life apps, certainly not enough to justify the price and lower capacity. You can always add on a Raptor later down the line, too.

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2073&p=1

Our tests have also shown us that the 10,000RPM Raptor can offer a noticeable, but not dramatic, performance improvement over the current generation 7200RPM 8MB cache drives. While the performance improvement is there, it's not as significant as the synthetic tests would have you believe.

Sonic: that build looks pretty nice, but does it kinda lean onto the gaming side?

It does lean to the gaming side, but it will be faster than the 2.4C/ASUS P4C800-E DELUXE combo in just about everything. In addition to that, you're also ready for PCI-E and dual-core A64s.

oh and the first AMD we owned was an AMD K6-2 processor @ 350 Mhz...and it wasn't a good experience(crashed every other day) ...so that's why i havn't been looking in AMD, but it is a lot cheaper!

AMD has come a LONG way from those days. Just read some reviews, look at user opinions, ect.

how does the clock speed match up with the P4 northwoods?

Clockspeed is only one factor that determines a processor's overall speed. Check out the reviews on the site for a better picture of the performance.

I saw the review on the hard drive comparisons..and the raptor really walks the rest, just not sure if getting a slower hdd might hold back the system or not. i'll consider that build though, thanks Sonic
-keep it coming!


-Jonathan

One thing is for sure, you will be thrilled with any newer system after coming from your 700MHz Celeron.

 

[dudeman007]

Hey Jonathan, this is Andrew. Don't worry about the the 7,200 rpm drives. In honest real time settings you're not gonna see much of a difference between the 7,200 rpm and raptor drives, unless you plan on using raid which I doubt you will. BTW don't get confused with clockspeeds between AMD and Intel as Intel tends to focus on ghz, while AMD tends to focus more on the core and pipeline (confirmation?). Sonic your info is pretty much a direct hit. One more thing, though you got a camera and plan to do video editing, really you shouldn't worry about using an AMD even though Intels are supposed to be better in video type editing programs. Unless you're a real hardcore nerd about it, then the AMD will work out sweet.

 

[clarinetxkid]

awesome guys, thanks a lot!

Andrew, hopefully we can get this thing started soon..i kinda wanna throw this current computer (- the awesome monitor) out the window. it's a bug to use haha. yea, and no new games work no more on this. how sad. I found the current video card i'm running on this computer: Intel(r) 82815 Graphics Controller. Not too bad right? haha. oh well. ttyl andrew, and thanks Sonic!