TheWrongTree
Member
Parts used:
Tt Soprano Black case (kept from previous)
GECUBE Radeon HD3850 512MB GDDR3 video card
Silverstone ST75F 750 modular PSU
AMD Athlon X2 5000+ Black Edition
WD 250GB HDD
Zalman CNPS 9500 AM2 CPU Cooler
2GB OCZ Vista Upgrade DDR2 RAM
MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard
Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit
ASUS DVD/CD-RW Combo drive (kept from previous)
Total Cost: $903, including shipping and not including the two parts retained from previous machine.
Build notes:
The video card is quite long and fit in my case okay, even with a HDD mounted at the same level, but that could be a problem with a smaller case. It's very quiet.
The MSI motherboard comes with little adapters for the mini plugs that are used to attach power switch, reset switch, USB connections, etc. from the case to the MB which make it much easier to do. You plug the little plugs into the well labeled adapters and then just plug the whole adapter onto the motherboard pins. A simple thing but nice.
The CPU cooler is sexy and you can point the airflow however you want to based on your case configuration. It uses a seperate controller for fan speed rather than allowing the m/b to control the speed, which I thought was strange. However, even at max, it is not terribly loud and my temps are fairly low. I haven't spent a lot of time trying to see how much they change under load or anything. I'll do some more testing at a later date.
Vista is definitely maturing quickly. The 64 bit edition that I got had no trouble recognizing anything and I was up and running in about 45 minutes once I got all the parts installed. Took another hour or so to download and install updates, but I was able to surf and explore the new desktop while all that was happening so it wasn't a big deal. Generally, I think I like Vista. I don't think anyone running an older machine should consider upgrading to it however. It really is a resource hog. When I booted up the first time, I went with 1 stick of RAM just to ensure there were no weird issues with the two sticks (I had read that some people ran into that in various places with Vista) and it was consistently using 50% of my RAM just to sit and look at the desktop. It's doing a lot more stuff in the background than XP did. And FYI, if you've been watching those Apple commercials ('cancel or allow'), that actually DOES happen while you're doing a lot of installing at the beginning but 98% of the time everything is normal after that. It hasn't seemed particularly intrusive to me. I wouldn't be afraid of upgrading to Vista with a new machine anymore. The water is fine, come on in.
Peformance Notes:
Some people suggested that I'd be better off with an Intel CPU instead of the AMD for the price. I'm sure they were right, but I don't feel cheated. I ran 3DMark06 awhile ago and my score was 8712. I compared on Futuremark's site with other computers running the same video card, but with Intel processors and the Intel processors that were comparable in performance to mine were the ones that were about $130 (E4500's, mostly). The ones that smoked my scores were all the higher end, more expensive ones. This seems to me to be as I would expect. Price to performance is about the same for them at stock speeds. Intel is more overclockable, so if that's of value to you, definitely consider Intel. But don't be skeered of the AMD. Too many people are stat jockeys and will tell you that one or the other is hands down the best there is, but in reality both are quite good.
I've played some games on it and it is way beyond acceptable. I am able to crank the settings all the way up on all games that I currently have. I don't have Crysis which seems to be the gold standard for whooping up on your video card. Going to be loading up Bioshock soon to see how that looks. FEAR, WOW, and CS:S and all the HL2 games are fantastic. And my g/f says Toontown works just great, too. *rolls eyes* Again, a little comparing on the futuremark site revealed that the 3850 performs extremely competitively with the 3870, though the 3870X2 is another story entirely. THAT is a much faster card if you want to spend the money.
Soooo... again, thank you to all of you who offered your advice while I was mulling this over and I'll post more results on this thread later once I get it all humming along nicely.
Tt Soprano Black case (kept from previous)
GECUBE Radeon HD3850 512MB GDDR3 video card
Silverstone ST75F 750 modular PSU
AMD Athlon X2 5000+ Black Edition
WD 250GB HDD
Zalman CNPS 9500 AM2 CPU Cooler
2GB OCZ Vista Upgrade DDR2 RAM
MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard
Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit
ASUS DVD/CD-RW Combo drive (kept from previous)
Total Cost: $903, including shipping and not including the two parts retained from previous machine.
Build notes:
The video card is quite long and fit in my case okay, even with a HDD mounted at the same level, but that could be a problem with a smaller case. It's very quiet.
The MSI motherboard comes with little adapters for the mini plugs that are used to attach power switch, reset switch, USB connections, etc. from the case to the MB which make it much easier to do. You plug the little plugs into the well labeled adapters and then just plug the whole adapter onto the motherboard pins. A simple thing but nice.
The CPU cooler is sexy and you can point the airflow however you want to based on your case configuration. It uses a seperate controller for fan speed rather than allowing the m/b to control the speed, which I thought was strange. However, even at max, it is not terribly loud and my temps are fairly low. I haven't spent a lot of time trying to see how much they change under load or anything. I'll do some more testing at a later date.
Vista is definitely maturing quickly. The 64 bit edition that I got had no trouble recognizing anything and I was up and running in about 45 minutes once I got all the parts installed. Took another hour or so to download and install updates, but I was able to surf and explore the new desktop while all that was happening so it wasn't a big deal. Generally, I think I like Vista. I don't think anyone running an older machine should consider upgrading to it however. It really is a resource hog. When I booted up the first time, I went with 1 stick of RAM just to ensure there were no weird issues with the two sticks (I had read that some people ran into that in various places with Vista) and it was consistently using 50% of my RAM just to sit and look at the desktop. It's doing a lot more stuff in the background than XP did. And FYI, if you've been watching those Apple commercials ('cancel or allow'), that actually DOES happen while you're doing a lot of installing at the beginning but 98% of the time everything is normal after that. It hasn't seemed particularly intrusive to me. I wouldn't be afraid of upgrading to Vista with a new machine anymore. The water is fine, come on in.
Peformance Notes:
Some people suggested that I'd be better off with an Intel CPU instead of the AMD for the price. I'm sure they were right, but I don't feel cheated. I ran 3DMark06 awhile ago and my score was 8712. I compared on Futuremark's site with other computers running the same video card, but with Intel processors and the Intel processors that were comparable in performance to mine were the ones that were about $130 (E4500's, mostly). The ones that smoked my scores were all the higher end, more expensive ones. This seems to me to be as I would expect. Price to performance is about the same for them at stock speeds. Intel is more overclockable, so if that's of value to you, definitely consider Intel. But don't be skeered of the AMD. Too many people are stat jockeys and will tell you that one or the other is hands down the best there is, but in reality both are quite good.
I've played some games on it and it is way beyond acceptable. I am able to crank the settings all the way up on all games that I currently have. I don't have Crysis which seems to be the gold standard for whooping up on your video card. Going to be loading up Bioshock soon to see how that looks. FEAR, WOW, and CS:S and all the HL2 games are fantastic. And my g/f says Toontown works just great, too. *rolls eyes* Again, a little comparing on the futuremark site revealed that the 3850 performs extremely competitively with the 3870, though the 3870X2 is another story entirely. THAT is a much faster card if you want to spend the money.
Soooo... again, thank you to all of you who offered your advice while I was mulling this over and I'll post more results on this thread later once I get it all humming along nicely.
