Decision, decisions, but what is the newest news?

[theycallmeaububba]

I want to build this system:

ANTEC Mini ATX Tower 350 Watt
P4B266-C
2X 256 Crucial 2100
P4 1.6a
Maxtor 40 -7200
Creative Labs 5.1 ??? or Turtle Beach? or P4266 onboard sound?
Video Card? (i have 2 monitors, I was going to get a gainward 2 monitor card with 32mb of SDRAM but cant find it on newegg anymore)
Ram cooling????

I really want to build this system but I am going to work for Harley Davidson this summer and will probably be using my laptop there since I am going to come home a lot on weekends (home being where my fiance is and school).

I am trying to figure out if it is worth my wild to wait until August to build a system. I really wont need it this summer if I built it now.

Any suggestions about the hardware? I really don't want to spend 60 bucks on the Turtle Beach if it is not necessary but dont know if the Soundblaster is good with an overclocked system. Also, I have 2 monitors and am concerned about what I need to buy. Do I need DDR on board the video card?

This system will be used for webdesign and some other stuff. I have always bought dell computers but want to build my own and learn about overclocking.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

jc

 

[ddives]

Do yourself a favor and get even just a Soundblaster 16 sound card, the onboard AC97 codec is crap. Think twice about the DDR, I m running DDR now, but already regret after reading about the RDRAM future. DDR is basically maxed out, whereas RD has a ways to go. If you are running dual monitors, get a GeForce Ti for your AGP, and your secondary monitor can run on any bargain PCI, I run a GeForce 3 Ti with a 4MB ATI as secondary. DDR is not required on the video card, but preferred. Far as overcloacking goes, that VIA P4 chipset you are looking at is a great choice, the P4 clock is locked, so you'll have to increase the FSB and voltage on everything. My 1.7 runs well over 2.4 Ghz, but solidly at 2.1. Watch out next week, Intel is releasing another chip, P4 prices should have another drop.

David

 

[TimidOCer]

do yourself a favor get an epox 4bda or 4bda2+ (same just with raid) the ebda is 99 at mwave.com and overclocks amazingingly well everyone at hardforum is raving over these boards they overclock JUST as well as the p4b266 , some even think better because they have some nice ratio options.. the raid board is 120 and the non raid (4bda) 100 ... cheaper even then the p4b266-c which doesnt get bios support worth crap because its made for oem .

I would try the onboard sound and if it wasnt any good or you didnt like it then id buy a card but not until you try it 🙂 if you do get a sound card try to get a 5.1 soundblaster.. ive seen them as cheap as 23 $ so that shouldnt be that much of a problem.

Get some samsung ddr unless you already have your ddr .. samsung pc 2700 is great . If your running a dual monitor setup then you should get a dual head card if you can .. that way 1 video card = 2 monitors.. thats what Id do anyway..

the p4 1.6a seems like a good plan and alot of people on hardforums hit 2.4ghz with the 4bda board so its a good board 🙂

 

[jiffylube1024]

Some of the information above is not very accurate. I will try to clarify it for you.

First of all, the P4B266 and P4B266-C are not VIA motherboards, they're INTEL motherboards! Second of all, the P4B266-C does not have onboard audio (well, most don't) and the P4B266 has C-Media onboard sound, not AC97. The C-Media chip is about the same quality as a SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 .

The main difference between the P4B266 and -C versions is the onboard sound and onboard USB 2.0 on the regular P4B266. USB 2.0 will be the standard pretty soon, with lots of interesting devices coming out (portable CD/DVD burners, portable high speed hard drives, scanners, printers, etc) so I figure you'll have to buy into USB 2.0 sooner or later. It's your choice on which motherboard you get, however.

I'm running the onboard sound on a P4B266 right now, and it works great for me (and has never screwed up for me once, working great even when I overclock my CPU 450-600 MHz). However, many people seem to have faulty sound chips or something, because it does not work for most people. I recommend this very same motherboard to a friend of mine, and his machine crashes everytime any sound is played using onboard sound, overclocked or stock speed! Installing a SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 solved all of his problems.

Oh yeah one more thing: about the comment saying DDR is a dead end and RDRAM has a way to go, that's not true at all. Both have very good new platforms coming out in the near future, neither of which work on current motherboards so you're screwed in the future either way. If you run your DDR memory at 333 MHz (I am right now: FSB is at 125 MHz and I'm using the 4:3 memory ratio) it's almost exactly the same speed as PC800 RDRAM. Sure RIMM4200 technology looks good (its PC1066 memory only dual channel on a single memory chip, giving 4200 MB/s of bandwidth), but dual channel DDR is just as good (dual channel 333MHz DDR = 5400 MB/s), if not better. Both technologies are due sometime this year, with the Rambus solution coming out a few months earlier). As I said, either way the new, faster memory technologies are not compatible with today's motherboards so either way your machine will not be "top-of-the-line" in 6 months (isn't this always the case?).

I hope this clears some things up for you.