i have $400 to spend, help me decide what to get

[kanezfan]

Here's the deal, I had a 4 GB hard drive. I just got a 30 GB pull from an HP. this drive is 5400 rpm. now at newegg with $400 i can get an abit kr7a, athlon xp 1900, and 256 mb ddr, or i can get same except athlon xp 1600 and a 7200 rpm hard drive. now what do you think, will i benefit more from a faster cpu, or a faster drive? I'm leaning towards the drive myself, but damn that 1900 xp looks tempting.

 

[DN]

How large is the 7200 rpm drive?

 

[kanezfan]

sorry its a 40 gb seagate barracuda, or a maxtor 40gb

 

[ChrisIsBored]

Go for the XP 1600+ or 1700+ and the 7,200 RPM hdd. Your hdd is the bottle-neck of most newer systems now-a-days... so why spend all the money on the CPU when you need a faster hdd...

 

[JOSEPHLB]

Do you want to stay the AMD route, or go with a more stable INTEL solution?
If you have $400.00 to spend, and plan on keeping your other components, here is what I recommend, at under your budget
The 1.6A Intel Pentium 4 should overclock to 2.13 Ghz (133 fsb) with ease (and with the stock heatsink as well)
The Corsair XMS PC 2400 memory is spec'd up to 150 FSB (300 Mhz DDR). The XMS PC2700 stuff is spec'd to 166 FSB (333 Mhz DDR), but will cost a few more pretty pennies

A02213 CORSAIR CM64SD256-2400C2 32X64 XMS2400 256MB CAS2 DDR DIMM Detail Specs $105.60

A15943 ASUS P4B266-C INTEL 845 CHIPSET ULTRA ATA100 ATX FORM FACTOR 1xAGP(4X)/6xPCI/1xCNR/2xDDR (BULK PAK) Detail Specs (CPU TYPE:INTEL PENTIUM 4 - 478PIN) $115.00

A03080 INTEL PENTIUM 4 1.6A GHZ (BX80532PC1600D) W/512K CACHE 400FSB 478-PIN RETAILED (3 YEARS WARRANTY) $150.00

Sub Total $370.60

 

[MadRat]

Your typical, brand new 5400rpm tends to be quieter and so close to the same performance its more of a personal preference than anything. The XP1700+ is ONLY $2 difference from an XP1600+, so perhaps you should go that route?

With that $150 of savings you could go for the "Gainward/Cardexpert GeForce 3 Ti200 64MB (NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 200 GPU), Power Pack Golden Sample, 4ns 64MB DDR. TV-Out. Retail Box." at $149.

JOSEPHLB-

You forgot the harddrive!

 

[JOSEPHLB]

I noticed

Ok.. That is what I recommend, if you dont opt for a new harddrive

Ok... sell that 4 & 30 gb drives.. and if you could spare to push your budget up to $450, then you would be set

You can get a 40GB IBM 7200 RPM drive for under $100

That previous post that chrisisbored stated, was right on the money..

7200 rpm EIDE harddrives are somewhat of a bottleneck in todays lightening fast , high bus speed systems

 

[MadRat]

But the Maxtor at 5400rpm is able to transfer data as fast as a 7500rpm Seagate Barracuda. The advantage of the latter is not speed but quietness, which it is very quiet. You'll have a hard time distinguishing between the startup times of programs from the Maxtor to the Seagate.

If he goes for the Maxtor, 256mb DDR, and the 1700+ then he saves enough to toy with the idea of a GF3 Ti200 w/TV-out card.

 

[Bovinicus]

I would opt for the faster harddrive. It will make much more of a difference than that extra 133MHz will. You could always overclock to make up for the difference anyway. =)

 

[Athlon4all]

Get the 7200 RPM drive. I just now setup a 2nd PC and had to use a 5400RPM and I can tell you, I can definately notice the difference. Get 7200 RPM drive at all costs.

 

[MadRat]

Before you can say the 7200rpm model is faster at transfers at least look it up. The Maxtor HDs have a denser platter than what many other HD manufacturers use, meaning they read/write faster than the competition. Besides, with 256mb of RAM in Win98 or Win2k he won't necessarily care if its even 10% different due to so much memory.

 

[nirgis]

Another vote for the hard drive. The difference between 5400 and 7200 is much more obvious than 300mhz at that speed

 

[AGodspeed]

Everyone has said basically everything about which HD to get, etc. But just to make sure you choose the right CPU and MB...

You should only go the AMD route if you're not going to be doing a lot of overclocking. If you're going to be doing some extreme overclocking go with the setup JOSEPHLB recommened.

Good luck!

 

[kanezfan]

not going to do any overclocking, i don't have much experience with it. I appreciate all your responses. I wont go intel, i just dont trust them anymore. I just see them as overpriced and underperforming.

 

[PlatinumGold]

kanez

look at my sig. see my two systems? i find the P4 1.6a @ 2.24 to be much faster than my XP1700+.

obviously my p4 isn't faster in 3d graphics (geforce MX vs ATI 8500 no way). but it's quicker w/ boot up times, changing apps, opening closing apps etc.