Is it worth to upgrade now?

[Jean]

Hi everyone,

Is this the right time to upgrade, since I've seen the price of the CPU ($171 P4 1.4GHz), MOBO and RAM has plunged dramatically? If so, is there any fast, stable mobo (same form factor as ABIT KT7 RAID) out there that would support P4, DDR and RAID? The reason of my move to P4 is the program Media Studio Pro 6.0 render faster with SSE instruction (recommendation from ULEAD). Which of the following DDRAM will you pick PC1600, 2100 or 2400? What's the difference? I've heard a lot about EPOX, unfortunately, the RAID mobo doesn't support DDR.

Any suggestion and additional comments is greatly appreciated.

System1: ABIT KT7 RAID, TBIRDS 800, 32 MB PROPHET II MX RETAIL, 2X128 MB MUSHKIN HIGH PERF CAS 2:2:2, 2X 30GB IBM 75GXP, 1X 9GB QUANTUM FIREBALL+, INTEL PRO+ NIC CARD, SOUNDBLASTER LIVE (NEVER USED).

System2: TYAN S1692D, DUAL PII 266, #9 REVOLUTION 3D, 128MB RAM PC66, 1X 12GB MAXTOR 91296D6, 1X 9GB IBM 370910, SMC EZ-NIC CARD, SOUNDBLASTER 16.

MAIN APPLICATIONS: 3D MODELING, GRAPHICS, DOWNLOAD FILES AND RENDER MOVIES (OVER ONE HOUR LONG).

 

[jamesbond007]

Jean, if you're into 3D modeling and price is not the factor, go for a dual AMD setup. It will be THE fastest setup you can get for dualies. (Quads may differ, but c'mon, folks. Xeons are a lot of $$$) Anyhoo, look for the Tyan K7 Thunder board, which has SMP for Palaminos (the new AMD), SCSI, LAN, and the features go on and on.

The reason I'd reccomend AMD for 3D modeling is because of the higher floating point in their chips. That helps specifically towards the 3D rendering process and will render out quicker than an Intel setup.

Now, I'm personally building a P4, but I don't do 3D rendering myself. P4s are by far not a bad choice, but if you have the dough for a P4, then you're more than likely gonna have enough for a dualie AMD setup. It will cost a tad more, but I'm sure it will be worth it as you will have to wait a lot less.

My $0.02

Good luck!

 

[hojl]

I personally will not buy the current p4 since it will be obsolete soon. I heard the next generation of p4 will be different and that you cannot use the current p4 mobos.

Someone else want to verify this?

 

[jamesbond007]

hojl, you are correct in that statement. However, the current ones utilizing RDRAM will be the fastest performance, until the clocks of the DDR-based ones reach high enough to surpass the performance of RDRAM. I figure, by the time 1.7Ghz is too slow and 512MB of RAM won't be enough and a GF3 is too slow, it's DEFINITLY time to upgrade. I plan to keep my box for a while and don't plan to upgrade, other than HDD space or a DV card or FireWire maybe. Eitherway, the current P4s are PLENTY fast for pretty much everyone, excluding the ones that do 3D rendering, or are very CPU hungry.

The AnandTech review on that recent conference even stated that the new DDR ones are for the budgeted user.

 

[Jean]

jamesbond007:

No offense, but I prefer to stay away from Tyan. Their board is stable but unable to upgrade like others. My Tyan can't even support HD over 9GB in comparison to a Dell PII bought at the same time. The later support all the latest HD without any problem though. Beside their technical support s@ck (based on my personal exprerience). Is there anything close or better than ABIT KT7 RAID that support P3, DDR and RAID? What's in the horizon? If it were you which mobo, cpu and ram will you pick? Since the DDR RAM is quite inexpensive now due to the economy slow down. For speculation purpose, will you buy them now to be able to use them later? Thank you all for your time and help.

 

[jamesbond007]

Jean,
A Pentium 3 will take no advantage of DDR. You may as well save the cash on the DDR motherboard and buy more SDRAM. Check out my sig to see the P4 box I'm working on. It's almost done and will for sure kick some @$$.

You won't go wrong with current P4s, IMHO.

 

[dowxp]

Whats your budget?

 

[Jean]

<< Whats your budget? >>


I would say around $500 max for ram, mobo and cpu.
If it were you what is your upgrading path? I wish to have two systems one Athtlon for 3D MODELING and one Intel for Video editing.

Since I already have an Athtlon, it doesn't make sense to have a second Athlon even though the price is extremely appealing right now. I think I should wait for a good performance, stability DDR mobo with RAID capability (let me know if there is one right now) before upgrading my current Athlon system. What do you guys/girls think?

 

[chainbolt]

If you summarize this, I think a P4 is not a good choice currently, even though it might be the best fit for your needs performance wise. The chip, the board, and the memory you need are not only more epxensive than a AMD DDR solution, you also get a CPU, which will be replaced within this year.

 

[Tripleshot]

Your system 1 looks like a pretty good system. you may want to increase HDD or make a raid array there for performance,but the scale for improving on that dimishes rapidly by tryingto increase CPU speed above 800. Thats my opinion. The cost do not justify the upgrade when comparing price/performance.

System 2 is ready for relacement. It was nice in its day.In fact cutting edge just 2 years ago. Since you are familier with Abit and find SMP a valuable tool, consider this. It should come in within budget and use much of your existing hardware and ram. The jury is still out on the real benifit of DDR over SDRAM att the CPU speeds we have now, and I will never recommend Rambust to anyone. I don't care what platform Rimms run on,I will never, ever support that group of people. I have both the Highpoint 370 raid up and running and promise Raid controller running raid 0. Its a wash between the two. With 7200RPM ATA100,my sytems run FAST. The raid really removes the bottlekneck in performance.

Good Luck

Edit:........When you click on &quot;this&quot; you are routed to Abit site. I was refering to the VP6. You will have to navigate to it. The cut and paste URL must have the page I wanted embedded in the main URL.
Sorry about that.

 

[mlchang]

I wouldn't get a P4 now either. They are about to come up with a die shrink and switching to a micro PGA process I believe to make the chip. So the P4 will soon need a new socket and new motherboards. You wouldn't want to buy something now and be stuck without an upgrade path in less than 6 months...

i845 (chipset with DDR support) isn't supposed to be out until Q1 of 2002. However, you could possibly wait for VIA's DDR P4 chipset. That may be a while in coming as well. Basically, if I were you and I wanted a P4, I would definitely wait until about October or November of next year.

As someone else mentioned dual Athlons will probably perform better for the tasks that you name. Again if you wait a few months, Asus, MSI, Abit, and Giga-byte will have boards out, so you can avoid Tyan. Also, supposedly they will be cheaper than the Tyan is currently with MSI shooting for a target of around 200.

Anyway, I think the best thing for you to do right now is wait.

 

[MadAd]

<< A Pentium 3 will take no advantage of DDR. >>




jamesbond007, can you help me understand that plz? but not here, on this thread here ive got currently trying to understand this area please?

 

[jamesbond007]

Read this here. It can sum it up and give you a better picture of the P3 and DDR as a whole.

Taken from Tomshardware.com:
-----------------------------------------------------
Conclusion - Marginal Advantages to Using DDR SDRAM

This test of 10 boards with Apollo Pro 266 chipsets has proven that for your day-to-day business, using DDR SDRAM memory with the Pentium III doesn't offer any discernible advantages over using SDRAM memory (in combination with the Intel 815). Since Intel still only offers its own 815 chipsets for use with the Pentium III, the Apollo Pro 266 is a viable alternative. Whoever wants to avail themselves of an appropriate board from this test series should select one of the combination boards. In this way, there is no need to purchase expensive DDR SDRAM memory. After all, you've got to spend $60 or more (especially for CL2) for a 128 MB DDR SDRAM module, whereas an SDRAM module only costs $30. In this case, the Shuttle AV32 is worth consideration. With all of its features and its combination interface, we heartily recommend this board.

~Tomshardware.com

 

[Jean]

Thanks for all the help. After reading your post, I am still confused. Can anyone please clear my mind up.

Let me summarize a little bit.

One hand I need a Pentium system for video editing. This can be done by just purchasing 512MB SDRAM PC133 CL2 CRUCIAL or EQUIV., SHUTTLE AV32 with THE FASTEST PIII that I can afford. Am I understand your advices correctly?

On the other hand, my upgrade option for the ATHLON sytem a few month or a year from now will be waiting for MOBO with DUAL TBIRD, RAID and DDR. Is this the way you would do?

One last thing, if it were you, will you buy the PC2100 DDR RAM now just for speculation purpose?

Once again, your time and help is greatly appreciated.

 

[hojl]

okay this is my view on the subject and current situation with the home pc technology if I was in your situation.

I would get stay where I am if you okay with your tbird 800. If not I would get a decent speed tbird 1.2 1.3?

I would wait until nforce by nvidia comes out then get a that mobo. This mobo has dual channel ddr ram. What this means is that theoritically it is faster and wider then even rdram. Get this mobo and a top of the line amd cpu.

If I want a duallie well AMD seems like the way to go also but I would wait for a few months another more mobo choices and revisions are out there.

Intel? well I was an intel fan until recently. With the nforce comming out I am prob gonna buy an AMD system next. Especially if nvidia makes a dullie setup. This is because the next generation of rd-ram is not going to be released until like 2003 and 2005. By then I think sd-ram technology will be better and there will again be no reason to buy rd-ram again. But who knows maybe intel is secretly working on some new chipset or technology to counter the dual channel ddr ram.

 

[Jean]

Someone just suggest a 1.4GHz Palomino with an ABIT KT7A mobo. Especially, he stated that the Palomino support SSE. If this is true, then my problem is solved. I don't need Intel anymore. I just put mobo, RAM, CPU from my system 1 into system 2 and buy the KT7A with a Palomino. What do you think? Is this too good to be true?

 

[Raspewtin]

<< Palomino support SSE >>



really?

 

[IdahoB]

Wow - this is a complex thread.

The Athlon 4 (ie Palomino) supports the full SSE instruction set (not SSE2 though). Combine that with it's faster FPU and you have the best single processor system for intensive floating point work. I can see no reason at all to go for a far more expensive P4/RDRAM solution.

Personally, with the Athlon 4 only just released, and the extremely high price of 512Mb DDR modules, I'd wait for now, and then get a new dual processor Athlon MP system when it's available.

A dual Athlon MP system blows Intel out of the water - wait for the prices to level out, then I really think it's your best bet. The current P4 just doesn't cut the mustard.

 

[AaronP]

one thing I can tell you, I own both a P3 system and a AMD Duron system that I both built myself. The PC system is like a Cadilac (SP) and the Duron system is like a KIA.

AMD may make great processors, but their motherboards and chipsets are trash.

 

[jamesbond007]

I agree with Aaron. I've found that despite VIA's attempts to create a good chipset, they lack the quality found in those of Intel chipsets. I totally agree on the fact that the AMD CPUs are hella tight and are offered at unbeatable prices, but it's the motherboards/chipsets that's keeping them back. Hopefully nVidia's nForce will be AMD's ticket to thier highest success yet to come. I surely wish that some manufacturers would pair up the AMD 760 chipset with AMD's southbridge found on some previous motherboards. Ali Magik lacks performance, VIA lacks compatiblity/stability (IMHO), but get some AMD and nVidia on the motherboard to put the frosting on the cake.

To me, it seems by putting in VIA chipsets, it's like putting an inline V4 engine in a SUV...you don't get the performance that you should be getting or that you need.

My $0.02

 

[AnimEva]

very true, i will never trust via again, personally they suck in my eyes.

 

[Jean]

Thanks to everyone helps.
Your voice has been heard. I will wait until the Nvidia Nforce come out. BTW, when this sweet little baby has been planned to lauch on the market?