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New PC Build - suggestions?

S

Splat

Junior Member
Greetings,

I'm looking into buying components to assemble a system build this weekend (4/10/04) and am seeking any expert opinions on my configuration thus far. The area I'm having the hardest time with is my memory selection. Supposedly the motherboard I've picked can support this fast memory, but is the memory a good pick? Take a peek and post your thoughts on this - thanks!

Purpose of system: Home system that can handle lots of BF1942 as well as other multimedia well.

Video - SAPPHIRE ATI RADEON 9800PRO Video Card, 128MB DDR, 256-bit, DVI/TV-Out, 8X AGP -BULK -OEM
Sound - Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 PCI Sound Card, Model "SB0244" -OEM
Memory - OCZ Performance Series Dual Channel Kit 184 Pin 1GB(512MBx2) DDR PC-4200- Retail
Memory Link PC4200
CPU - Intel Pentium 4/ 3.2C GHz 800MHz FSB, 512K Cache, Hyper Threading Technology - Retail
Harddrive - WD 160 Gig 7200rpm 8meg, SATA
Drive - SONY Black 1.44MB 3.5inch Floppy Disk Drive, Model MPF920, OEM
I'll be using my old DVD and cr-rw drives as supplements too.
Joystick - Logitech Freedom 2.4 Cordless Joystick USB -RETAIL
Motherboard - ASUS 875P Chipset Motherboard for Intel Socket 478 CPU, Model "P4C800-E DELUXE"
Case - CHIEFTEC Purple ATX Mid Tower Case with 450W PSU, Front USB 2.0 and FireWire, Model "ATX-601AE"
Fans - KINGWIN 80mm Ball Bearing Case Fan, Model "F-01B-3PIN".
Cooling - I'd love to get the Aerocool Tower, but I'll wait for now.

Most everything I have is probably coming from Newegg except the harddrive.

Thanks for your thoughts,

Splat


 
i would really consider an athlon 64 3000, unless you just encode all day long.

a gig of mushkin 3500 level I is very quality stuff BTW
 
I've heard some really good things about the Athlon 64 series, but I haven't pursued it too much since I'm not very familiar with AMD. I had a bad experience with a Cyrix POS a few years back and decided to stick with Intel. Are the AMD chips better than the P4 chips at this time?
 
Originally posted by: Splat
I've heard some really good things about the Athlon 64 series, but I haven't pursued it too much since I'm not very familiar with AMD. I had a bad experience with a Cyrix POS a few years back and decided to stick with Intel. Are the AMD chips better than the P4 chips at this time?
Click to expand...

browse
 
i've got a personal campaign going for the death of the floppy drive... but that's me (USB keys are better, IMHO)

if you still use floppies, cool... otherwise the drive needs to die
 
i like your setup, but for gaming the athlon64 is much faster (intel = amd in quality, so no reason to avoid amd cpu's)

but personally i would change a few things
athlon64 3200+ or 3000+
asus k8v motherboard

and with the amd setup you wont need the pc4200 ram (i would personally get some nice corsair, mushkin, or crucial pc3200)


 
Originally posted by: shady06
dude, the 3.2C has a multipler of 16. why would you get pc4200?

even if you can overclock it 4 ghz, all you need is pc4000 (250*16)

edit: this is what i use: http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=20-144-517&depa=1

cheaper than most any pc4000 and yet it is rated to cas2.5
Click to expand...


** This is exactly what I was looking for, a rationale for choosing fast memory. I am considering overclocking, but that will be down the road, I'll be loving life at 3.2ghz since I have a 933mhz at home. Is Geil a pretty good company for Ram? I know of Corsair and OCZ.

** For the AMD dude below, Thanks for the link. I'll be doing more research on the Athlon 64 3200+, its similar in price and looks like a good performer.
 
I thought this was interesting - off Tom's Hardware Guides:

Article Info
Revving up in the New Year: AMD Athlon64 3400+ versus Intel's P4 3.2 GHz
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Created:
January 6, 2004
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By:
Patrick Schmid
Bert Töpelt
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Category:
Processors
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Summary:
The Athlon64 3400+ sure is fast, but can it beat the 3.2 GHz Pentium4 performance-wise?

Conclusion: More Speed Is Good

A close look at all the benchmark results reveals that the new Athlon64 just barely earns the performance rating 3400+. Out of 32 benchmarks, only 13 were decided clearly in favor of AMD's new contender. If you were to evaluate each of the 41 individual disciplines, the result would be even poorer.

Two things should be considered here, however: for one, the big "64 bit" unknown remains a non-factor and for another, the benchmarks in which the Athlon64 shines are significant. In practically all of the gaming benchmarks, the 3400+ is able to beat its archrival Pentium 4 - sometimes soundly. X2, Warcraft III, Unreal Tournament 2003, Splinter Cell, Serious Sam, Gunmetal, Comanche and Aqua Mark: the Pentium 4 has to concede victory in all of them.

---------------
** SO it looks like the Athlon64 is great at gaming, but thats about it for right now. I suspect a new 64 O/S would kick it up a notch...BAM!
 
I think that the Purple Chieftec case is due to the influence of your wife. ;D

I also think that this computer purchase may be a direct result of your desire to show up a friends Scr34m1n 1337 comp. Tsk tsk tsk.
 
Purple is cool. Sure beats my cruddy looking beige dell. I also like that for under 100, this case comes with a window on the side, a 400+Watt PS, and a drive cover to keep my 18month old from turning my machine off when I'm gaming...YIKES!!

Why build now? - I'm just getting to the point where I'm hitting the "doesn't meet minimum requirments to run game" issue (like on BFV). That and I hate how long it takes me to load BF1942 - once I'm there I usuallly rock though. :evil:

[AK NLB] Splat for all you BF players out there.
 
LotharJade - This is a forum for people to help me with a system design, if you have nothing constructive to add, then don't rant.

Back to the Memory selection:
Is PC4000 what I should be using? I see most all the shops that build computers sticking with pc3200 and pc3500 for now...is that because it is cheaper or is the performance pretty much the same?

I see lots of different marketing terms tossed out there.....EL, low latency, type I vs. Type 2, and cas ratings, etc. Are their any other recommandations on solid performing Ram?
 
Hey Splat,

I will also be building a computer in the near future (most likely by the end of the month.) Unless you are doing a lot of encoding (as mentioned above) the Athlon64 is faster in most everything else. IMHO Tom's Hardware used to be a decent site for hardware reviews, but has gotten very biased towards certain hardware and manufactures and usually doesn't paint a fair picture to AMD. I would highly recommend reading Anand's reviews and use those as a basis for your decision, Anandtech's reviews are very informative and seem to also be very impartial.

That said, here is the specs of the computer I will be putting together (I am waiting for the NForce 250 series motherboards to be released.)

Athlon64 3200+ (or possibly 3400+ if there is a price drop.)
Asus NForce 250 motherboard (I would recommend the Asus KV8 if you need to build now.)
1GB PC-3500 Mushkin or OCZ
1 or 2 74GB Western Digital Raptors (can't decide if I want to go RAID again or not.)

One other thing you might want to consider... the new generation of graphics cards are coming out in just a couple of weeks. Even if you don't want to drop the dough for a new gen. card, the 9800 that you are looking at right now will probably drop in price significantly at that time. I would use some old video card for a couple of weeks and then reap the sweet goodness a new generation of cards brings to current card prices.

Just some thoughts...

Schnieds
 
Not sure I'll want to wait for a new video card since that one I'm using is a GeForce2 64meg and it is barely getting me by for gaming. I'm looking to purchase this weekend and I don't think $207 or so for a 9800 pro is too bad. I originally wanted to get the 9800XT, but I just can't justify the 200+ price increase for a little more performance that games can't utilize much.

I've done more research on AMD and they certainly seems like a good CPU manufacturer and the testing I've seen indicates they will run most games faster. I'm still undecided if I will go with a 3.2C Northwood or a 3200+ at this time. Most of the tests I've seen show them neck and neck for general things. I do enjoy playing games, but we also use the computer for Photoshop, MS Office, and other things like burning DVDs, MP3's, and internet. To be honest, I'd be happy with either since both will be a substantial upgrade from my P3 933mhz, 512ram.

I've read that the AMD chips tend to run cooler than the p4's. I know both come with a stock heat sink and fan, but is 3rd party cooling like Aerotechs HT-101 recommended? I know it will be for sure If I overclock.
 
I agree with everyone the Amd solution is best now but realistically it's close enough.


How much are you spending on this rig?

Tom
 
As the original configuration exists, I'm looking at $1,438.46 Est Total with shipping.

I'll look into modifing the Memory and pricing out the 3200+ and motherboard to see the differences. That is prob what will ultimatly make the decision if all else is pretty much equal.
 
You can get an aftermarket cooler if the retail one seems loud, and I wouldn't know, since I got the OEM one (there was no retail version available when I got mine, first day for the 3000+), but I have heard they are fine.
 
I have heard some complaints about the Sapphire 9800's not having high enough of a quality fan and the fan quiting. I also noticed that On the Anandtech buying guide they are suggesting a PowerColor Radeon 9800 PRO or XT. I can not see buying one of the fastest processors from Intel then spending less money on the video card. It should be reversed. Spend a little less money on the processor and more on the video card.
 
athon64 totally dominates in gaming, for most other apps the athlon64 is still faster (but by a small margin)
the only exception is encoding, in which case the athlon64 is slower (but again, its only slower by a small margin)

athlon64 is also more future proof

athlon64 also runs cooler

athlon64 = P4 in stability, ease of installation, ease of setup.


IMHO athlon64 is a very easy choice
 
Originally posted by: Boonesmi
athon64 totally dominates in gaming, for most other apps the athlon64 is still faster (but by a small margin)
the only exception is encoding, in which case the athlon64 is slower (but again, its only slower by a small margin)

athlon64 is also more future proof

athlon64 also runs cooler

athlon64 = P4 in stability, ease of installation, ease of setup.


IMHO athlon64 is a very easy choice
Click to expand...

longhorn will not be out until 2006 in which case both CPUs will be pretty much obsolete

Cooling should be be a problem for the C series. mine idles in the mid 30's, 48C under full load
 
Originally posted by: shady06
Originally posted by: Boonesmi
athon64 totally dominates in gaming, for most other apps the athlon64 is still faster (but by a small margin)
the only exception is encoding, in which case the athlon64 is slower (but again, its only slower by a small margin)

athlon64 is also more future proof

athlon64 also runs cooler

athlon64 = P4 in stability, ease of installation, ease of setup.


IMHO athlon64 is a very easy choice
Click to expand...

longhorn will not be out until 2006 in which case both CPUs will be pretty much obsolete

Cooling should be be a problem for the C series. mine idles in the mid 30's, 48C under full load
Click to expand...

athlon64 runs cooler, which means during the summer my PC room doesnt get as hot 🙂
and winxp 64bit is expected this year, and more and more games and apps are going 64bit (making athlon64 much more future proof)

 
Here is a final update to let all of you know what we ended up doing.

- Processor: After much discussion, I decided to stay with the p4 3.2. It's pretty close in comparison and I've always liked Intel's quality. THe AMD 64 64 3200+ and the p4 3.2 were pretty much identical in performance - not always, but pretty darn close.

- Memory: took a suggestion and changed my PC Memory to the GEIL PC 4000 1 gig - It's awesome!

- Video: I selected a PowerColor Radeon 9800Pro. It came with a better warranty and more bundled software than the sapphire one.

- Case: They were out of my original choice of a chieftec Purple dragon case. I was thinking they were kinda plasticy-cheapy feeling on the door anyways. I changed my case to a silver all aluminumThermaltake Xaser III and added a blue light to it. Looks awesome, I'll try to get a picture up shortly. The case was so light....only 8.8lbs, which really make it cheaper to ship to Alaska!

- Motherboard: The ASUS P4C800-E DELUXE was about 180 while the ABIT ICG-7 was about 140 on sale. Pretty much the same features I wanted, but for 40 less. The board was easy to install and it works great.

- Audio: I upgraded the audio selection to an Audigy 2 ZS instead of a Audigy 2 OEM. I got more games and a slightly better card for a few bucks more.

I order the items from Newegg and they were delived to my door 2 days after they shipped (I live in Alaska-so that is pretty darn good). The only problem I had was with the case. It had a slight crack on the door and Newegg is taking care of it. I was a bit suprised at how much more wiring I needed to do since my last build since the case has a 4 fan controller unit and a cpu monitor. Neddless to say, I finally conquered the wiring and have that bad boy up and running. As far as getting the harddrives and software loaded, it was the easiest builds I've done yet. I especially liked that my ABIT board came with sata power adapters, lots of cables, and a really cool IDE to SATA converter unit that hooks on the back of my old hard drive (used a a spare now).

I was able to load BF1942 - WOW, what a differance from my old p3 933. I'm able to play much more effectivly now.

** Again, I'd like to thank eveyone who helped me out with discussions and suggestions. As you can see, this directly affected several of my descions in the end. Everyones support and approval of the newer AMD64 3200+ gave me much more insight and made it much harder to pick one or the other for a cpu. I'll prob be building again in 3-4 years anyways, so by then their may actually be products out there for the 64 bit applications, but as of now their aren't any.

THANKS!
 
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