new system: need advice

[jyoungkin]

Like many, I plan to get a new system soon, where soon =<3 months from now. I am most interested in the price/performance metric and long-term viability for deciding between components. For chipset I see: nFORCE 2 vs. 845PE vs. "Granite Bay" vs. 850e (Rambus). For CPU: AMD XP 2100+ vs. AMD XP 2600+ 333 MHz FSB vs. Intel P4 2.4GHz 533MHz FSB. Quality PC3200+ modules seem better than PC1066 in the price/perf department but I am open on this.

Some questions: Is it wise to combine an AMD XP 2100 w/ a NForce 2 board like the ASUS A7N8X and 2x256MB Corsair PC3200 CAS2 modules? Will the XP 2100's 266MHz bottleneck the memory or can the ASUS board force the XP to work at the Corsair pace? I'm talking about OC'ing now and I don't have any experience, I've only read a bit about it.

Honestly, are the AMD offerings comparable to what Intel has OUT now for about the same $? I ask b/c it seems AMD is beat at their own game. Thanks all.

 

[Cerb]

The AMD stuff for the same amount of money is much better. However, you might want to restart this thread...you'll likely get some helpful replies if we knew what you were going to use the comp for.

 

[gaidin123]

Welcome to the AT forums! I'd definitely take Cerb's advice if I were you and detail what you mainly plan on using this system for. All of the platforms and combinations you mentioned are the *correct* choice for certain people with certain needs.

For example, if you want the absolute pinnacle of P4 performance right now you will need to buy an 850E motherboard along with PC1066 RDRAM. That's not what you see people talking about constantly around here and on the net though...Integration of other features such as firewire, dual NICs on the nForce 2, and Serial ATA are kind of the in vogue thing right now. If you want a decent box now and plan on upgrading again in a year though, you will get another recommendation. If you plan on keeping the machine for 3 years you will get another.

Personally I'm looking forward to some unique systems that may be produced with the nForce2 chipset (ie Shuttle's SN41 G2) and especially Intel's Granite Bay chipset. There's a lot of hype about it out right now but seeing as how the P4's performance is castrated if you use any DDR RAM P4 board, a dual channel DDR solution like Granite Bay (and the follow ups by Sis and Via) are sure to make the P4 market very interesting within the next few months.

If you check out some reviews on the nForce2 boards coming out you will probably get some pretty detailed answers to your questions. Both the nForce (not using integrated video) and the nForce2 chipsets provide more usable bandwidth than an Athlon can handle. Getting a 166Mhz FSB athlonXP will let you use more of the spare bandwidth. Both an nForce2 system or Via KT333/400 system, can run the RAM at higher speeds than PC2100 which is the maximum bandwidth that stock 133Mhz FSB Athlon can use (not including bandwidth needed for onboard peripherals). The benefit you gain from fast RAM in these systems is less than if you were running an Athlon at >133Mhz FSB (ie overclocking the FSB) in tandem with faster memory.

For a super cheap solution I'd recommend snagging an Athlon 1600+ as most can make it to 166Mhz FSB with no problems on boards that support it. For $53 or so how can you go wrong?

But yes please detail for us what you would use this system for for a much more specific recommendation.

Gaidin