Please critique my dream machine...

[wpenhall]

Ok - I have a few bucks to spend, but funding is, of course, not unlimited. Here's what I came up with. All prices are Newegg's.

- AMD Athlon 64 3000+, 512KB L2 Cache, 64-bit Processor - OEM ($211)
- CHAINTECH nForce3 150 for AMD Socket 754 CPU, Model "ZNF3-150 ZENITH" -RETAIL ($179.99)
- Corsair XMS Extreme Memory Speed Series, 184 Pin 512MB DDR PC-3500 - OEM ($153)
- ATI RADEON 9800PRO Retail ($298)
- Antec 380W Power Supply, Model "TRUE380" -RETAIL ($55)
- Western Digital Raptor 36.7GB 10,000RPM SATA Hard Drive, Model WD360GD, OEM ($124)
- Thermaltake SILENT BOOST Cooler for AMD AthlonXP up to 3400+ -RETAIL ($26.99)
- Cooler Master Wave Master Case, Model:TAC-T01-E1C, Retail ($151)
- Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack SP1a - Full Version OEM ($139)

The whole thing together is $1338. I mainly want it for video encoding and games (especially Call of Duty and Microsoft Flight Sim 2004), but I also wouldn't mind dabbling in a bit of overclocking. I've yet to bother (my current proc is an XP 2200+ which I've read has about ZERO headroom), but I wanted to give myself plenty of room to experiment which is why I choose the more expensive RAM. Is this Corsair a good selection? Would I also get good results with a cheaper stick? It's my understanding that this proc is single-channel and only requires a single stick - is this correct?

Also, has anyone heard anything about the Antec power supply? I want a good, QUIET, PS and someone recommended this one on the forums. Newegg's reviews had a few horror stories, however. What do you think of the cooler?

As far as the OS goes, maybe I should hold out for the 64 bit version of WinXP and just put on my current copy of Win 2k for now? I could then put that money into getting another Raptor and do a RAID 0 - now that would be sweet! I currently have an extra WD 1200JB that I can plunk in there for storage. I'll keep doing my CD and DVD burning on my current rig, so I'll probably just put in some cheap DVD drive for now.

Anyway, open for comments, suggestions, etc. Thanks!

 

[newbiepcuser]

For video editing, wouldn't it be better to go with 1GB of memory.

 

[wpenhall]

Well, you'd think so but on my current system with 512k, I've noticed that Premiere doesn't use it all (from Task Manager). I peak out at about 400mb. The files that I edit aren't usually longer than about 30 min, however, which may account for it...

[Edited to correct typo]

 

[high]

Thermaltake SILENT BOOST Cooler for AMD AthlonXP up to 3400+ -RETAIL ($26.99)

will that fit an a64?

 

[nick1985]

i say go for a gig of ram

 

[mcveigh]

via or sis chipset. read anands review.

more mem

 

[RaNDoMMAI]

wow thats alot like mine

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=27&threadid=1218572

i orginally wanted corsair xms, but i changed my mind for kingston from recommentions

~RaNDoM

 

[jdogg707]

You definitely want 1GB RAM, try something like This for only $52.00 more than your current selection and should increase overall performance quite a bit now and in the future. You may also want to look at something like an Asus K8V Deluxe as it is a little cheaper, should offer better performance if not overclocking. As far as the CPU Cooler, you'll need to get the K8 Silent Boost for it to work with your chip. If you already have Win2K, just wait for Windows XP 64-Bit Edition, it will be a more worth while upgrade. Other than that, the system looks good...

 

[wpenhall]

Thanks everyone for your suggestions. Based on your recommendations and a little more research, I'll change the cooler and bring the RAM up to 1 GB. jdogg707 recommended PC-3200 RAM - would that be ok for moderate overclocking, or should I really trade up to PC-3500?

I did read some of Anandtech's reviews, and it is my understanding that the Chaintech board is the only one so far that is verified to have an AGP/PCI bus lock. Anandtech's Abit KV8-MAX3 review notes that none of the K8T800 boards have an AGP/PCI bus lock, which they consider a major fault. Since I'll probably only do moderate overclocking, I don't know if this is really relevant to me, but I'd rather not have the limitation if all else is equal. I realize that Anandtech's Chaintech review is a couple months old, but they still rated it as the best of the bunch. It sure seems to have all the features I could ever want including, at minimum, Gigabit LAN, high-end audio, 1394, and SATA RAID.

McVeigh - What is wrong with the nForce chipset right now that makes you recommend the VIA or SiS? And which boards using those chipsets would you recommend?

jdogg707 - Are you saying that the ASUS K8V has better performance at stock speeds than the Chaintech?

Thanks again for your suggestions, everyone. This is extremely helpful.

 

[gsellis]

I 3rd or 4th the 1GB of memory. I don't know Premiere, but for my system, I will use the ASUS PC-DL with a dual 2.66 or 2.88 Xeon setup. Since I use Pinnacle Liquid Edition, the video card is good.

You definitely do not have enough storage. The 120 is too easy to fill. That is less than 10 hours of video and half that if you consider project space (for those wondering ~13GB = 1 hr of DV25/DV version 2 video). Add 2 200GB drives, make sure your case has spaces for 4 HDs (know nothing about yours and too lazy to look at the moment ), and with 4 drives, a powered video card, a DVD burner, do you have enough power at 380W?

On another note, one of the perennial folks here just mentioned that a NDA NLE suite supports HD and XP-A64. Don't know what, but this rig you have could soon be a real gas! But you need more memory and storage.

Oh, Pioneer's A07/107 releases this month. Unlike other 8x's announced, it also supports 8x -R (Plextor, et al, 8x is only in +R). You might want to wait for that. But, you can get a deal on a 4x right now.

 

[wpenhall]

Gsellis - Thanks for the input. My current rig has 300 GB of storage - more than I need for editing. It also has the Optorite 4x DVD multiformat Burner. I want my new system to be very "clean" so I'll do my editing and encoding on the new sys, but transfer the final file over my LAN to the old sys for burning. I don't typically edit video of more than 30-45 minutes, so the transfer won't be too painful. If I put one of my 120's in my new system, it should be enough. I also keep all my raw footage and final edits on DV tapes (and DVDs), so I don't need HD space to store all that. As far as a new DVD burner goes, my Optorite will hold me until the dual-layer burners come out I'll probably just put in a cheap, generic DVD-ROM into the new system. I will definitely look for 64bit NLE software, however. The decreased encoding times are really just a bonus, however. I really want a nice new system for max gaming performance (especially MS Flight Sim). My GF3 and the painful terrain load times just aren't cutting it anymore...

Thanks for the input!

 

[Whitedog]

Why the small hard drive? Are you doing anything that requires mega access times? If you already have a ton of disk space (including a WD1200JB), I would just use that as the drive.

Those small raptor sata drives are not really ideal for a regular PC but more ideal for something like a database server or file servers on large node networks.

With the speed todays 7200 8MB IDE's are cranking out, they are VERY sufficient for even the top end "PC's".

I "had" 10krpm U160 scsi's in my PC. I replaced them all with WD*JB's. VERY satisfied with that.


My .02 - I don't consider small "noisy" hard drives to be a "dream machine" item.

 

[jdogg707]

Originally posted by: wpenhall
Thanks everyone for your suggestions. Based on your recommendations and a little more research, I'll change the cooler and bring the RAM up to 1 GB. jdogg707 recommended PC-3200 RAM - would that be ok for moderate overclocking, or should I really trade up to PC-3500?

I did read some of Anandtech's reviews, and it is my understanding that the Chaintech board is the only one so far that is verified to have an AGP/PCI bus lock. Anandtech's Abit KV8-MAX3 review notes that none of the K8T800 boards have an AGP/PCI bus lock, which they consider a major fault. Since I'll probably only do moderate overclocking, I don't know if this is really relevant to me, but I'd rather not have the limitation if all else is equal. I realize that Anandtech's Chaintech review is a couple months old, but they still rated it as the best of the bunch. It sure seems to have all the features I could ever want including, at minimum, Gigabit LAN, high-end audio, 1394, and SATA RAID.

McVeigh - What is wrong with the nForce chipset right now that makes you recommend the VIA or SiS? And which boards using those chipsets would you recommend?

jdogg707 - Are you saying that the ASUS K8V has better performance at stock speeds than the Chaintech?

Thanks again for your suggestions, everyone. This is extremely helpful.

The Via chipset with the Socket 754 chips will run faster most of the time, due to the Via chipset taking full advantage of the Hyper Transport Bus @ 1600MHZ opposed to the nForce3 only using 600MHZ...if you don't get the Asus, look for one comparable to the Chaintech using either the Via or Sis755 chipsets, either one will perform better. Also, if you are going to OC, grab some PC3500, you can find some with good timings for around the same amount of money.

 

[wpenhall]

Originally posted by: Whitedog
Why the small hard drive? Are you doing anything that requires mega access times? If you already have a ton of disk space (including a WD1200JB), I would just use that as the drive.

Those small raptor sata drives are not really ideal for a regular PC but more ideal for something like a database server or file servers on large node networks.

With the speed todays 7200 8MB IDE's are cranking out, they are VERY sufficient for even the top end "PC's".

My biggest annoyances with my current system (Athelon XP 2200+, Epox 8K5A3+, 512 MB Samsung PC2700 RAM, GF3 Ti200 video, 2xWD 1200JB HDs, 1xMaxtor 60 GB 5400RPM HD) are terrain load times for MS Flight Sim (can take upwards of 3-4 minutes) and low frame rates. The satellite terrain can consist of tens of thousands of small files which have to be loaded at once; it seems to me that the Raptors in a RAID 0 array would load them much faster than a single PATA. I was envisioning putting my OS and Flight Sim on the SATA array - for which 36GB is plenty of space. I would keep my DV, media files, music, and everything else on one of the 1200JBs.

Admittedly, I haven't done my homework yet to really look at the difference in transfer speed numbers between a PATA and a SATA RAID 0 config. I assumed it would be significant, but I haven't actually looked at the numbers. It would be worth it to me to get those load times down to a minute or less.

Although it would be much fun to build a new computer, I was also thinking that to solve these issues with my current system, all I would really need is a better video card and faster hard drive access. So I could just buy the 9800 Pro and a SATA controller card with RAID capability to upgrade my current machine. After that, my processor would probably be the bottleneck, but these upgrades might be enough to last me until the next big things - PCI express and true 64-bit computing.

Originally posted by: jdogg707
The Via chipset with the Socket 754 chips will run faster most of the time, due to the Via chipset taking full advantage of the Hyper Transport Bus @ 1600MHZ opposed to the nForce3 only using 600MHZ...if you don't get the Asus, look for one comparable to the Chaintech using either the Via or Sis755 chipsets, either one will perform better. Also, if you are going to OC, grab some PC3500, you can find some with good timings for around the same amount of money.

Thank you for the clear explanation. :light:

 

[Dunbar]

I have a very similair setup to you with a 10k rpm SCSI drive (Atlas 10k II) and play MSFS. I would add the 10,000 rpm drive first and see if it helps. If you aren't satisfied, add the video card next and if you're still not satisfied build a new machine. MFS 2004 is more processor intensive so a video card isn't going to help a whole lot. Then ugrade your sytem when the next (all new) flight simulator comes out. RAID isn't going to help in loading a bunch of small files, rotation speed will. I believe all 7200rpm SATA drives right now are simply bridged PATA drives so the performance difference will be small (if anything.)

 

[Whitedog]

My guess is your bottle neck is your CPU and Video Card for MSFS.

It's nothing for a computer to grab 10,000+ small files off a hard drive. The big thing is the Program doing a lot of crunching trying to piece them all together into a huge grid of graphics.

It's just like loading a level in any 3d video game... most of your "wait" time isn't it retrieving the data from the hard drive, it's "building" the level... putting all the pieces together.

I don't know how a A64 3000+ will fare... but something like a P4-3ghz/800 will whip the tar out of that 2200+ you are running now. Especially with a game like MSFS.

I'm unsure how much a video card will do though as Dunbar mentioned.

If I were you, I would "start" with a new Mobo+CPU setup and see how that goes... Then I'd add new components as needed... Probably the Video card too as a GF3-ti200 is Way outdated.

Good luck!

 

[fleflikr]

more ram

definately more power......antes 430 true power

scratch the xp pro and use the home version

 

[Lyfer]

Wait for better board support if you plan on overclocking. Sis 755 boards are starting to show up slowly now.

 

[wpenhall]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone! All of you have certainly given me much to think about. I was thinking that my GF3 is the real bottleneck in my system, and that my proc is still powerful enough such that I would see a real difference by upgrading my video card. If Whitedogg is right, my processor is more of a bottleneck than I thought.

Perhaps I'll follow Dunbar and Whitedogg's advice, but still start with the video card. If I don't see much improvement, then add a SCSI hard drive, and then build a new system.

One other question - someone told me that due to the large terrain areas, MSFS is one of the few games that can really benefit from a 256 MB video card. Would other people second that, or would a 128 probably serve me just fine?

Thanks again!