System Critique please

[Jbroad572]

Well, I had to sell my Apple Powerbook for financial reasons and am now planning to build my PC. Here is what I have so far:
Asus P4C800-E Deluxe edition - $174 on NewEgg

Intel Pentium 4 540 3.2 (Prescott core) $220 (Pc club)

Corsair XMS PC4000 184 1GB (512x2) Memory $293 (new egg)

NEC 16x Double Layer DVD+/- Drive Black Model ND-3500A ($89 New Egg)

Lite-On Black 52X32X52X16 Combo Drive, Model SOHC-5232K, OEM Bulk Pack ($41.50)

Western Digital Raptor 74GB - $175.99 (NewEgg) or 36GB for $113
Western Digital 120GB <$100
Fortron 530W Power Supply, Model "FSP530-60GNA" -RETAIL $75.50


Still have to add a case, fans, heatsinks, etc. I think this will be the core. Let me know if u can find better prices


I'll just use the onboard video for awhile, and I'm also planning to purchase the Dell 2001fp. I am planning to buy in stages. I think I will eventually end up with a water cool setup[. Just have to budget it all in there.
Am I missing anything? This will not be used to game too heavily, but I do plan on OCing it, hopefully to reach 4ghz.

 

[nick1985]

have you considered an athlon64?

 

[Jbroad572]

No, never thought about one.

 

[Mik3y]

you should consider one. they're superior in performance to its intel rival in most things except encoding/decoding for socket 754 vs 478.

 

[Jbroad572]

No other suggestions or comments? I'm looking for a case for it all now. Considering the Tsunami at the moment.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

I recommend athlon 64 too. Go with either a msi neo plat or asus k8n-e motherboard if you go that route. I'd go with the 74 gig raptor or maybe 2 36 gig ones raided. If you only need 36 megs for your games/os then that's fine too.

 

[Wahsapa]

i thought the P4 520 was socket 755? it wont fit in your socket 478 mobo.

if your on a budget you might as well get a Mobile Athlon XP 2400-2600+ and overclock it on a Abit NF7-S v2

you can find a gig of ram for under 200 dollars

i like seagate harddrive and raptors are over rated

 

[Jbroad572]

Why would you chose Athlon over Pentium? I don't care too much about price, well I do, but don't want that to determine what cpu I go with. I would like to hit 4ghz and with a watercool setup, it seems like that's within my reach.

 

[FreshFish]

What good is "4GHz" if your system is still running slower than an analogous a64 system?

Are you going for looks with the case? If so, Tsunami's are pretty sweet. If you dont care too much about the look though, Antec has good prices and great PSU's I hear.

 

[Gerbil333]

Originally posted by: Jbroad572
Why would you chose Athlon over Pentium? I don't care too much about price, well I do, but don't want that to determine what cpu I go with. I would like to hit 4ghz and with a watercool setup, it seems like that's within my reach.

Uhhh..."Why would you choose a Pentium over an Athlon" is a better question. Check out some benchmarks. The Athlon 64 will own a P4 for gaming and most other tasks. Only go with Intel if you'll be encoding/rendering.

 

[stevty2889]

If it is a P4 540 then it is socket 775, so it won't work with the motheboard you chose..and if you really want to overclock, you don't want socket 775 anyway as the chipset has a built in overclocking limiter.

 

[Wahsapa]

ok so. you want to hit 4ghz but the cpu your trying to do it on has an automatic overclock lock on the chipset it uses, so thats not going to work. so if you want that processor, your going to have to spring for a newer motherboard, which also means.....

i dont see a video card. if your going to use that processor then your going to have to also get a pci-express video card because none of the chipsets that support P4 540's have AGP ports which means.... more money is going to be spent. the P4 540 runs on the 915 which needs pci-e graphics and right now, thats the most expensive platform with the least amount of preformance increase.

oh ya, i dont think that motherboard has onboard video.

theres really no point in trying for 4ghz with no reason to do so, unless you beleive it will enlarge your e-penis.

nobody likes pentiums anymore, they dont offer anything new.

amd athlon 64s on the other hand are the sweetist deal around. 64 bits, on die memory controller, a better pipeline then the P4 at a lower price point. if you feel like you need to over clock just to say you have xxxx overclocked to xxxxx then save some money and get an xp 2600 mobile and an nf7-s, both could be had for under the amount your going to spend on your cpu(540) alone.

you can also get a nf3/kt800pro based board and a a64 2800 for a little over the price of the 540 also.... which is mush more pimper then a pentium.

 

[soulflyfan]

Id definitely go Athlon 64 over the xp or P4 - extra performance down the line in 64 bit apps, no stability issues due to overclocking an athlon XP, and cheaper than the P4 with better performance

The tsunami is a sexy case indeed, if i hadent spanked £80 on a Xaser 3 last year, id get one

If your on a budget, go with value ram rather than XMS - you'll only see difference in overclocking.

 

[Jbroad572]

Ok, so you guys got me thinking about Athlon now.... What are the numbers (ghz wize) That are achievable with the Athlon's? I don't care about money for the cpu, since I was anticipating spending $300+ on it, but if I can get good performance 3.5 ghz+/- a few for cheaper then it might be worth it. I'm curious, now.

 

[nick1985]

dont measure CPU speed by Ghz.

click

why does the 2.2 athlon beat the 3.4EE pentium 4? Ghz are the old n00b way of measuring a CPU speed.

 

[RussianSensation]

EPoX EP-8KDA3J NVIDIA nForce3,Retail Box. - $97 - Review
Kingmax TSOP 512MB DDR4000 - $103 x 2 = $206 - Review
Athlon 3400+ @ 2.4ghz (faster than 3500+) - $284

for a power supply, if you are going to spend near $75, I'd probably get Enermax 470 (dual 12V rails), or Tagan 480 (both available on Newegg). The one you have is excellent for AMD though but lacks on the 12v rail (which affects P4 more and high-end videocards, which you dont seem to need so...)

Why get a lite-on CD-Writer, when the NEC writes at 48x24x48 already? Save $$$ and just get a plain DVD rom (even from the same company) for $25 if you plan to copy CD/DVD to CD/DVD.

Also you don't have to get 3400+ cpu for $280 and you can instead get 3200+ cpu for ~$200 and overclock that but since you have watercooling I can see how you can squeeze maybe 2.7ghz out of it if you started with a 2.4 cpu already. If you want to save then get 300+ for $160 and overclock that to 2.4ghz.

 

[Jbroad572]

So, the higher ghz numbers don't matter like they used to, but moreso how efficient the cpu is? I am not much of a gamer, but more into applications, movies, music. Now that I will have a PC I may game more than I use to, but it will be rare and any decent cpu on the market would allow me to game like I wanted, since I'm not into it that deep.

 

[Jbroad572]

Ok, after doing a little more reading, I do think I will go the Athlon XP route. Not sure if I should do the 3200+ or the 3400+ though. What are the better mobos for these cpu's and what kind of memory is suggested for this system?
Thanks all. I still am a little confused about the Athlon being 2.4ghz outperforming the Pentium 3.2+ ghz cpu. Maybe someone can break it down in dummy terms or maybe this 80 hour work week has screwed with my head and I just need some sleep. G'night

 

[Jbroad572]

Oh yea and I will take your advice, Russian Sensation, regarding the drives, I overlooked that.

 

[pookie69]

Originally posted by: nick1985
dont measure CPU speed by Ghz.

click

why does the 2.2 athlon beat the 3.4EE pentium 4? Ghz are the old n00b way of measuring a CPU speed.

This is very interesting INDEED;

" For all of our benchmarks we used Doom 3's built in timedemo functionality." - AT

XBITS just recently put together their Doom 3 CPU ARTICLE, in which they explain very well EXACTLY what the role of a CPU in Doom 3 is and therefore WHY THE TIMEDEMO IS NOT THE BEST WAY TO BENCH FOR CPU PERFORMANCE.

>>> their results are quite illuminating, and unlike AT's results, do not pay devoted homage to the A64.

Those of you that endlessly keep rattling on and on about how great the A64 is for gaming and how P4s suck need to take at least a look at the benches that XBITS published. Better still would be to have a read, in particular the CONCLUSION ... come to think of it.. i may as well post the damn thing here to make it even easier...

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Conclusion

So we can draw two points from our today?s tests. First, the standard test method that measures the average fps rate when playing a demo cannot be used for a correct comparison of CPU performance in Doom 3. More precise results can be achieved in real gaming environment only. Second, our tests don?t reveal a clear performance leader among the topmost models of the Pentium 4 and Athlon 64 series. It would be imprudent to claim that a particular CPU architecture suits better for playing Doom 3: the Athlon 64 FX-53 is about as fast as the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition and the Athlon 64 3800+ equals the Pentium 4 560. We could continue drawing parallels longer, though.

The older Athlon XP CPU family cannot compete with the new Pentium 4 and Athlon 64 models anymore. In real tests we encountered situations when the fps rate got below the comfortable value of 30 with Athlon XPs. By the way, the same can be seen with Athlon 64 3000+ and 3200+ CPUs. That?s why we recommend you to use Pentium 4 models with frequencies from 3GHz up and Athlon 64 models with ratings from 3200+ up, if you want to be absolutely warranted against any accidental slowdowns.


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[Yanagi]

Originally posted by: Jbroad572
Ok, after doing a little more reading, I do think I will go the Athlon XP route. Not sure if I should do the 3200+ or the 3400+ though. What are the better mobos for these cpu's and what kind of memory is suggested for this system?
Thanks all. I still am a little confused about the Athlon being 2.4ghz outperforming the Pentium 3.2+ ghz cpu. Maybe someone can break it down in dummy terms or maybe this 80 hour work week has screwed with my head and I just need some sleep. G'night

Im gonna go with what I tried to explain to another guy in a previous topic. Its called Yanagis McDonalds Analogy.


quote:

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to put it short. imagine you're going through the drive through on McDOnalds. where you place your order, pay and pick up the food. thats three steps.

If we now look at the intel McDonalds you have 21 different stations. Whereas you have to go through 21 different steps to get your food. to get to the end you have to travel faster to complete all the steps in the same time as the amd route where you only have to complete 12 steps in order to get your food
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And elkinm further elaborated the analogy which you can read here:


quote:

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I really like Yanagi's McDonalds analogy. In a CPU architecture you need to complete every stage of a pipeline in a single clock or you lose it so going back to McDonalds:

You order a sandwich, the order is sent in, someone puts a burger in the oven, when done he gives it to the nest guy who ads the ketchup, then next is the mustard, and then the bun pickles onions ect. And then you have the fries.

The slowest part is the cooking of the burger so a single clock cannot be faster then the time it takes to cook the burger or it wouldn't finish.

What Intel does is spit it up some more like cook the burger on one side, then cook on the other. Since it takes less time to cook only one side, the single clock is shorter allowing for higher frequencies but now you need two clocks to cook the burger.

Then you have other optimizations to have maximum work done in a clock like one can add ketchup, mustard and pickles in the time to cook a burger so that can be just one stage. And the problem with a mispredict is when you guess the person wants mustard when he does not so you have to thro it out and start again.
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I hope that clears things up for ya a bit. I know its hard to understand but I really did try to put it as straightforward as I could. And elkinm did a pretty good job aswell. I think we deserve a sticky

 

[renierh]

Originally posted by: AyashiKaibutsu
I recommend athlon 64 too. Go with either a msi neo plat or asus k8n-e motherboard if you go that route. I'd go with the 74 gig raptor or maybe 2 36 gig ones raided. If you only need 36 megs for your games/os then that's fine too.

i wouldn't go with the raptors. they don't offer a lot of performance difference for their price. i would just stick with a good 7200RPM disk, 160GB is the sweetspot right now. a normal maxtor or seagate is fast enough. just make shure you get a 8MB buffer model.

i'd stick with the P4, but that's just me.

 

[pookie69]

Originally posted by: renierh

Originally posted by: AyashiKaibutsu
I recommend athlon 64 too. Go with either a msi neo plat or asus k8n-e motherboard if you go that route. I'd go with the 74 gig raptor or maybe 2 36 gig ones raided. If you only need 36 megs for your games/os then that's fine too.

i wouldn't go with the raptors. they don't offer a lot of performance difference for their price. i would just stick with a good 7200RPM disk, 160GB is the sweetspot right now. a normal maxtor or seagate is fast enough. just make shure you get a 8MB buffer model.

i'd stick with the P4, but that's just me.

Yes i'd agree there. Raptors aren't all that, but if you did want to get one, stick to the newer 74GB Raptors. No point in messing with the smaller 36GB ones.

I too am going to be sticking with S478 for my next upgrade. The price-to-performance ratio for S478 is the best out there at the moment. Throw in some new low latency PC3200 memory into the mix and a decent mobo, and you have the potential for a very nice o/c'ed system that performs great.

A64s are NOT the only gd things out there as some ppl may lead you to believe. There's no doubting that the A64 CPU architecture is great, but don't get confused into thinking they're the only CPU you need if you want to setup a good gaming system.

 

[Goi]

Originally posted by: Jbroad572
Ok, after doing a little more reading, I do think I will go the Athlon XP route. Not sure if I should do the 3200+ or the 3400+ though. What are the better mobos for these cpu's and what kind of memory is suggested for this system?
Thanks all. I still am a little confused about the Athlon being 2.4ghz outperforming the Pentium 3.2+ ghz cpu. Maybe someone can break it down in dummy terms or maybe this 80 hour work week has screwed with my head and I just need some sleep. G'night

I believe you meant to say Athlon64, because Athlon XPs are really kinda slow now and they don't make a 3400+ model.

Motherboard wise, I'd say get an nforce3-250 based one. MSI has a good one. If you feel like cheaping out, the Chaintech VNF3-250 is an excellent budget board.

As for the slower clocked A64 beating a faster clocked P4, Yanagi has done a nice job explaining. Beyond that, it would take more than a forum post to explain.

 

[pookie69]

Originally posted by: Goi

As for the slower clocked A64 beating a faster clocked P4, Yanagi has done a nice job explaining. Beyond that, it would take more than a forum post to explain.

You AMD fanboys are annoying. You are constantly undermining Intel and P4s and suggesting P4s are somehow miles inferior to A64s. Aside from P4s not being of A64-bit archietecture, they are not. Granted, Intel's 90nm Prescotts are pretty sucky also for what they should be, but that certainly doesn't apply to Northwoods, which are solid performers.

A P4 equivilent AMD CPU IS clocked slower, for the reasons explained by the MacDonald's analogy, but that doesn't mean it will 'beat' an equally matched P4. It depends so much on the type of applications being run - also one cannot simple say "but for games an A64 is better" because although in general that may be true, firstly the difference is not as great as some ppl make out, and secondly is a generalisation and not the case everytime.