Yet another "What should I buy?" topic

[DOOManiac]

Hey guys. First let me preface this with an apology for my nubness. I only really keep up with hardware (other than the occasional glance at GPU benchmarks) when it's time to actually buy stuff, and so I'm a bit out of the game regarding knowing what is new, fast, and good. In the past these boards have always been a tremendous help in narrowing down my selection, and so I turn once again to you guys to point me in the general direction I should go.

It's been awhile (summer of 04, and even then only video card) since my last upgrade, and with Obilvion coming out and a few other games on the horizon, not to mention some extra cash on hand, I figured now would be a terrific time to throw away my hard earned cash.


My current rig is this, which isn't too bad I admit, but still I want to get a new Tiny God:
2.4Bghz Intel P4 (533FSB I think?)
2x512MB = 1GB pc2100 dual channel
MSI Master-L motherboard
PNY GeForce 6800GT AGP
SB Live! 5.1 Value
120GB WD 7200rpm ide HDD (almost full :X)
D-Link 108Mbps wireless
Plextor DVD Burner
And a 3.5 floppy drive!

(As you can tell, I know my current stuff quite well, its just the new stuff that I haven't kept up on. Hell I didn't even realize Intel stopped using ghz as their selling point)

Moneywise I'm pretty good, but if I spent more than $2000 I'd be really pissed at myself unless it was an omgpwn awesome deal.


As far as the usage of the box, primarily it's gaming, though I also do some coding in Visual Studio and/or Dreamweaver. Mainly gaming though. I like to run with all the bells and whistles at at least 50FPS. Fast boot times are nice too. However I'm also a big demander on stability. My current system is rock solid. Never crashed beyond the occassional software app that does it. I definately do not want to go to a less stable system. (I'm looking at you, AMD K6 & Athlon )



So while I'm looking for general suggestions regarding CPU speed and what mobo, i also have a few more specific points in other areas:

1) As for CPU, last I hear the 64-bit ones are still a little bit behind 32-bit in performance of 32-bit apps, and I don't expect to be running any native 64-bit apps soon (unless game developers suddenly start supporting it). But as far as Dual Core stuff goes, I'm ignorant as to any performance gains or losses it causes. If you're running just 1 app that is very processor intensive (like, oh I dunno, games) but not necessarily optimized as much as they could be for dual processors (again, games), is there a performance drop?

2) I'd like to get at least 2GB of uber fast RAM. Nothing too crazy, but faster than this PC2100 crap.

3) My 6800GT, despite being from August of 2004, is still holding up well I think. However it's AGP. All the new mobo's are probably PCIe. Has PCIe gotten to a point where its faster than AGP yet, or is it still in that "well theoretically it can be faster" category? Do I need to update to a 7800GT just for PCIe to go along w/ the mobo? Or should I get an AGP mobo (and then hope that whatever video card comes out in anoter year or two when it is time to retire the 6800 is still plenty fast on AGP)

4) If I do get a PCIe mobo, does it come with old fashioned PCI slots, or will I need to replace my other components like my sound card and wireless card?


5) My 120GB is getting full. And now that I have a x-box 360 with free Media Center Extender functionality, I'm going to be watching more and more content on the HDTV in the living room streamed from my PC, meaning more storage space required. So I'll definately be wanting to get a SATA hard drive, but I'm not sure if I should just get a 500GB 7200MB drive w/ a buttload of cache, or if I should fork out the extra cash for a speedy 10,000RPM drive in addition (for the OS and games, while leaving non-hdd intensive stuff like movies, mp3s, and documents on the 500gb)?

6) Are those new fancy pants SB XFI (or whatever) cards any good? I stayed away from Audigy cause I heard nothing but bad things about them, but I've heard nothing about these new ones. I'm by no means an audiophile, and the 5.1 does just fine on my cheapo $150 5.1 speakers. The only thing is that they're really 6.1 speaker and I just have the other one laying around somewhere, but that isn't really a big deal to me.

7) Should I get a new case, I wonder? I kind of like the Antec P180, but really hate that I'd have to open the door to turn it on and off (which I have to do to sleep at night, the fans make too much noise for me to sleep). Plus it's sexy. And apparently keeps things cool...

8) I'm not at all interested in a RAID, SLI, or overclocking.

9) Should I keep the floppy drive?


Again, thanks in advance for the help guys. I'm sure that I'll get at least a push in the right direction to help me make up my mind. Thanks!

 

[LiquidImpulse]

the answer to ? 4, yes it still does come with PCI expansion slots believe it or not , the newest things these days are the AMD X2's (dual core) and the Opteron's(also dual core). As for the AGP vs. PCI-E its a good idea to upgrade to PCI-E as the video card is AGP is limited to the middle ranged/lower end graphic cards, whereas all the new cards are being released in PCI-E

as for the 10,000 rpm hard drives, i personally wouldnt want to fork out the extra $$$ on those. There is only a slight, if not, miniscule boost in performance from the 10,000 (raptor) rpm hard drives. I'd say, stick with SATA/SATA2, and 7200RPM. Also, RAID should also be something you should consider as you can have 1 hard drive for a) your media stuff ie. movies, games, photos, etc. and b) applications,and the important items here and there

 

[alimoalem]

Originally posted by: LiquidImpulse
Also, RAID should also be something you should consider as you can have 1 hard drive for a) your media stuff ie. movies, games, photos, etc. and b) applications,and the important items here and there

do you know what RAID is? having 2 hard drives doesn't mean running RAID. the most common are having 2 hard drives in a RAID to make them show up as a single drive (so 2 160gb drives will show up as one 320gb drive) or having 2 drives in a RAID to make all your data copied to both drives, for extra security

OP, here are my answers to your questions:
1. you'll want the 64-bit and he dual core. applications are starting to become multi-threaded, including games. the extra core will help a lot here
2. you don't need to get anything too fancy if you're upgrading from 3200; you'll find a great boost even from value ram. this G.Skill Extreme Series DDR400 ($195) or this Corsair XMS ram ($159AR) or this OCZ Platinum ram ($159AR) should suit you very well. they're all CL 2. i'd check out the value ram of all 3 companies too cause timings don't make too much of a difference, and they're usually not worth the extra cost.
3. definitely go AGP. the newest card (and last i believe) made for AGP was the 7800GS. it's more expensive than the 7800GT PCI-e and performs worse. even if PCI-e isn't faster yet, companies are certainly switched over to it. you can get a motherboard (like the ASRock Dual) with both AGP and PCI-e slots if you're still satisfied by your 6800GT. the 7800gt is a good buy, though.
4. the previous poster already answered this but yes.
5. i wouldn't get the raptor. just get a Western Digital SE16 500GB drive (comes with 16mb cache). seagate's 7200.9 isn't bad either.
6. not sure
7. i don't think you specified what case you have but the p180 is a good one. pretty quiet too
8. if you're not overclocking, don't get any DDR500 (PC4000) ram. that's strictly for overclocking. meaning you overclock it yourself to DDR500. get some name brand DDR400 (PC3200) ram.
9. if you already have it, might as well. should you buy a new one? i wouldn't.

hope this helps

 

[alimoalem]

you really need to specify a budget first. is it $2000? or would you prefer to pay less? also, there's a new socket for AMD coming, the AM2. it has 1 more pin for the cpu (940-pin) and supports DDR2 memory instead of DDR. it comes out in the summer. it may be a worthwhile wait

 

[DOOManiac]

Well, basically, discarding budget, what's the best SATA based single cpu non sli right I can get? Something that's not overkill, but is still a hefty system.

As for AMD, well... I still really don't have much confidence in them based off my previous experience with them. I'm not really sure if I'm willing to give them another shot unless they are just substantially better than an Intel CPU. And I'm still not convinced that 64-bit is what I need or want...


I've thought about it more, and I think I'm going to go w/ just a 500GB sata drive, and not bother w/ the 10K RPM one. Likewise, I'll probably just keep my 6800GT and then when it comes time to upgrade that card I'll do both the card and the mobo (and hell, maybe even the CPU again).


Does anyone have any spefic CPU and mobo combinations to recommend, so that I can start review hunting and narrow down my choices a bit?

What are some 'must have' features to even look for nowadays?

 

[DOOManiac]

Sorry to bump an old topic, but I'm still looking for a few solutions...

I read about the new 7900GT cards yesterday on Anandtech. Since 6800GT isn't even on the benchmark pages I'm going to assume it'll be quite a lot better, and if it's only $300 then I might consider shelling out the cash for one... I dunno...


So yeah, going with my previous post, anyone have mobo/cpu and RAM recommendations?

For RAM, is Coursair (or however you spell it) still the best around, or should I go w/ some other brand? Do they have a lifetime warranty like Crucial does/did?

 

[Bobthelost]

Ok, overclocking build:

Opteron 170 (picked over 165 for nicer multiplier)
Epox 9na Ultra (a top notch single card board)
7900GTX or X1900XTX ( chose the ATI if you're not worried about heat/noise, the GTX if a loud graphics card pisses you off)
2GB PC4000 RAM (Not economical, but with a 2K budget you can afford it)
Hard drives: How high is up? Raptors are very fast, and lovely for the boot times, the Raptor 150 is the fastest drive you will find for gaming short of 147GB SCSI. But it does cost $300
PSU 400W Enermax liberty OR Fortron 450W (Enermax is my first choice, but the FSP is very cheap and well regarded)

If you're not overclocking then the advice changes:

CPU: 3800X2 or 4200X2 (if you want to go higher than that then go for it, but the increased cache rarely makes much difference and the price/performance starts getting silly after the 4400X2)
Motherboard: Asus A8N E (I like asus and it's supposed to be rock solid, also has all the bells and whistles, the epox would do fine here too)
RAM PC3200 (buy CAS 2 RAM)

Remaining parts are all the same.

With your budget you could go SLI, but since you're only using a 6800GT and were considering just keeping it then you'll still be (very) happy with a high end single card option.

RAM brands are rather irrelevant as far as i can see, the only differences are in terms of warranties, you can't go wrong with crucial though.