New system, what to get?

[auger 0]

Going to build my first sorta-kick-*** home system. Long overdue. I'm leaning Athlon XP 2100+ w/ Asus A7V266e motherboard, Volcano 7 Fan, Enermax 350 watt ps and 1G Micron PC 2100. Half assed considering one of the new 333 based chipsets with USB2. Haven't even ruled out a P4. I do a little gaming, lotsa web dev and tons of Photoshop and some video. Will be running Win2K/98 but maybe XP instead. If you were going to build a basic but kinda high end box, what would you build and why?

[CrazyKillerMan 0]

Well...if you are doing video, firewire would probably be better than USB 2.0 (as far as I know there are more available FireWire recorders than USB 2.0). You may also want to get 2 HDD and do a striped raid array for the video editing (although HDD's have almost closed the gaps between RAID and their lone selves ).

 

Going with an AMD system would be my choice, and because of the amount that photoshop would be used, the RAM is a good size.

 

Building a good system doesnt always mean that you need to buy the best chip out there. When I got my 1.2GHz t-bird, the 1.33 and 1.4 Ghz cpu's were on the market, but not at all comparable in price. The system I have built is still more than enough for what I do (very similar to your requirements minus video) and has plenty of kick left.

 

Considering video is another option. I went with the Radeon 8500 for its dual monitor capabilities, and for its gaming prowess, because I feel that this setup makes me more efficient in my programming and 'power user' applications, and still can beat a 1.4 GHz/gf2 pro setup

[JP- 0]

Oohh someone is going to tell you off for this post (or maybe the other 1).

 

Anyway, if you want an athlon i would go for an nforce board, they seem fast and stable and you know that nvidia will provide good support for them.

 

Think i would go for an abit TH7-II with pc800 memory, a 2ghz + p4 and a geforce 4, ti4200 or 4400

[BladeRunner 0]

You're doing video work!!

No competition, P4 Northwood with RDRAM for maximum memory bandwidth.

[sflesch23 0]

i would def go with the amd setup, avoid intel at all costs their stuff is really not up to par as some people would love for you to believe.

[sapiens74 0]

P4 and the Rambus. Its actually cheaper for Rambus right now, You can get a GB for less then 300 bucks. Go with the WD 120 GB with 8MB of cache. Get 3 of them, One to boot and the other 2 for raid.

 

GO with the Abit Board, or an ASUS, either way you cannot go wrong. Make sure to get name brand memory too. Get the Sound Blaster Audigy, it has Firewire port, and get a 30 dollar USB 2.0 card as well. THat will give you plenty o Ports. You can also get another firewire card if necessary.

[BladeRunner 0]

The ASUS P4T-E is a lovely motherboard, use it myself.

If you are into overclocking (not sure if you will be, sounds like you are actually using your computer for proper work, shock, horror) then the ABit TH7-II is probably a better bet.

The P4 Northwood 1.8Ghz I believe offers best bang for bucj right now, although expect price drops once the 2.4Ghz starts coming out in numbers.

Do not be fooled by the uninformed, RDRAM in most cases is actually cheaper than DDR, try and buy Samsung branded, it seems to be the best stuff out there.

If you are doing serious video work you will not regret P4 & RDRAM.

[sapiens74 0]

Was gonna say Samsung too, great Ram. Also You might not want to overlcock when doing DV. Most cards have problems when moving that kinda of data overclocked.

[clutch 1]

Northwood w/RDRAM for power and compatibility, and SCSI for your harddrives if possible so as to reduce CPU overhead (although the newest generation ATA controllers come very close to SCSI in that regard as well).

[auger 0]

Really leaning toward the P4 2G with Samsung Rambus. Lots of good suggestions here. I can get the P4 2 for $499 CDN; the XP 2100+ is $435. I can get 4 x 256 Samsung Rambus PC 800 sticks for $558; 2 x 512 Micron DDR for $498 or 2 x 512 Kingston for $558. There's not a lot of price diff here & I'm thinking the stability plus-side of the Pentium based system will be a big payoff. Then there's the memory bandwidth advantage which is icing on the cake. Will keep researching, thanks for all the comments and thanks for not flaming me over the cross post! Cheers all.

[sapiens74 0]

SCSI is nice, but a 2 or 4 disk IDE raid is much faster and cheaper.

[clutch 1]

Quote:

SCSI is nice, but a 2 or 4 disk IDE raid is much faster and cheaper.

I don't see how, if you get a good SCSI controller and configure the disks in RAID 0. Highend SCSI is faster than highend IDE/ATA, period. However, it costs a helluva lot more. But if video editing is your bag then a good disk subsystem is what you'll need, and the options should be researched. If you are going for "X" amount of money, then you can get more for the money going ATA, but (as I would do) I have "X" amount of performance that I need, so I buy accordingly.

[sapiens74 0]

SCSI raid is faster of course. But SCSI raid was never mentioned. IDE Raid is faster and hella cheaper vs. SCSI drives by themselves. Even a 15 K drive cannot compete with good IDE raid. And the problem with SCSI is the densities are so low, You have to buy like 2 36 GB and thats off the scale with price, not to mention the raid controller.

 

2 ATA 7200 RPM 120GB w/8mb of cache = $400

ATA 100 Raid Controller = $100

 

2 SCSI 15k Seagate = $500

1 SCSI Adaptec Raid Controller = $400

 

 

So twice the cost and 1/5th the storage.

 

Both max the PCI bandwidth out, the only thing with SCSI is that it's access times are faster. THat doesnt matter when your pushing lots of data through, just like Rambus.

 

If money is no object then a board with a 64Bit PCI should be considered, then SCSI RAID, for max performance. But on a standard INTEL 850 board, then IDE IMHO is the Best choice.

[JP- 0]

Personally i would advice not to go for RAID, especially RAID0, seeing as the whole point of RAID is that you have a safety net for your data. RAID0 just makes you twice as likely to lose your stuff and its really not much faster, infact i didnt notice any difference when i was running it. SCSI would be nice but i dont think its really worth it considering what you have to pay. Think I would just get a nice fast single IDE drive and maybe have a 2nd 1 to store stuff on

[clutch 1]

First, I brought up SCSI as an alternative to ATA, not SCSI as an alternative to ATA/IDE RAID combinations. And of course, there is a major price difference, but if you want optimal performance (which is something to consider in this department) then SCSI is the way to go.

 

Next, the purpose of RAID is to increase the "performance" of the disks/disk subsystem, not necessarily be limited to redundancy. While the "R" does stand for "Redundant", RAID 0 is an option and a pair of disks can be installed separately from the system partition (which would be ideal with either ATA or SCSI) to handle streaming duties.

[sapiens74 0]

I Use my raid for performance, and have a large drive for backup.

[Dirty Harry 0]

Hey, as everyone assumes that Auger has no financial restrictions, I'd like to point out that SCSI and RAID do not exclude each other.

Therefore I suggest a RAID array with SCSI drives. Now that beats both SCSI and RAID, doesn't it ?

 

H.

[CyberGenX 0]

Might as well get a P4$ or say you are getting one. If you go AMD the forum will shred you to pieces as I have learned.

[JP- 0]

I agree tis very intel here, but ppl dont just say 'go intel' for no reason. They must have experienced problems with amd (more likely via) to recommend intel.

[clutch 1]

Quote:

Might as well get a P4$ or say you are getting one. If you go AMD the forum will shred you to pieces as I have learned.

Nah, you just got shredded because you like to troll a bit too much that's all.

[pmistry 0]

I am looking around now to upgrade as well.

Currently I am thinking of either P4 1.6 or 1.8 Northwood on either Asus P4T-E with 512 MB RDRAM or Asus P4S333 with 512 PC2700 DDR. This would be a nice basic desktop system for personal use basically gaming and MS office applications and some Macromedia Dreamweaver and Paintshop Pro.

[Brian Frank 0]

It's the chipset that's more of an issue here. Just as with about anywhere, there are those people that don't like Via. I don't give a rip what he buys. He gets a P4--fine. He goes AMD--fine. The best policy here, IMO, is "Whatever works for you"

[Alien 1]

<head slowly spinning>

I want Intel, I want Intel!

</head spinning>

 

Wow! Dunno what possessed me to say that!

[Dirty Harry 0]

Nah, go AMD, apart from being faster its also cheaper.

 

What you see here it a lot of "post purchase disorder", ppl trying to rationalize that they got less, but paid more.

 

I haven't had any AMD/VIA related problems, most are Microsh1t related anyhow. There are millions of happy AMD users out there!

 

H.

[JP- 0]

I would say...go cyrix!!! cos as everyone here well knows, they rule! Also you are extremly lucky to not have any via problems, i havent been so lucky and i certainly wouldnt recommend them to anyone else.