Author Topic: big upgrade planned...need advice (Read 798 times)

Edbert · « **on:** August 09, 2004, 10:23:25 AM »

I've got 11 ebay ads that are going to go live at about noon central time :-)

Hopefully will get about $3K from them and spend about $1,500 on a new MB/CPU/RAM/VID upgrade. The rest is going to my 67 Stang restoration project.

I'm looking at a 915P based MB, the 3.4GHz procs are almost $200 more than the 3.2s, not sure its worth that much extra. The MB I have my eyes on will not have an AGP slot so I'll just "have" to get a PCI-E video card :-) And of course no system with less than a GB of RAM is worth logging into, the MB I am looking at is the only one that supports 600MHz memory and that stuff aint cheap!

I gotta get it all in before the middle of September for the convention

, the auctions end one week from today so I'm about ready to buy. Any preference between the ATI and Nvidia cards? I've heard that the ATI cards to not support some of the DX9 stuff that Microsoft has put into D3D. Anyone able to verify that?

ALL ADVICE IS WELCOME!

Kev367th · « **Reply #1 on:** August 09, 2004, 10:57:39 AM »

Correct - at present ONLY nVidia 6800 cards support Shader 3.0.
You will also need DX9.0c from Microsoft.
Only question is why P4?
Try Athlon 64 socket 939. Much faster!!! Ask anyone here running one.

ChasR · « **Reply #2 on:** August 09, 2004, 11:12:00 AM »

I've got both Intel and AMD rigs so I don't have a bias. I would go with socket 939 AMD rig if I had build one right now. It would be faster and cheaper.

Edbert · « **Reply #3 on:** August 09, 2004, 11:18:55 AM »

All three of my home computers are AMDs right now. I'll look into the 939. Does it support 600MHz RAM? I cannot see spending any "real" money on an AGP board at this point in the game.

Keep the advice coming guys, I appreciate it!

Holy crap! The 939 boards and CPUs are almost twice as much as a915P and a 3.4-800. Am I looking at this wrong?

DAVENRINO · « **Reply #4 on:** August 09, 2004, 02:06:50 PM »

I don't understand why you want 600 MHz RAM. Is that a DDR2 board? OCZ is the only 550 MHz RAM I have seen with latency below CAS 3 and it is only 2.5. The fastest CAS 2 RAM I have seen available today is 433 MHz. The 433 or 600 MHz is only a rating anyway, rather than a required speed.

Kev367th · « **Reply #5 on:** August 09, 2004, 02:07:53 PM »

Only needs DDR400 unless your planning to overclock AMD 64's.
Thay are more reliant on latency then memory speeds, therefore you need CAS 2 memory to get the best outta them. Mine averages over 5gb/s mem transfers, something even the fastest P4 can't get close to.
The Athlon64 3500 socket 939 is cheaper than the P4 you are on about.
Cheapest 915P I can see is $99, socket 939 $150, but to be fair the S939 mobo has more features.

Edbert · « **Reply #6 on:** August 09, 2004, 02:32:55 PM »

The new LGA boards with the 915P support DDR2, and the ones from Asus (every MB I've bought since 1998 were Asus) are certified to 533 and working with 600.

Did you notice my edit?

Pricewatch shows the FX53 MB/CPU/fan combos start at ~$925. The P4 LGA775 at 3.4 is ~$560. Surely the FX53 aint THAT much faster for 32 bit code.

Kev367th · « **Reply #7 on:** August 09, 2004, 05:34:45 PM »

Don't fall for the DDR2 main memory. The latency is absolutely crap, thats why AMD is bypassing support for DDR2 and going straight to DDR3.
FX53 is the top of the line one, and yes it is that much faster, faster than the P4EE (emergency edition), and cheaper.
What you should look at is the price of the P4 you were thinking of, and the Athlon 64 at comparable price. You get much better CPU for comparable price. Top 4 or 5 gaming CPUs are all FX or Athlon 64 series.

bloom25 · « **Reply #8 on:** August 09, 2004, 07:03:49 PM »

When it comes to gaming, any Athlon 64 from the 3400+ on up will beat the pants off anything but an Extreme Edition (Emergency Edition) P4. The 3800+ and FX-53 are totally untouchable by any P4. In fact, except for a few highly P4 optimized video rendering benchmarks, the 3800+ and FX-53 dominate the P4 in every benchmark ... the price of them reflects this. The 3500+ is an excellent deal compared to a 3.4 or 3.6 GHz P4.

The Athlon 64 also has the advantage of being a cooler running CPU than the new Prescott type P4s. I also do not consider DDR2 support to be a benefit currently. It's actually slower than DDR1 memory until Intel releases 1066 MHz FSB versions of the P4. It also costs more. Add in 64 bit compatibility on the Athlon 64, so when the 64 bit version of XP finally ships (which will give at least a 5 - 10% boost to almost all applications because of some old legacy x86 garbage it jetisons) and you have a better platform for the future as well IMO.

AWMac · « **Reply #9 on:** August 09, 2004, 07:09:29 PM »

Need some help guys on a Gamer Puter... I only have a few day as the wifey is amorous...Please look at this and if you can off something and still get me flying feel free to let me know... the less $$$ the better.

Beggin fer help here from you guys that know....

I'm am going CRAZY without flying of shooting the watermelon with you guys in the air...

AWMac · « **Reply #10 on:** August 09, 2004, 07:10:07 PM »

This is what I'm thinking of.....

http://www.magicmicro.com/smoreinfo.asp?iid=428Magic 820 Athlon XP Expert DDR Series (XP2600+, DDR333, Geforce FX, 120GB) Starts out at $499.00

and I added/substituted:

AMD Athlon Barton 3000+ 2.167 GHz 333Mhz BUS 512.

ASUS A7N8X-X NFORCE2 DDR400, 8XAGP, Sound, Lan, USB 2.0

512Mb PC 2700 DDR333

ATI Radeon 9600PRO 128MB DDR 8X AGP dual head. tv out.

80.0GB Western Digital 7200RPM UDMA100 8m Cache.

Lite-On 52x CD-ROM Drive

Optorite 52x24x52 CDRW Drive

Sound Blaster Live 5.1 Digital.

Realtek 10/100 Network card

USB 2.0 Adapter Card 4 port PCI

Thermaltake Xaser III VM3000A black 600W, side window, front USB & IEEE

Case Fan 80 mm DC fan

Black Windows Keyboard. 104 key, PS/2.

Black 2-Button Wheel Mouse, PS/2

Victory 2.1 3-Piece Subwoofer System Black

Microsoft Windows XP Home.

$ 1047.00

Give me some ideas on how to make this cheaper, what to drop/lose,or forget.
Beggin here for help guys. This is the ONE chance I get from the Wifey to make this happen.

Edbert · « **Reply #11 on:** August 09, 2004, 08:07:57 PM »

The Athlon 3500 is a little chaper than the 550-P4-3.4. So DDR-400 with a 3500 will outperform DDR2-533 on a LGA P4 at 3.4?

Kev367th · « **Reply #12 on:** August 09, 2004, 08:19:02 PM »

You got it!!!
All to do with latency, Athlon 64 have nearly 0 latency due to mem controller being on the CPU.
DDR2 has really high latency, so what you gain on speed you lose on that and more on latency.
Take a look here for some benchies http://tech-report.com/reviews/2004q3/athlon64-3500/index.x?pg=3
AMD Athlons and Opterons top 6. Some P4EE's are in the top, but who wants to pay $850+ for a CPu, in that case I'd get the FX53.
Even tomshardware notorious for being Intel biased has been forced to admit Athlon 64 is all round better CPU architecture.

bloom25 · « **Reply #13 on:** August 09, 2004, 09:35:19 PM »

AWMac there are several things you can do with that system:

Drop the extra USB PCI card. That board already has USB 2.0 ports on it. (4 on the back, 2 extra available using the onboard headers)

You can also go with a cheaper case. A 600W power supply is EXTREME overkill. A 380 or 430W supply would be fine.

You also don't need the Realtek network card, the A7N8X-X has onboard ethernet.

You could also drop the extra Cd drive and go with a single burner. (That does mean you will have to cache files to the hard drive, rather than doing a disk to disk copy.)

If it were me though, I'd seriously consider going with an Athlon 64 3000+ CPU on a board to support it if you can afford it. It will cost more, but it will also be quite a bit faster system.

_________________________

Just as a little sidenote, Intel has chosen to abandon the P4's "Netburst" architecture for future desktop CPUs. The future will be dual core versions of the Pentium M, which is a derivative of the P6 architecture. Intel P6 architecuture CPUs were the Pentium Pro, Pentium 2, Pentium 3, and Pentium M [Centrino].

If you can still find it, I wrote a thread here when the P4 was released highlighting the numberous flaws in its design. In a way, I'm glad to see I was proven right. In the end the Netburst (Pentium 4) architecture ultimately failed because it simply consumes way to much power for the amount of work it does. That makes it totally unsuited for mobile cpus, or more seriously much of the server market. My personal prediction is that 4.0 - 4.2 GHz will be the end of the Pentium 4 line. The other interesting effect of this is that future Intel CPUs desktop based on the P6 design will likely launch at around a 2 - 3 GHz clock speed, which has forced Intel into using a rating system for its processors, just like AMD...

Edbert · « **Reply #14 on:** August 09, 2004, 10:03:53 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Kev367th
You got it!!!
All to do with latency, Athlon 64 have nearly 0 latency due to mem controller being on the CPU.
DDR2 has really high latency, so what you gain on speed you lose on that and more on latency.
Take a look here for some benchies http://tech-report.com/reviews/2004q3/athlon64-3500/index.x?pg=3
AMD Athlons and Opterons top 6. Some P4EE's are in the top, but who wants to pay $850+ for a CPu, in that case I'd get the FX53.
Even tomshardware notorious for being Intel biased has been forced to admit Athlon 64 is all round better CPU architecture.

Like I said earlier thanks for the info. I'm not an idiot but I'm not up to speed since the 2.0/2.4s came out. I cannot see paying ~$800+ for ANY CPU, thats crazy. I was looking at about $650 for the 3.2 or almost $800 for the 3.4, and those prices were WITH a top quality MB. Right now I'm thinking 3500 or maybe 3800. But I don't wanna spend that kind of money on an AGP based MB. PCI-E is the clear future.