Author Topic: Geeks Needed to Answer ? (Read 324 times)

Hap · « **on:** May 09, 2006, 09:10:22 AM »

A friend of mine is going to buy a new puter. Here's the question . . . he saw an ad where an athalon processor touts a bus speed to 2,000. It was a circuit city ad.

I don't know enough to explain things.

Another question is . . . does bus speed = fsb speed? Like there's only 1?

We looked at newegg under amd mobo's and saw the boards with 1k bus and a 2k MT/s in parentheses. What's that?

So what are the guys who wrote the ad wanting the buyer to think? And is it legit?

~~hap~~

Hap · « **Reply #1 on:** May 09, 2006, 09:14:50 AM »

here's the link to the machine he saw.

http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/HP-Pavilion-Media-Center-Desktop-PC-A1410N-/sem/rpsm/oid/147055/catOid/-12962/rpem/ccd/productDetail.do

thanks again for weighing in.

Skuzzy · « **Reply #2 on:** May 09, 2006, 09:19:56 AM »

I would call it a typo. Should be 200, not 2,000, unless they turn the multiplier to 1. Hehe.

scottydawg · « **Reply #3 on:** May 09, 2006, 10:21:18 AM »

Hap,

As a geek, I would steer anyone I know away from HP Pavilion desktop PCs. They are so overloaded with crap software its ridiculous and the hardware isn't that great either. Lots of HW failures and their tech support is pretty horrible.

Just remember that your pc is only as good as its cruddiest component. No matter what, there will always be a bottleneck.

humble · « **Reply #4 on:** May 09, 2006, 12:16:42 PM »

I just bought a compaq and the point about "extra crap" loaded on is 100% right....however I was very suprised overall. In fact i'd say it'll run out of the box better then 90% of the homebuilt systems out there (I've built close to a 100 with about 10 of them gaming box's. The real key is understanding what you want. The box will not run AH exceptionally well however the onboard 6150 will do an "OK" job at default settings. Overall components are not great....but actually not bad either. You can build out a better box burt if you shop right you cant match the price. Mine was about $400 afer you discount the 8ms LCD .... just the XPMC and cpu/motherboard would run you ~$350 at wholesale. Basically "as is" it runs dead silent and very cool and is very well optimized. Now the flip side is I put in a 7900GT and 535W PS so in the end I spent more to upgrade it....but I was getting 25/45 fps out of the box with 55 process's running

...of course with the 7900 i'm getting 90/180....

scottydawg · « **Reply #5 on:** May 09, 2006, 01:22:24 PM »

I'm glad you're happy with your PC, humble.. One other thing with the Big 3 (HP, Sony and Dell), is that sometimes when you get the 'special du jour', you're getting what is essentially a cheapie crippled motherboard that has little expandability, i.e. just one or 2 PCI slots, an AGP slot instead of a PCI-Express slot, or a single 2.0 USB host controller instead of dual. It's important to know what's in there, especially for gaming, as you will most likely outgrow the onboard video before the computer is paid for, and you'll want to throw a 7900 GX or an x1700 in there and 1 gb dual channel RAM, it's always a bummer when you figure out it's not going to happen.

Hap · « **Reply #6 on:** May 09, 2006, 02:06:30 PM »

thanks for your responses. "A friend" of mine asked about the machine. I run AH on a box I made.

His main ? was "what about the 2,000" figure on the bus speed.

I don't know how to answer him. I gather the machine sold by circuit city is inferior and why.

Any answer to my friends question about bus speed and if front side bus = bus speen generally.

thanks, hap

scottydawg · « **Reply #7 on:** May 09, 2006, 02:54:21 PM »

FSB speed is the speed that the cpu bus runs at. For example, a FSB that runs at 200 mHz can have a processor that runs at 2.0 gHz because the processor is running at a multiplier of that speed, in this case 10x. Typically the FSB speed only pertains to the CPU and RAM.

The bus speed is the speed that the rest of the board operates at, in the simplest terms. PCI buses run at 33 mHz and I believe the latest speed is topped at 66 or 100 (can't remember). ISA buses ran at 8 mHz (Zzzzz).

In any case, as Skuzzy said, the 2000 bus speed is definitely a typo. 200 is probably the case.

Hap · « **Reply #8 on:** May 09, 2006, 03:19:19 PM »

ty scottie!!

~~hap~~

Kev367th · « **Reply #9 on:** May 09, 2006, 07:13:28 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Skuzzy
I would call it a typo. Should be 200, not 2,000, unless they turn the multiplier to 1. Hehe.

Think it means the Hypertransport bus, not FSB which doesnt exist in an Athlon 64 system.
Max setting for current HT is 1000Mhz, but is bi-directional so = 2000.

Mine is currently set at 1000 (2000 bi-directional) on a 5x multiplier.

To use DDR500 -
Set at 800 on a 4x multiplier (4*500=1000)