Apache Posted February 19, 2005 Share Posted February 19, 2005 Well, it's my favourite time (apart from the hassle of having to get everything working the way I want.) Any views on this set up appreciated: Dell XP4S Intel Pentium 4 HT Extreme XP Home 1024 M PC4200 Dual Channel DDR 533 (2x512) 256M PCIeATI Radeon X800 XT (accepting no fog - just hope CMX2 will rectify - time to move to Radeons for me I think) OR I could have the GeForce 6800 at no extra charge. Premium Creative Audigy 2 Sound Dell 5650 5.1 speakers 17" Digital flat panel monitor (dell) 250G Serial ATA HDD (7200) 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Apache Posted February 19, 2005 Author Share Posted February 19, 2005 Mind you - this looks OK too. Athlon based but £100 cheaper (Mesh): AMD Athlon™ 64 3800+ Processor Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition 1024MB DDR 400 RAM (PC3200) Memory 250GB Serial ATA (150Mb/s) Ultra Fast Hard Drive 2x 128MB GeForce 6600GT - PCI-Express SLI (migh be better to Ug this to 512 or even 1024?) 19" Iiyama ProLite E485S TFT (20msec response time) SONY 16x Dual Layer DVD-RW (R/W all standard formats)* Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Creative Inspire T7900 - 7.1 Surround Speakers Internet Ready V.92 56Kbps data/fax/voice modem Network Ready integrated 10/100/1000 Ethernet Logitech Cordless Keyboard and Rechargeable Mouse ASUS WiFi 54MBps IEEE 802.11g PCI Card FREE Microsoft Works 8.0 3 Year Parts & Labour Warranty (Back to Base) Mini Tower Case/4 USBs + Additional Features 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Apache Posted February 19, 2005 Author Share Posted February 19, 2005 My son likes to play games like Rome Total war so I suspect another way of tackling this might be to ask for views on an 'ideal' (but not bank busting!) system for gaming today. With particular refernce to: CPU Video card Sound card Motherboard RAM Hard disk (may get two for video editing etc) Monitor OS Mouse/key board And other aspects I may have forgotten about. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Krazy Canuck Posted February 19, 2005 Share Posted February 19, 2005 My friend, if you can afford #2....go for it!! KC 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Thorne Posted February 19, 2005 Share Posted February 19, 2005 #2 or anything with something else than ATI card...just don´t do that mistake of buying ATI card and loose the fog graphics. I did that dumb move and bought ATI no more fog for this commander untill the Geforce revolution strikes back to my system. Hopefully soon -LT 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted February 19, 2005 Share Posted February 19, 2005 ATI sucks outside of CM. See my long thread on the General forum. The extreme edition P4 is good (130nm northwoods core with the lower power consumption and pretty fast), but be warned that you can higher performance in many areas with high-end AMD CPUs, and party much higher for the dollar. These areas include gaming, scripting languages, databse work, compilation of large C++ files. I wouldn't accept a "random" harddrive, I would insist on Seagate. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Krazy Canuck Posted February 19, 2005 Share Posted February 19, 2005 Not to argue..but! The PC in my office has a Seagate w/8mb buffer , it is louder and clunkier than the WD I have here at home. Seagate, IMO, is overrated and overpriced. KC 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted February 19, 2005 Share Posted February 19, 2005 The 7200.7 and 7200.8 Seagate barracoudas are practically the quietest harddrives out there. Seagate only recently makes quiet drives. During 2004 I had 2 of 4 Maxtors 160 GB screw up, and so close to each other that I lost parts of a RAID5 array. Afterwards there was trouble with the warranty, so they are out. After that I decided against WDs, amoung other reasons for their horrible reliability rating on storagereview.com. The three Seagate 200 GB I have now are very happy. And I am too, because they are very quiet. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Krazy Canuck Posted February 19, 2005 Share Posted February 19, 2005 Originally posted by Redwolf: The 7200.7 and 7200.8 Seagate barracoudas are practically the quietest harddrives out there. Seagate only recently makes quiet drives. During 2004 I had 2 of 4 Maxtors 160 GB screw up, and so close to each other that I lost parts of a RAID5 array. Afterwards there was trouble with the warranty, so they are out. After that I decided against WDs, amoung other reasons for their horrible reliability rating on storagereview.com. The three Seagate 200 GB I have now are very happy. And I am too, because they are very quiet. Ahhh, that must be the difference. The Seagate HD in the office is at least 3 years old. (3) 200 gb. HDs?? :eek: :eek: I'm getting by nicely with my teenie weenie 80 gb., you must edit video or dl lots and lots of music? KC 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wally's World Posted February 19, 2005 Share Posted February 19, 2005 Since I just bought a new LCD monitor two days ago for my machine, you may want to think about getting a lower response time LCD for option #2. My LCD has a 12ms time and I do see a tiny bit of blur when I play NHL2004 on it. Depending on what games you play on your PC, maybe a 16ms or faster response time might be better. Just my uninformed opinion though... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CommonSense Posted February 19, 2005 Share Posted February 19, 2005 Originally posted by Redwolf: ATI sucks outside of CM. See my long thread on the General forum. The extreme edition P4 is good (130nm northwoods core with the lower power consumption and pretty fast), but be warned that you can higher performance in many areas with high-end AMD CPUs, and party much higher for the dollar. These areas include gaming, scripting languages, databse work, compilation of large C++ files. I wouldn't accept a "random" harddrive, I would insist on Seagate. Pnetium 4 EE is not good. It is a huge waste of money. AMD 64's will smoke that thing in games and cost a fraction of it's inflated price. ATI does not suck. I have an eVGA 6800GT and stuck and NV5 slincer on it and I like. This does not mean ATI sucks. The truth is that the top ATI cards are comparible with the Nvidia offerings. In fact ATI at the moment has the fastest out. Top of the linke ATI is equal to top of the line Nvidia and thats a fact. Pentium 4's do suck for games. That is also a fact/ Or to be more precise in comparrison to AMD. If you do video editing and crap like that, Pentium is the cpu for you. If you game AMD is the cpu for you and even costs less. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CommonSense Posted February 19, 2005 Share Posted February 19, 2005 Also Dell uses poor cooling so whatever sytem you get will run slower compared to an Alienware or whatever with the same hadware. Me? I build my own. You want an LCD? Get one that games well. I have the Samsung 710T and it rocks. Worth every penny. It will play any game you throw at it. HDD's; Dell uses Western Digital last I heard. They are good. Seagate is good too and run quieter but not quite as fast in general. Either is a good choice. Get an AMD 64 socket 939. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liddell-Hart Posted February 20, 2005 Share Posted February 20, 2005 Agree that P4's are poor value compared to AMD, I don't know how they sell any topline p4's at the price. HDD's are much of a muchness as long as you don't end up with IBM/Hitachi, those things chew themselves up with alarming regularity. TFT's are still overpriced despite supply massively outstripping demand, outside of space saving there's absolutely no reason to pick one. SLI Graphics just seems a pointless gimmick to me, why not just make one great card rather than having 2 decent ones? Either of the systems in the original postings will play CM (and probably CMX2) without breathing hard. All in all I'd plump for the AMD, although I'd build it meself and dump the SLI. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted February 20, 2005 Share Posted February 20, 2005 Whether P4s are competitive for the price or not is a matter of application. It is outside the scope of this forum to discuss that in detail. Gaming is usually an AMD strength but the original poster made it clear he isn't playing too many ninja games. The Extreme Edition is of course mighty expensive but if you have the money it is a fine CPU. You should avoid the prescott core P4s, though, pointless blowing of electric power and cooling/noise. With Intel CPUs you get the nicer mainboard chipsets, so it doesn't come without advantages. Says the guy who has an AMD64 3400+ and a P4 2.8C, and I observed the both of them pretty closely 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted February 20, 2005 Share Posted February 20, 2005 Oh and ATI sucks 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CommonSense Posted February 20, 2005 Share Posted February 20, 2005 SLI is pointless and needlesly sucks away both money and psu juice. 2 SLI 6600GT's = 1 6800GT Who wants to hear and extra fan too? If you build your own I have the Antec Sonata for a case and I would buy another. Runs nice and quiet. The 120mm fan is great. I bought another one and it comes on only as needed. One blows the air out of the case and the extra one pulls hot air away from my hard drive as needed and circulates more air through the case. Stock heatsink/fans may get the job done but they don't do it for me. Don't be afraid to spend an extra few bucks if you want a cooler and quieter case if noisey ones bother you. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CommonSense Posted February 20, 2005 Share Posted February 20, 2005 Originally posted by Redwolf: Whether P4s are competitive for the price or not is a matter of application. It is outside the scope of this forum to discuss that in detail. Gaming is usually an AMD strength but the original poster made it clear he isn't playing too many ninja games. The Extreme Edition is of course mighty expensive but if you have the money it is a fine CPU. You should avoid the prescott core P4s, though, pointless blowing of electric power and cooling/noise. With Intel CPUs you get the nicer mainboard chipsets, so it doesn't come without advantages. Says the guy who has an AMD64 3400+ and a P4 2.8C, and I observed the both of them pretty closely What are you talking about? With all due respect the fact of the matter is AMD outperforms Intel in all games. The P4 EE costs as much as an AMD FX 55 and get blown out of the water. If you game Intel is not even close to AMD in performance. Intel has been lagging behind for some time now in everything but prices. The P4 EE does'nt even do 64 bit apps. A 64 bit version of Windows is due out by around the end of this year or early next. Intel is a rip off and make money off of name recognition. Their technology is lacking big time. Intel is the Bose of CPU's right now. ATI is equal to Nvidia right now. Chipsets made by Intel suck! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CommonSense Posted February 20, 2005 Share Posted February 20, 2005 An AMD 64 3400+ would smoke a Pentium 2.8c. Want to know something else? My AMD XP OC'd to 3200+ will smoke that 2.8c as well. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted February 20, 2005 Share Posted February 20, 2005 Common(notso)sense, I benchmarked my two CPUs extensively. For many applications they are exactly equally fast per current dollar CPU cost, for many others the AMD is faster per dollar. However, I like the Intel 875 chipset better than the NForce 3 GB. However, keep in mind I have a Newcastle Skt 754 which is 2.4 GHz, if you compare with a 3400+ socket 939 you have a lower clockspeed and won't see the same speed I have (again, depending on applications). A socket 939 system may be more future-proof, however at this time the socket 754 3400+ is the only cheap 2.4 GHz Athlon 64. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CommonSense Posted February 20, 2005 Share Posted February 20, 2005 Benchmarked with what? Give me some specs on the two systems. You can't judge how fast a cpu is by clock speed. Even Intel is finally figuring out the megahertz myth. No hardware is future proof. There is nothing wrong with the 754 socket. It's not slow or anything? You won't be running an FX on the 754 or the dual cores but at this moment in time a 754 socket AMD 64 will smoke a Pentium 2.8c in 3dmark, Sisfot Sandra you name it...... If you like the 875 chipset better than Nforce 3 for some reason great. That does'nt mean it's better though. Stop buying into the megahertz myth; AMD cpu's have been designed far better than Intel for awhile now. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CommonSense Posted February 20, 2005 Share Posted February 20, 2005 Oh, and don't try and condescend with me n00bwolf. You can't fake it with me. I know what I'm talking about here. [ February 19, 2005, 09:31 PM: Message edited by: CommonSense ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted February 20, 2005 Share Posted February 20, 2005 I compared: - C compilation - C++ compilation - C++ with heavy templating - Common Lisp compilation - perl code - php code - mysql - video encoding - audio encoding - shellscripting - Linux and FreeBSD kernel compilation - 3D games - my employer's application - multitasking of some combination of the above. Most of the results I posted on forums.anandtech.com. As I said above, for many the P4 is price/performance competitive, for other the AMD is better. And (surprise!), they match the results you can see on anandtech.com and tomshardware.com It is not that I'm the first to benchmark There is absolutely no point telling me how fast the machines under my home desk are. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Apache Posted February 20, 2005 Author Share Posted February 20, 2005 Thanks folks. Think I'm leaning more to an AMD 64 3800 with Ge Force 6800 (not that keen on SLI from what i've read). Not sure about the flat screen now. Might stuff the extra cash into more ram, better cooling and/or better case. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Apache Posted February 20, 2005 Author Share Posted February 20, 2005 This is what I'm now looking at: Case: MESH ATX MidiTower with tool free access Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition Motherboard Features: ASUS A8N-E Mainboard - DDR400, GB LAN, IEEE 1394, SATA, PCIEX16 Processor: AMD Athlon 64 3500+ (939PIN) Memory: Upgrade to 1024MB PC3200 DDR (400MHz) at £100 Hard Drives: 250GB Serial ATA (150MB/s) Ultra Fast Hard Drive Video Card: 128MB nVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT - TV Out + DVI - PCI Express Monitor 1: 19'' Iiyama ProLite E485S Flat Panel LCD Monitor - with 20 msec response time + DVI Optical Drives: SONY 16x Dual Layer DVD-Re-Writable +R/-R/RW Sound: New - Creative Soundblaster AUDIGY 2 ZS Speakers: New Creative Labs Inspire P5800 - 5.1 Surround Modem: 56kbps V92 Modem, featuring data and fax. Keyboard & Mouse: Logitech Cordless Desktop Keyboard & Mouse Video Editing: Pinnacle Studio 9 SE (OEM) Software: Microsoft® Works® 8.0 Wi-Fi: ASUS 54MBps 802.11G Wi-Fi PCI Card Game Selection: X-treme-4 Games Bundle - Nostromo Speedpad, Joystick, Games (3 titles) Warranty: 3 Years - Parts & Labour - Back-to-Base Warranty (Mainland UK only - Terms Apply) Delivery: Insured Del within Mainland UK (+ £39) at £39 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted February 20, 2005 Share Posted February 20, 2005 Sounds good just a few notes: the socket 939 3500+ is for most applications slower than a socket 754 3400+, because it is a 2.2GHz chip with 512 KB cache. The 754 3400+ is a 2.4 GHz chip, and for most applications the clockspeed beats the higher memory bandwidth of the socket 939 combo. So if you wanted best bang for the buck now the socket 754 might be better. If you plan to put in a faster CPU later the socket 939 makes more sense. There is no A8N-E mainboard from Asus. It sounds like you get an NForce 4 board which means PCI express. I wouldn't get PCI express at this time. Do not get the A8N-SLI board, even if you don't do SLI. People report massive problems with these boards, even non-SLI related. The 6600 GT is a good card, however the 6800 (no letters) costs about the same (in AGP) and has substancially more reserves for high resolutions and high quality settings. Although the base speed for current games at medium quality is about the same the 6800 has more reserves to play older games at maxed out quality. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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