Hey all, its been ages since ive been back to the bit-tech forums, havent modded a thing for at least a year. but in the next month or two ill be coming into alot of money, thus ill be buying a new rig. right now i my comp consists of: Soltek SL-K8AV-R AMD Athlon XP 2500+ (Barton) ATI Radeon™ 9600XT 128MB Kingstons 512mb PC-3200 DDR400 Maxtor 120bg 8mb cache X2 thats the basics. with my new rig though, i would like to go all out, i havent bought a computer for awhile and cant say im fresh on my motherboard knowledge. basically i want the best performance cpu/mobo/gpu i can get. i know id like to go with ocz memory, and having some beefy harddrives in raid 0 would be nice. so, any tips, suggestions? who can help me out? :edit: to start off, i was thinking to go with the ABIT AA8 DuraMax and a Intel P4-560 3.6ghz.
you should get some Western Digital Raptor 74GB SATA150 hdd's or you could go scsi but i would go for the Raptors in Raid 0
Depending on how much money you're coming into will seriously affect what you can buy, if money isn't an object then i'd get an FX-55 with an nForce4 motherboard (coming soon...) along with all the schizzle, e.g. a 6800U, 2*74GB Raptors, 2GB RAM etc.
A lot has happened over the past year, which you really need to be brought up to date on if you want to know whats on top. Currently, AMD is the performance king. Intel just plain doesnt compare with AMD's newest and greatest, that being the FX-55, which is a 2.6 Ghz processor that is about as fast as a 4.2 Ghz Pentium 4 would be. They are pricey, but they are also super powerful. As for motherboards and graphics, SLI is going to be out soon, which will allow you to combine two Nvidia graphics cards to make a super powerful machine in Graphics. The most powerful cards where this is possible are the 6800 Ultras. They are currently $400 a piece, but they are super powerful on their own-and just insane in SLI. Two gigs of RAM is really good, but Nforce 4 will go up to 4 Gigs-If you wish, you could get that much RAM. As for Hard drives, the top drives are Western Digital Raptors, which are 10000 RPM drives. four of those in RAID 0+1 would rock. You could then add a terabyte of 250 gig drives without a single controller card. Soon though, 400 gig drives will be out, which will allow you to have 1.6 terabytes. The best cases out there are the Lian Li V2000 (Youll need a case this big for this kind of system) and the CoolerMaster stacker, IMO. The new motherboards that you will need for this are Nforce 4 or K8T890 (preferably nforce 4). These use the new PCI Express interface, as do SLI video cards. Even if you dont know what all of these things do, let me tell you this. The amount of power you will have at your disposal will be just plain sick
props to roto for a nice detailed response. thaaat being the low budget option, haha, thats great. for the CPU, i was thinking of going with either the 3.6ghz Prescot, or as mentioned, the FX-55. the system is going to be watercooled so hopefully i can get some good overclocking going on. right now my cpu is running extrememly hot, being overclocked with just heatsinks and fans. as far as cases go, i know Lian Li are the best cases, but paying that much for a case is overkill. im going to turn this new system also into a modding project, as i am going to custum build the case from scratch (cube design). personally, as far as a GPU's go, i am an ATI fanboy, so ill be going with the x800 xt plat. most likely, depending on when i buy everything. :edit: money is not tight, but it is not unlimited, its still coming out of my pocket (ie. its not free ) so basically, this is going to be a big project. and like old times, your gonna be seeing alot of me around the forums.
Fanboyism is something thats going to bite you in the ass with the way the market is now. The X800 cannot be combined to run together, it doesnt run as fast as the 6800 Ultra, is virtually impossible to find. As for the 3.6 Ghz Pentium 4, its far, far slower than the FX-55 and runs much hotter. Prescotts dont overclock for anything much really. Thas why I reccomend the FX-55 and the 6800 Intel is suffering some major problems right now, which is the entire reason why I am leaning AMD.
ive been an AMD guy for awhile now. i just havent done enough research as of late. from the articles i read, the prescot did OC fairly well, but compared to the FX-55 i have no idea. Its funny you say that the prescot runs hotter than the FX, i remember back in the day running an amd chip would run anywhere from 10-20 degrees higher than an intel. the X800 card is not hard to find, in my area at least. but from what your saying i might have to overcome this fanboyism of mine.
Well an X800pro might not be hard to find, but X800xt's are pretty rare, let alone platinum editions. As for FX-55 overclocking....[linky] And Prescotts are still running hot, but getting cooler. Intel are finally sorting their leaking transistor gates. Slowly I would... FX-55 NF4 SLI 1*6800ultra for now, add another later
Forget the prescotts, just go for a 4000+ and an SLI NF4 then. Unless you can afford an Intel EE, then get that and 925X with HD sound if you can plug it into a home theatre with AC3 decoding.
if you do go prescot you should know that theyv hit 3.8 advertised so expect a possible 4ghz from your proc. if you can get higher than that (not likely) that pipeline will really start to come in handy... a phase change system wouldn't be bad for this i havent seen marks on the 55-fx but iv heard intel is heading tward a 4ghz advertised soon. $.02
i think alastor is on the right track for me. 731|\|37, a friend from a lan party had a prescot oc'd just short of 4.1ghz, on a moderate to small watercooling setup. so anything is really a decent option.
Didn't intel announce they weren't making a 4GHz prescott? I've always had intel because I was too n00bish to ask questions please forgive me The FX-55 is an amazing chip and combined with watercooling will give you some crazy speeds. P4EE is a bit of a rip-off really, I'd rather spend that extra couple of hundred quid on another 6800 If money is not a problem, look at phase change so you can get the best clocks. Costs a lot, isn't too quiet and is a lot of work but your processor will lurrrrve it.
The new AMD chips are overclocking a lot further than the Intel chips. Someone got an FX-55 to 3.6 GHz Extreme (Expensive) Edition Pentium 4s (hereby known as EEEs), are horrifically low value. Most Prescotts run faster than them; especially when overclocked. Pentium 4 is not the way to go, as AMD handels 3D applications much better, still runs much cooler than the Pentium 4, is more overclockable (The FX-55 has unlocked multipliers ) and in general, a much more powerful CPUs. AMD has done quite well for themselves in this generation of CPUs. Intel is needing to design a new Pentium chip, and AMD is just rolling ahead. Even Dell is considering getting AMD, albeit starting with servers. I consider the AMD option the only option for the super high end. Now, lets start talking about other parts... How does two ViewSonic VP201bs sound to you? :EDIT: Intel cancelled the 4 Ghz Prescott for reasons that are unclear at this time. The leading theories are that they are running too hot, yields are too low, or they dont perform adequately-or any combination of the above, or possibly other reasons as well. Honestly, no one knows for sure entirely why they did it, but it just goes to show you that Intel is in some VERY hot water
90nm A64-939, no question. They overclock very well and A64's just own intel in gaming. I'd suggest nForce4 and a nice PCIE card once it's available. If you have unlimited funding then I'd say SLI but in reality it's pointless when compared to a 6800u/x800xt unless you're playing games OVER 1600x1200 4xAA 8xAF, in which case you have too much eye candy anyways. Not to mention you'll have to wait longer. Just to let you know, x800's CAN be combined together, it just needs that wierd Alienware chipset, and apparently ATI has something in the works as well by the sounds of it (probably for x900's if you ask me). And they're not that rare.... I just ordered one. Maybe in the UK they are but they're not overly hard to come by over the big pond. Albeit mine was AGP and not PCIE, but those are available as well. I'd really suggest that you avoid RAID0 - the performance gains don't make up for the risk at all. That aside, I'd say get a 74GB raptor for your boot drive and a 300GB Maxtor w/ NCQ for your storage drive. Still quite speedy, and half the chance of losing data in a HD loss. Also, I don't think anyone's touched on PSU, but I'd say go for an Antec Neowin or whatever it's called, that modular one. I just ordered one for a friend's build and it should be here tomorrow, but I haven't heard anything bad about it, not to mention it has native PEG/EATX powr connectors so no messing around with adaptors for next-gen setups. Of course, DL DVD burner, some nice case and a floppy to throw out the window because floppies suck. Oh Bindi I don't think the intel "HD" sound is that great... I've heard quite a few people say it doesn't even compare to a $25 generic card just from reduced hiss and whatnot. But I'd say an Auidgy2ZS, that's the ultimate gamer sound card. Mmmmm... EAX goodness
Ive used enough motherboards and talked to enough people to know. Ive even written an article on it which should be out soon. EAX is over-exaggerated. Give me AC3 encoding thru SPDIF and Dolby Live anyday. And ill be £100 better off. As with anything it comes down to driver installation and speaker setup but mostly subjective opinions. "OMG Its onboard so it must suck.!!11oene" Id still definately go for an AMD machine though, and not use onboard AC97. Its an Alienware PCI card, that's propriatory to Alienware computers. It's also poorer performing than Nvidia's SLI. ATI wont have multiGPU tech until this time next year.
