Building new rig.Any advice?

Dingatron

I'm building a new rig for someone and have about €1100 to spend on the box. I have case and monitor. Looking for advice on what to put in it. AThlon64, P4 3.0 or XP3000? Whats the best value for performance. I'm thinking:

Athlon64 3000. Is it worth the extra money or is a XP3000/P4 2.8 as good?
MB SATA, LAN, FIREWIRE, 5.1 sound etc. Not sure whats best one out there?
2 X Baracuda 80 GB SATA RAID 0
DVDWR
DVD
1 GB PC3200. Would 512MB do?
Saphire 9800 Pro.

Opinions welcome.

This is probably pushing €1200.

joePC

I'd go with the P4 2.8Ghz & 512mb Ram, the person your building it for do they know much about computers & what do they use it for?

Thanks joePC

Dempsey

I recommend myself a P4 (Prescott if ya can afford it) At the moment I dont recommend going 64-bit, not yet.
Abit IC7-G (or the MAX3 if ya can afford it) for a Mobo
512Mb of ram will do, but if ya plan to be playing games while encoding a film or Photoshop then id recommend 1024Mb

What PSU do you have at the moment?

JustHalf

If you can wait, do not buy a new computer now. But if you can't, then do not buy a Prescott.

Prescott performance, in most apps, is less than that of a Northwood running at the same speed. Intel botched their transition to 90nm, and had to take certain steps with their processor (such as increasing the pipeline length by 50%) to get it to run properly. These steps reduced performance.

If they are up for overclocking it, get a decent socket A motherboard (with S-ATA of course). Get an XP Mobile 2500+ chip. Apparently, they overclock really well. Some people have gotten it up to 2.7GHz, which works out about as fast as (possibly faster than) a 4GHz P4.

You could use the money saved to buy one of those 36 or 74 gig raptors, but that really is a luxury.

Dempsey, what kind of goon would encode video and play a game at the same time on one machine? If you were doing that kind of crap, to get decent performance you'll need much more than just a lot of RAM. You'd need to go multiprocessor.

Dempsey

Originally posted by JustHalf
Dempsey, what kind of goon would encode video and play a game at the same time on one machine? If you were doing that kind of crap, to get decent performance you'll need much more than just a lot of RAM. You'd need to go multiprocessor.

Id be doing it sometimes. Have to play a CS match while im encoding. I have a lot of films to do at the moment. Its not a good idea but im not worried

JustHalf

Well, I guess that answers my question.

astrofool

encoding is more processor intensive than ram intensive tbh I wouldn't like to be playing a game while having encoding going on in the background.

Game performanance wise, at stock, the Athlon 64 is king of the hill atm, tho if u wanted to overclock it, you'll have to get an nforce3-150 motherboard as it keeps the agp/pci speeds locked.

The rest of the specs look grand for a mid range system, doubling the ram only adds about €50 these days.

DO NOT GET AN ATHLON XP, if you are looking to the future at all, get a p4 or athlon 64.

Motherboard wise, IC7-Max3 for p4 or kv8-Max3 for athlon 64, are best on the market at the moment.

Mutant_Fruit

I have an Athlon XP1800+ and i encode while playing CS.

Amazingly enough it works grand, but mostly what happens is the encoding slows down a lot, but i can still use the computer fine.

Dempsey

Originally posted by astrofool
encoding is more processor intensive than ram intensive tbh I wouldn't like to be playing a game while having encoding going on in the background.

It is but if ya have encoding running while running another program, then you'll more than like be over 512Mb

VeVeX

A Multiprocessor system is what you need for doing such intensive work.

My mate has a Dual 2Ghz G5 with 2gb of Ram. Handy for encoding and the likes.

Mutant_Fruit

but multiprocessors are next to useless unless you are going to be encoding and playing at the same time (or other similar things).

If you play a game, then it can only use one processor, the other just sits idle. My advice is get a fast single processor system, and just put encoding on slightly lower priority if it ruins the gaming experience.

The athlon64 3000+ is definately well worth its money, it only costs 220eur! I'd get one, but id have to get a new mobo aswell, and i only upgraded a few months ago :-/

Sir Random

Originally posted by JustHalf
Well, I guess that answers my question.

Creamy Goodness

Originally posted by JustHalf
If you can wait, do not buy a new computer now. But if you can't, then do not buy a Prescott.

tbh i'd get the P4 northwood. their prices are great now atm.

if you wait though is always what i hear no matter when you buy something comes out afterwards.

it's a excellant time to buy gfx cards though you can get a 9800pro for 220 on jes-computers.

Dingatron

The guy I'm building it for will be using it for games mostly. Definely putting a 9800 Pro in it. Got the Komplett offer a few weeks back for €200. its gone up to €240 now so might look at jes-computers for it. Whats the best deal on cpus, Komplett? Had a look around and couldn't find any better yet? Overclockings out the window as its for someone else. I don't want any hassle with it so staying at stock speeds. The raptors are excellent. Running 2 X 37 GB raid 0 myself but there a bit out of the price range. I belive the seagate baracudas are pretty good sata disks? Looking for best preformance but need to stay in the €1100 - €1200 price range. Think the Atlon64's the way to go if I can get it for a decent price. Whats the story with memory for it. Is PC3200 the fastest for a 64 at stock speeds?

JustHalf

Astrofool, you are an idiot. Any board you buy today is unupgradeable.

The socket 754 AMD chips are being relegated to the value range. Chips released for this platform will in future have less cache than their mainstream processors.

Of course, when the 90nm hammers come out, you may not be able to run these in current boards. You definitely won't be able to jam any DDR2 or PCI-Express devices into current boards.

The only safe buys for internal devices are SATA hard disks.

And don't get me started on Prescott. There's a brand new socket coming out for that in a few months. And I wouldn't recommend buying a Prescott to anyone, for the reasons I have already mentioned.

This year you should only be buying hardware if you really must. If you can't avoid it, don't waste your money on Athlon 64's, Prescotts or fast Northwoods. Don't waste your money on expensive boards. You'll get a much better deal for your cash in 2005.

Mutant_Fruit

i agree with that wholeheartedly.

AMD's new chips will be on socket 939(i believe), so if you want upgradeability, wait for that to come out at the very least. DDR2 and pci express are only around the corner, so buying now wouldn;t make the best of sense.

And also in the coming weeks AMD are releasing more highpowered A64's, which will make a dent in the current pricings of processors.

JustHalf

I've just done a quick look around. Don't take these as the best bargains ever.

From Komplett:

EPoX EP-8RDA3+
94.38 Euro

Corsair Value S PC3200 DDR-DIMM 512MB Kit w/two matched Value Select 256MB
96.80 Euro

Mobile Athlon XP 2500+
Around 110 Euro

Sapphire Radeon 9600 Atlantis 256MB DDR AGP, ATI 9600, DVI-I, TV-Out, Retail
112.53 Euro

Logitech Internet Navigator Keyboard SE (English), PS/2 og USB, Retail
35.43 Euro

Logitech Optical mouse
around 20 Euro

Hercules Gamesurround Muse 5.1 DVD Soundcard PCI, Retail
26.62 Euro

Plextor DVD-player IDE 16x/48x black Internal Bulk (PX-116A)
47.09 Euro

Sony Floppy Drive, 3,5" 1,44MB Black Floppy Drive Internal
15.58 Euro

( The stuff is in Black because I didn't think you had a case, and know of a sweet black one for 110 euro (getting one myself) ).

Total is Euro 558.43.

You should able to get all this with two 74 gig raptors (2x 238.37 or 476.74 total) for less than 1100 Euro. In fact, for 1035.17 Euro. Obviously, the hard drives are overkill. A decent 120Gb S-ATA will set you back 110.74 Euro. Total cost is then 669.17 Euro.

For a sweet system, particularly if you overclock.

Gerry

That is a sweet machine ok. www.jes-computer.de have the mobile barton for €99.85, indeed that site seems to be pretty cheap in general. The raptors are good enough to carry forward into a new build in 2005 also.

BloodBath

Ok done my first set of benchmarking. All results are default settings and nothing is overclocked (yet).


3dmark2001--score 18083.

3dmark2003--score currently running, will update.

PCMark2002---scores :
Cpu- 7903,
Memory- 9908,
HDD- 2377.


BloodBath

astrofool

JustHalf, u are a twonk.

While nothing you buy today (or ever) is going to be future proof, the socket 754 platform will last a good deal longer than anything else available today.

read: http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1985

just on that socket 754 will have a 3700+ with 1 meg of cache by april, beyond that they will still be supporting the platform for a good while yet, simply because its cheaper to support (less pinout = less cost).

Also notice on the roadmap that the 3700+ on socket 754 has twice the cache of the 3800+ on socket 939, the inference being that you can either get twice the cache, or twice the memory bandwidth for about the same performance, or for highest performance, get the FX chip.

sheeeeeeeeesh.

Also, the athlon 64 will be ddr-I for a while yet, which is good seeing as first generation ddr-II will be as fast as, if not slower than ddr-I due to the increased latency on the devices, + the fact that it'll be a few months before the price of ddr-II comes down to the same as ddr-I.

RicardoSmith

Incidentally you can get a 3000xp/512mb ram/120gb HD/Radeon 9100/DVD and CDRW drives and a 15" TFT at the moment in Dixons for €1100. A P4 of the same spec is 1300 in PCWorld. I thought that was pretty decent. Especially when you consider it includes MS Works, XP home and a warranty in case anything goes pop. Of course you need to change the graphic cards to play games, but otherwise its a painless way to get a machine.

Building a machine and then supporting it is a lot of hassle. But if you are going to do it then personally I've found Intel machines less hassle than AMD ones, and for a machine for someone else I'd go with an intel system. If theres problems with the machine through no fault of your own they'll blame you and not the hardware. But the AMD machines are better for value, and bang per buck.

JustHalf

they're all coming in May. Socket 754 has the longest legs of all available atm, AMD seem to be gearing it up to be their budget chipset, so it should last until at least the end of the year as a supported platform, if not longer.

I've quoted this to show how much of a tool you are.

You're boasting about a socket 754 chip coming out with 1 meg of cache in April 2004. You say this "platform" will last up until the end of the year. From the looks of that article, AMD have NO official roadmap after April 2004 for socket 754.

AMD are notoriously bad at providing reliable information on future systems. It is entirely likely that future socket 754 chips will be less powerful than current socket 754 chips. And that will be bad for people who blow their money on a really good system now.

From overclockers.com: http://www.overclockers.com/articles923/

Towards the end of the year, we'll see 90nm processors come out, and they'll all be socket 939. Socket 754 owners will notice at that time that not only will there not be a 90nm socket 754 replacement, but that the new socket 754 replacement is a downgrade on what they already have.

If you can hold off buying a machine until 2005, then do so. You'll get the benefits of a relatively mature PCI-Express platform, you should know if your buy will have a proper upgrade path. Right now, it's almost certain AMD platforms you buy today have an extremely limited upgrade path. It is certain that Intel platforms have this problem.

Won't you look like a tool when you blow 1200 euro on a beast of a machine now when you'll have to spend the same again in 2005? Why not pay half that, and buy a system good enough to last you until then?

Don't waste money on a beast of a machine today. You're painting yourself into a corner.

You say:

While nothing you buy today (or ever) is going to be future proof, the socket 754 platform will last a good deal longer than anything else available today.

But I have not been arguing against socket 754 for this reason. My reason has been not that socket 754 is equally as crap as everything else. What I have been saying is that everything is a crap buy now, so maximise your bang for your buck, and don't spend over 700 on a PC that doesn't include a case or monitor. That's just an insane waste of money.

astrofool

yea, it also means that AMD has no socket 939 roadmap past april....

This guy is building a computer for someone, the computer parts that will go furthest right now is socket 754. If the guy already had an athlon xp equiv system, then he may be better off waiting, but if not, you may as well get the best bang for the buck available atm, and right now that is either a p4 3c+ or a64-3000+. To buy a new athlon xp system now is completely stupid, it doesn't even have a roadmap at all, and will deliver less than steller performance in the new games released this year, which the person will probably want to play. There's no point in buying raptors, if you're cpu is a piece of sh*t, esp. as when you do buy your real new computer, the price of the hard drives will also have fallen.

Also, that overclockers article was written before the AMD roadmap came out showing support for socket 754 beyond what was originally believed.

At worst if u buy a socket 754 now, u will be able to go to at least an A64-3700+

RicardoSmith

A P4c or a 64AMD is a lot more expensive than a Athlon Xp machine and at the end of the day for the high end games you are talking about a better graphic card will make more of a difference than having the latest CPU.

It makes sense to buy a machine for the apps & games you use now not in 6 months or 12 months down the line. That has never made sense.

astrofool

well even in the latest games released now, they struggle on athlon xp systems.

Games wise right now it goes: athXP < p4 < ath64

RicardoSmith

Originally posted by astrofool
well even in the latest games released now, they struggle on athlon xp systems.

Games wise right now it goes: athXP < p4 < ath64

What game? and what do you mean by struggle?

http://www.nordichardware.com/reviews/cpu/2004/Athlon64_2.2GHz/index.php?ez=7

Dingatron

Thanks for your input guys. The way I see it is that there will always be new technology around the corner. Personally I would wait for PCI-Express but its for someone else. The rig is for high performance mainly for games now so I'm edging towards the Athlon64 with raid 0 and either 1 GB or 512 MB or ram? Not sure whether 1 GB would make that much of a performance boost? Had a look at JES Computer and their prices are pretty good. Have never bought from them before so could someone let me know the following?

Is the best delivery option German Post? Looks like they use DHL.
Looking for an XP OEM. If I got one do they send English versions?
Going to get a new keyboard for myself. Do they stock English versions?

RicardoSmith

Be interesteding to see what the price differencies are between a P4c, 64AMD and an XP system. I guess everything other than the motherboard and CPU are the same so it would depend on the price difference of these.

Dingatron

CPU wise theres not too much difference as I was looking at a high end XP, P4 2.8 800 MHz and a Atlon64 3000+.


CPU Intel P4 S478 BOX 2800 MHZ (C) € 173,70

CPU AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Box € 219,90

CPU AMD Athlon XP 3200+ Box € 209,99

Good price for the P4 2.8. The mb is where you see the difference. The socket A mbs are fairly good value. The 478 and 754's are more expensive.

RicardoSmith

You also buy a cheap 2500xp mobile and a cheap socket A board and for games you'd be pretty much neck and neck with the P4 3Ghz and 64 AMD. Though I know that he didn't want to go overclocking with a machine for someone else.

http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD03MjImdXJsX3BhZ2U9Nw==

aaf

Originally posted by ding
Thanks for your input guys. The way I see it is that there will always be new technology around the corner. Personally I would wait for PCI-Express but its for someone else. The rig is for high performance mainly for games now so I'm edging towards the Athlon64 with raid 0 and either 1 GB or 512 MB or ram? Not sure whether 1 GB would make that much of a performance boost? Had a look at JES Computer and their prices are pretty good. Have never bought from them before so could someone let me know the following?

Is the best delivery option German Post? Looks like they use DHL.
Looking for an XP OEM. If I got one do they send English versions?
Going to get a new keyboard for myself. Do they stock English versions?

They don't stock English keyboards. Had placed an order for one and cancelled it as soon as I copped on it was not going to be an english version. They still haven't reimbursed me for the cancelled keyboard and that was about 3 weeks ago. I ordered a lot of stuff from them 3 weeks ago. Opted for the GLS delivery. They are a crap company. I tracked my order on the net. It was sitting in their warehouse for over a week when I decided enough was enough and called into their HQ in Blanchardstown to collect. No attempted deliveries and not a phone call. I tried to ring on multiple occasions and they do not answer the phone - ever! Don't know what the German Post option will be like. DHL are not great in my experience either although they do answer the phone! Everything in my order seems fine. I collected in on Friday but haven't had the chance to put it together yet. Will start build this evening. Fingers crossed. I got 1GB (two 512MB sticks) of DDR PC400 512MB Mushkin CL2 Level One ram. If your planning on doing a lot of intensive digital image processing and dvd stuff, a gig is the way to go. I went for the AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Box. It has a gig of L2 Cache compared to 512 on lesser AMD's.

Hope this helps

RicardoSmith

These are still pricey CPU's IMO. Heres an interesting review

http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD03MTc=

Col_Loki

Don't know what the German Post option will be like.

Thats the option i went for and both my orders arived within a week in perfect condition..... i was happy!!

On the topic of the thread, its a gaming machine thats not going to be overclocked and upgrading prob isint going to be much of an option with any system you buy when its a year down the road (AMD64 socket 754 might have a more options than the others) . IMO you gotta go with the AMD64 3000+ , its the best performing CPU for almost everything including games of the processors listed.

Bottom line is this isint a pc for himself its a pc for a friend with €1100 to spend, i think its better we give him advice thats within his stated budget thats going to give him the best performance. That said it is a bad time to buy and a cheap system is a good idea just not one that seems to be a valid option in this case (is good advise though). He's getting almost the best GFX card out there and spending more money on an XT is silly, so id get a good CPU.

On the hard drives thing, the seagates are quiet but not as good performers as the others like maxtor, WD, samsung. Mabye thing of the 160gb SATA 8mb cache drives for €105 on www.jes-computer.de .

[edit] PS getting a high end AMD XP is a dreadfull choice so steer clear of them.

JustHalf

Are you guys insane? Will you not even give this guy the option of deciding that the 10% improvement in FPS isn't worth the extra 55% in cost?

Because that's what it works out to. Here's what I call the big fat waste of money. Bear in mind that this has the cheapest 754 board on Komplett...

MSI K8T NEO-FSR mainboard socket 754 K8T800, SATA/ATA, GbLAN, ATX, SOUND
114.95

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 2.0 GHz Socket 754, 512 KB cache, BOXED
236.99

Sapphire Radeon 9800 Atlantis PRO 128MB AGP,ATI9800PRO,DVI-I,TV-Out, Lite-Retail
248.05

Corsair TWINX512-4000 DDR-DIMM 512MB Kit w/two matched CMX256-4000 DIMMs
157.3

Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 160GB S-ATA S-ATA/150 8MB cache 7200RPM
128.15

LG DVD drive IDE 16x/48x (GDR-8161BB) Bulk version
38.96

Creative SB Audigy 2 PCI soundcard w/1394,THX, DD EX6.1, Bulk
76.23

Sony Floppy Drive 3,5" 1,44MB MPF-920 Floppy Drive, Internal
15.58

Logitech MX500 Optical Mouse USB & PS-2, Retail
46.74

Logitech Internet Navigator Keyboard (English), PS/2 og USB, Retail
34.36

----

Of course, this is just insane. Best tell your friend to save that cash for a later machine in 2005 (one with PCI-Express, and Tejas or a cheap 90nm Hammer).

RicardoSmith

Thats why I reckon a 3000xp or a P4 2.8 on a cheap board is probably the most sensible choice out there at the moment.

astrofool

u could also wait till 2006 for bargain basement 5ghz cpu's.

Even when PCI express is released, all graphics cards this year will also ship on agp, agp8x is nowhere near being used up, let alone double that again. BTX boards are only a huge benefit if the chip creates alot of heat (hello prescott). All boards this year will also ship with regular pci slots, AND ddr-II has no performance improvement over ddr-I.

While there are big changes coming, there are ALWAYS big changes just around the corner. There's talk of Intel releasing multi core cpu's by the end of the year (tejas), which will need another socket upgrade.

If you're buying a machine now, the one that will remain usable for longest is an a64 or p4 platform, NOT an athlon XP.

The fact that from the very same platform, people should be able to see about a 10% performance boost when XP-64 ships is a bonus as well. Already UT2004 is gonna have a 64bit port. It's likely that HL2 and doom3 will also (valve already support amd64 at server side with hlds_amd64).

RicardoSmith

Originally posted by astrofool
...
If you're buying a machine now, the one that will remain usable for longest is an a64 or p4 platform, NOT an athlon XP....

Remain usable? What does that mean? Since I know people still using 486s with Word 2 quite happily. I only retired a 10yr old Mac recently myself. If you mean remain the fastest then well obviously the fastest one is fastest. But you have to ask if you can play all the current games at decent frame rate, then what the heck else do you need to spend more than you need to?

JustHalf

Originally posted by astrofool
u could also wait till 2006 for bargain basement 5ghz cpu's.

Now you're just being stupid.

Originally posted by astrofool
Even when PCI express is released, all graphics cards this year will also ship on agp, agp8x is nowhere near being used up, let alone double that again. BTX boards are only a huge benefit if the chip creates alot of heat (hello prescott). All boards this year will also ship with regular pci slots, AND ddr-II has no performance improvement over ddr-I.

You're making unwarranted conclusions.

If you get a PCI-Express board, you should be able to throw in a top-of-the-range new graphics card for the next couple of years. If you get an AGP-only board, you can't... it won't last as long as an upgrade path. ATI and nVidia will abandon AGP as they have abandoned PCI. How hard is it to get a fast PCI graphics card these days?

BTX boards are a huge benefit if you have a super-hot chip, but if you don't (if Tejas runs at a decent wattage) then you will probably be able to run your computer with a lesser number and speed of fans. That sounds pretty good, doesn't it? But I never focused on BTX as a prime reason for not buying this year.

DDR-II has no performance over DDR-I clock-for-clock, but it is designed to scale to much faster speeds. 400MHz DDR-I is probably faster at the moment than 400MHz DDR-II. But are you going to claim that it's faster than 800MHz DDR-II?

PCI-Express is the biggest reason not to buy these year, and the combination of coming 90nm Hammers and (possibly) cooler Prescotts (or just Tejas) is the biggest reason not to buy right now. You would be a fool to waste money on a top-end computer such as an Athlon 64-based machine, especially as the PC I listed should overclock to be as fast as a 4GHz Northwood.

130nm Hammers are crap overclockers anyway. That XP is a known overclocking gem.

Originally posted by astrofool
While there are big changes coming, there are ALWAYS big changes just around the corner. There's talk of Intel releasing multi core cpu's by the end of the year (tejas), which will need another socket upgrade.

They'll almost certainly need a socket upgrade, but you won't need to switch your graphics card around.

Originally posted by astrofool
If you're buying a machine now, the one that will remain usable for longest is an a64 or p4 platform, NOT an athlon XP.

The Athlon XP machine I mentioned should last someone only slightly shorter than the hammer machine. And they'll have an extra 400 euro to spend on a decent upgrade when they need one.

Should someone spend 55% more on a computer to keep it "lasting" another three months?

Originally posted by astrofool
The fact that from the very same platform, people should be able to see about a 10% performance boost when XP-64 ships is a bonus as well. Already UT2004 is gonna have a 64bit port. It's likely that HL2 and doom3 will also (valve already support amd64 at server side with hlds_amd64).

This is wishful thinking.