New System / Some Help Please

Dazzer

Ok Im putting together a new system in four weeks time and have started to do my homework now as this is the first ever PC I have built. What I have so far.

CPU - AMD Athlon XP2200+ 1.8 GHz 266 MHz bus Socket A (Thoroughbred) Processor (OEM)
Price = EUR 303.73 inc. VAT

OR

Intel Pentium 4 2.26 GHz Boxed PC533 Socket PGA478, 512kB "Northwood"
Price = EUR 337.07 inc. VAT

Which is better? Never mind the price difference it is not that big.

MotherBoard - Asus A7V333 RAID Mainboard Socket A DDR VIAKT333, ATA/133, ATX, USB2.0, FireWire
Price = EUR 183.57 inc. VAT

Will this work with the above CPU's?

GFX Card - Gainward AGP GeForce4 Ti4600 128MB DDR "Ultra/750XP", Retail
Price = EUR 493.38 inc. VAT

Dont think I need help with this altho any advice on any better GFX cards would be great.

Memory - Crucial PC2100 DDR-DIMM 512MB CL2.5 REG Unbuffered, ECC/REG, 2.5V, 64Meg x 72
Price = EUR 305.50 inc. VAT X 2 = EUR 611 inc. VAT

Will this memory work with the above MotherBoard and CPU?

Hard Drive - Western Digital Caviar 120GB IDE 7200RPM Special Edition 8MB cache WD1200JB
Price = EUR 265.80 inc. VAT

Whats the difference between 8MB Cache and 2MB Cache?

FAN - GlobalWin CPU-Fan Socket A/7/370/FCPGA CAKII38, max 2,3GHz
Price = EUR 59.27 inc. VAT

I take it this fan will do?

Floppy Drive - NEC Floppy Drive 3,5" 1,44MB FD1231H Floppy Drive Internal
Price = EUR 19.26 inc. VAT

Dont mind this too much.

Sound Card - Creative Soundcard PCI Audigy Platinum With Firewire, Retail
Price = EUR 258.37 inc. VAT

Anyone know if this is any good or can I get better for cheaper?

CD Re - Writer - Asus CD-RW IDE 40x/12x/48x CRW-4012A, Internal Retail (FlextraLink)
Price = EUR 122.23 inc. VAT

Unsure about Asus but my ISDN modem from them is great.

DVD ROM - Pioneer DVD Player IDE 16x/40x Slot-in Retail (DVD-A06S)
Price = EUR 86.68 inc. VAT

I like the speed and the way you slot the CD/DVD in

Case - Chieftec Dragon BigTower, w/Door, Silver Case w/360W power, DA-01SL-D P4/AMD (UK)
Price = EUR 162.15 inc. VAT

I take it 360W is more than enough to run all of the above?

TOTAL = Total EUR 2598 inc. VAT

BTW is there anything I have missed?

Also if you can do better for cheaper or roughly the same price please post below. I would like to get peoples feedback as for the best system and parts to get for a similar spec.

Basically what Im after is.

• 2200 MHz / 2.2 GHz AMD or Pentium chip.
• Good motherboard with firewire and USB 2.
• GeForce 4 Ti4600 128MB DDR RAM.
• 100 to 120 GB Hard Drive at 7200 RPM. I dont think you can get higher than 7200 can you? And whats the difference between 8MB Cache and 2MB Cache?
• 1GB DDR-DIMM Memory.
• CD Re - Writer around the 40x/12x/48x speed.
• DVD ROM around the 16x/40x speed. No combies please.
• Crappy Floppy Drive in case I need to install from floppy.
• Decent sound but not mad important.
• All the bits en bobs to go with the above such as cables, fans etc.
• A case with a PSU capable of supllying power to all of the above.

Inspector Gadget

Dazzer:

Your CPU Heatsink/Fan (HSF) and motherboard are Socket A (AMD) only - you'll need a Pentium 4 board - I haven't looked at Intel stuff in a while, but something like the Asus P4B533? Anyone with more recent background care to recommend something better? - if you want to use the P4 (the "boxed" P4 actually has a heatsink and fan fitted to it at the factory, which is good enough if you don't overclock it).

Also, your sound card has a Firewire port built-in, so why do you need it on the motherboard?

Gadget

Dazzer

Want / Need more than one

Oh and I would rather stay with AMD but which is the better chip in terms of performance? I cant understand all them benchmarks out there

Inspector Gadget

...you can buy PCI firewire cards if you want more slots (even Compustore have 'em!) so you don't necessarily need to get it integrated onto the motherboard - anyway, USB2 and Firewire are similar in terms of raw bandwidth so it's unlikely that many boards will ship with both as it's a bit redundant.

With respect to hard disks, 7200RPM is the fastest spindle speed on current IDE drives (there are 10,000RPM SCSI models, but...) More cache is always good, as the drive will appear more responsive (basically, when you read something from the disk, it reads the next bit into its cache memory in anticipation of you looking for it; if you want it, it sends it to you from memory and loads the next bit off the hard disk...)

Everything else looks fine. Although, have you thought about:

• Monitor
• Speakers
• Keyboard
• Mouse

?

Gadget

Dazzer

Well the above motherboard has both? I never knew USB 2 was nearly as fast as firewire

Monitor - Have a 17" Panasonic flat screen that has done me proud now for 4 years running.
Speakers - Home cinema set but also have around 3 sets of good quality PC speakers lying around.
Keyboard and mouse - Will use the ones from my current system for the time being but I will eventually get the new Logitec black infra red keyboard and mouse.

Quigs Snr

Performance wise, not much between the AMD and Intel. The Intel will overclock a lot easier and probably run cooler too.
That said, nothing wrong with the AMD either. Although it's nearly double the price of the XP2000 and certainley not anything aproaching double the price, so in that respect, I think it's a somewhat foolish purchase, however you do want to 2.2, so .....

Gerry will probably tell you to go with the Intel, for the same money, although I am staunchly pro AMD, I would probably do the same, for reliability, overclocking and thermal abilities. Gameswise, ATI, 3DLabs and SIS recently announced that their new products would support AMD's new enhanced instruction sets, Nvidia, will eventually also announce this, but for now they seem to be siding a little with Intel and to top it off, the new Unreal game is being heavily touted as P4 Optimised, its all bull, I'd say either way you're doing well.


With regard to the hard drives, I use the Western Digital products also and have to say that they are great, I have no problems with mine. The 8MB cache is better than the 2MB cache, it's not really a huge difference though and (gross oversimplification alert) works similar to a cache on a processor where recently accessed stuff is stored in the cache memory for quick access.

I think you can get a 15,000rpm SCISI drive by the way.

Inspector Gadget

There's an article I found on google on the subject that might (only might) be interesting:

http://www.digit-life.com/articles/usb20vsfirewire/

Gadget

JustHalf

I'd recommend the Gigabyte GA-8IHXP, if you're going P4. It's the board I'm getting.

Gerry

Thats great JustHalf, but you didn't mention that board needs rdram.

If you want the best performance out of that p4, you will need a board like the gigabyte, and a different kind of ram called pc1066 rambus. This will give you excellent performance, but is a bit more expensive. It will put the p4 a bit ahead of the amd on performance though.

Or you can go for ddr, though the ddr ram you have there is wrong, you don't need ecc ram. This is only required for server boards, and the dual amd motherboards. The normal ddr is cheaper also. You should go for pc2700 ddr, especially if going for the p4. For best ddr performance with the p4, you should go for a sis 645 or 648 based board, like the asus p4s533. Then you can run the ddr at 200/400, for excellent performance.

Dazzer

What if Im going for the AMD option Gerry? is the DDR RAM you mentioned above still the best option?

The reason Im getting such a powerfull system with all the bells and whistles I can think of is because this is the last time for around 3 or 4 years that I want to have to upgrade or buy a new PC.

BTW how fast is DDR RAM?

pc100
pc133

DDR RAM ?

Rambus1066, I take it that 1066 is the speed?

Gerry

ddr ram is the best option for the athlon, it is not available with rambus and is not optimized for the higher latency and bandwidth of rambus. ( Note, higher latency is bad, but the p4 is designed to compensate for this )

rambus runs at 1066mhz ok, but is only able to transfer 32 bits at a time, compared to 64bit for sdram or ddr ram.

This page here explains it nicely I think:

http://www.amptron.com/html/ProductNews/RDRAM.html

I'm not sure about your logic about this system lasting 3 or 4 years. It is not terribly far ahead of systems costing half the price. Lets just say that it is good for 3 years. If you wait 3 months before buying it, the price will probably have fallen by 40 - 50%. Spending crazy money doesn't keep you on the bleeding edge for very long.

Dazzer

Aye I know but I only bought a 1 GHz system 1 year ago and its now pretty much redundant.

I think I have made my mind up. Ill go with the AMD option.

Will all the above components work together except the RAM?

Am I missing anything?

BKtje

GFX Card - Gainward AGP GeForce4 Ti4600 128MB DDR "Ultra/750XP", Retail
Price = EUR 493.38 inc. VAT

That is probably the best card going atm but when u buy ur system in 4 weeks the ati r300 will be out in the states. it supposedly 20% faster than the gf ti 4600 (20% of what tho is another matter). Over directx9 games it should be even faster.
Might be something to consider before purchasing the gf ti4600.
(nvidias nv30 is released in nov/dec but id imagine thats a bit long to wait for you)

If ordered from the states u could have that card just a little after you have gotten ur system.
(if its released on time)

Dazzer

Well I might wait a few months to get the GFX card as I know how fast they bring out new ones and the ones out at the moment have been around for some time now.

Does GF4 support the new dx9 features?

BKtje

They will work with them of course but as they aint optimised for them you wont notice as large a performance increase.