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PC upgrade time

Dud - Jun 26, 2005

		Dud	Jun 26, 2005
		You guys were all a big help when I built my computer almost two years ago, but I need more advice on upgrading key components, and I don't follow developments in technology so I don't know whats what anymore. I'm looking to replace the following parts: Processor - 3 Ghz/800 mhz FSB minimum, 64bit & hyper-threading (don't know what that is but I want it) preferred. I'm leaning towards the intel Pentium 4 series at the moment. Motherboard - I'll probably pick this out myself after I find a processor. I'll probably go with ASUS again, but it's got to have 2 onboard ethernet dealies, and PCI Express slots. Video Card - I'm going back and forth between the ATI X800 and the GeForce 6800GT, I'll probably get a GeForce but there are so many different manufacturers of said card, I have no idea which one to get. I'm also interested in getting two and running that SLI two card setup thingy. Sound Card - Doesn't have to be too fancy, just decent.

		it290	Jun 26, 2005
		IMO, you're still better off with an Athlon 64 for price/performance. As for the motherboard, rather than getting 2 onboard ethernet ports, why not just get a mobo with 1 ethernet port, and add a cheap $10 ethernet card? You'll probably save some bucks that way. As far as the 6800GT is concerned, I think Gigabyte makes some good Nvidia cards. Sound card - Nvidia Soundstorm is good, past revisions have had some problems but they're awesome for onboard sound. If you want a dedicated card, the Audigy 2 line is still good, but beware -- Creative's drivers still suck, and EAX3 enhancements aren't really worth it for most games IMO.

Dud

Jun 26, 2005

Originally posted by it290+Sun, 2005-06-26 @ 12:33 PM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(it290 @ Sun, 2005-06-26 @ 12:33 PM)</div><div class='quotemain'>IMO, you're still better off with an Athlon 64 for price/performance.

[/b]

Perhaps, but I was very unimpressed with my current Athlon XP, for example it takes like 6 hours to compress a DVD into XviD and I can't use the computer for anything else while it's doing that. I just don't see an Athlon 64 3700+ or whatever being a big enough step up from a Athlon XP 2600+. And I don't buy into that thing where AMD says the actual speed maybe lower but it is really comparable to faster cpu x.

Originally posted by it290@Sun, 2005-06-26 @ 12:33 PM

As for the motherboard, rather than getting 2 onboard ethernet ports, why not just get a mobo with 1 ethernet port, and add a cheap $10 ethernet card? You'll probably save some bucks that way.

Well, I usually go all out on motherboards, and it's never been an issue where I found something that didn't have 2 ethernet ports. Plus I like to keep by PCI slots free.

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t290@Sun, 2005-06-26 @ 12:33 PM

As far as the 6800GT is concerned, I think Gigabyte makes some good Nvidia cards.

Sound card - Nvidia Soundstorm is good, past revisions have had some problems but they're awesome for onboard sound. If you want a dedicated card, the Audigy 2 line is still good, but beware -- Creative's drivers still suck, and EAX3 enhancements aren't really worth it for most games IMO.

[/quote]

Sounds good, thanks.

		it290	Jun 26, 2005
		IMO, the Athlon 64 is a big step up from an Athlon XP. I built two nearly identical computers -- one for work that has an XP 3000+ in it, and one for my neighbor that has an A64 3200+ in it (IIRC, model number might be off). The 64-bit system just feels much more responsive, and he's not running a 64-bit OS. Photoshop flies on that system, and every game I've installed on it runs very well, even though his video card is substandard. I'm running an XP 2600+ in one of my machines here, and even though I still feel it's quite quick (and probably won't be replaced for a while, considering it's in a Shuttle box), playing around with the Athlon 64 has given me serious hardware envy.

		Dud	Jun 26, 2005
		Really? I'll keep it in mind then, that would save some money.

		Borisz	Jun 26, 2005
		Whereas the Athlon 64 is a huge step to the Athlon XP, be aware that it only outperforms the same class pentiums at gaming performance. Multimedia performance, such as encoding videos & audio is something that the Pentiums can do slightly better. I don't know if that applies to the dual core Athlon 64's though.

Dud

Jun 26, 2005

Originally posted by Borisz@Sun, 2005-06-26 @ 05:51 PM

Whereas the Athlon 64 is a huge step to the Athlon XP, be aware that it only outperforms the same class pentiums at gaming performance. Multimedia performance, such as encoding videos & audio is something that the Pentiums can do slightly better.

I don't know if that applies to the dual core Athlon 64's though.

[post=135820]Quoted post[/post]

Yeah, that's why I was leaning towards the Pentium 4 chips initially, because at the moment I don't do any gaming on my PC. I use it as a CD/DVD player mostly, but I hope to do a little bit of gaming once I get this new one set up. Also a huge problem I have with my current setup is when ripping a CD I have to make the rip proram wait for the encoder to finish a track before starting on the next one, so it takes 20 mins to rip a CD instead of 5 minutes like it's supposed to.

Also going back the the Athlon 64, I can't find an ASUS mobo with a socket 754 AND two PCI Express x16 slots. I think I am going to go with a Pentium 4 because of that plus I like to make my machines do heavy multi-tasking.

mal

Jun 26, 2005

Originally posted by Dud@Mon, 2005-06-27 @ 10:07 AM

Also going back the the Athlon 64, I can't find an ASUS mobo with a socket 754 AND two PCI Express x16 slots.

[post=135823]Quoted post[/post]

Forget about socket 754 now. I mean it. Now.

If you go with socket 939 you should be able to upgrade to a dual core CPU in the future with only a BIOS upgrade, rather than a new motherboard.

Dud

Jun 26, 2005

Originally posted by mal@Sun, 2005-06-26 @ 08:07 PM

Forget about socket 754 now. I mean it. Now.

If you go with socket 939 you should be able to upgrade to a dual core CPU in the future with only a BIOS upgrade, rather than a new motherboard.

[post=135825]Quoted post[/post]

What's a socket 754? I don't know what that is, and if I did at one point I've forgotten all about it.

It looks like there are better motherboards for socket 939's so I haven't ruled out the Athlon 64 completely. What is the best one for price

erformance ratio, the 4000+ seems a little too much at $475 but I don't want a 3000+ either, what's a good median here?

		it290	Jun 26, 2005
		Going off Pricewatch, the 3800 looks good, it's $125 less than the 4000. About the CD ripping thing, that sounds more like poorly written software than anything else. Does it screw up otherwise? I don't have a problem with that even on a very slow computer (G4-400mhz).

		Zziggy00	Jun 26, 2005
		I'm typing this on a laptop with a mobile Athlon 64 3400+... 2.2GHz with a 1.5GHz FSB... I really don't notice much difference between it and my 2.8GHz P4 system with 533Mhz FSB... I actually get better encoding, and compressing time on the Pentium computer... I would recommend thinking long and hard about buying all this stuff before you do it... I went and dumped money into the pentium system and slapped a 6800 in there (overclocked it and unlocked it's "defective" pipes) big HDD, etc... and it turns out I just never really used it for much of anything that my current computer couldn't do. (aside from gaming).

Dud

Jun 26, 2005

Originally posted by it290@Sun, 2005-06-26 @ 10:14 PM

Going off Pricewatch, the 3800 looks good, it's $125 less than the 4000.

About the CD ripping thing, that sounds more like poorly written software than anything else. Does it screw up otherwise? I don't have a problem with that even on a very slow computer (G4-400mhz).

[post=135835]Quoted post[/post]

I was using Exact Audio Copy with an ogg encoder. There's an option that lets you run the encoder seperately from EAC so it can continue ripping while the encoder does it's thing. You can even have the encoder work on 2 or 3 files while it is ripping the rest of the CD. I don't know why, my computer can't even handle the encoder doing one file, the two processes have to take turns otherwise it locks up. I don't know.

Thanks for all the info so far, this is still a ways off, I probably won't start this for at least a month. I'm just getting some ideas. In regards to what Zziggy00 was saying, there is still is time for me to cheap out and do a minor upgrade or none at all. After all I am a little pissed I have to do such a huge upgrade a year and a half after I built the thing...

		it290	Jun 26, 2005
		Hmm, is your CD drive on the same IDE channel as your HD? That might explain that behavior, but then agian, encoding isn't extremely HD intensive. Perhaps it's just an issue with the way the program handles the task priorities. If you can, see if you can run the encoder with a lower priority.

		Malakai	Jun 26, 2005
		I rip cds quite a bit, on an XP 1700+ CPU, and I can still do stuff while that's happening. Must be some other problem you're having.

		Dud	Jun 27, 2005
		I've got like 10 CDs coming in the mail, I'll try experimenting with it when I rip those.

		slinga	Jun 28, 2005
		In regards to hyperthreading, its just Intel hoopla. Your computer sees the CPU as two separate CPUs but the performance gain is very minimal, something around 5% over teh same CPU with HT disabled. AFAIK, HT works by giving the CPU an extra set of registers. That way when a processes switches in or out you can save time by not having to reload registers. This is useful if you have a lot of small processes switching in and not. I bet if you have one process consuming all your CPU HT would have no effect at all.

Dud

Jun 30, 2005

Originally posted by slinga@Wed, 2005-06-29 @ 10:34 AM

In regards to hyperthreading, its just Intel hoopla. Your computer sees the CPU as two separate CPUs but the performance gain is very minimal, something around 5% over teh same CPU with HT disabled. AFAIK, HT works by giving the CPU an extra set of registers. That way when a processes switches in or out you can save time by not having to reload registers. This is useful if you have a lot of small processes switching in and not. I bet if you have one process consuming all your CPU HT would have no effect at all.

[post=135954]Quoted post[/post]

That doesn't sound that great...

		it290	Jun 30, 2005
		Unless the app is designed to run multithreaded, of course. I believe many video encoding apps can, for example, work on different frames w/different threads.

		Dud	Jun 30, 2005
		Here's what I'm going with for now: AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego Integrated into Chip FSB Socket 939 ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard XFX PVT45GUDF3 Geforce 6800GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 I was going to go with the 3800 but I cheaped out as usual, and decided on the 3700 to save $40. As far as the video card goes, I noticed NewEgg has a huge sale on the XFX 6800GT, and I couldn't pass that up, it seemed to get good reviews.

		Pearl Jammzz	Jun 30, 2005
		get an x800xt . I honestly would save the money and get a 3200+. not THAT much fo a dif. Depends if yo uthink the cost/performance ratio is good for you. Goodluck w/ this... WHat PSU you using? What case? This shit matters as cheap stuff is bad for yer hardware and makes yer comp run like ass (my friend got a custom built PC from a local place...he was havin all sorts of slowness and whatnot. threw in a good PSU and it fixed it all). And get a gig of ram, you'll love it, trust me. I'd do PC3200