Need some current PC suggestions...

[1Quik7]

i usually upgrade my 'rig' twice a year, and this one is getting out of date. i have been out of the 'loop' for quite a while now, last time i heard 8x AGP was just coming out...what is the 'new hotness'? any new technologies i should be looking for?

 

i'll be looking to rebuild most of it, maybe not the vidi card though(i sill love my GF3 500, it does fine for me). i am partial to AMD, any new RAM or CPU architecture? fill me in guys =)

[Spidey2721]

how much are you wanting to spend??

 

Later,

jay

[Nate1647545505]

SATA HD. WD Raptor, 10,000RPM. Buy one.

 

1GB of RAM (Dual channel works pretty good)

 

Asus has an interesting feature where the computer will overclock itself under load, kinda neat..

 

CPU's....well, LGA is kinda new...Intel is working on bringing out there 64bit consumer architecture, as well as Mr' Gate's releasing Window XP 64 bit version. May want to hold off untill these come out, don;t know your budget, but I'm sure it would drop prices on the exisiting hardware.

 

AMD is chilling with their Athalon 64s, They are pretty solid with HyperTransport. I haven't checked on them much, but they seem to be hanging in there.

 

Uhhh,

As far as video cards, I'd vote for a GT4600 from Nivida or a 9800 pro from ATI. I have both and they do a good job for the money.

 

HTH

Nate

[1Quik7]

money is no object

 

i don't need anything "state of the art" just something somewhat up to date. i have been looking and it seems everything is 'onboard' anymore.

 

what are these 'Sempron' CPU's?

is there a noticeable difference between EIDE/SATA?

[500HP RX-7]

Steve

It doesnt take a high end machine to look at gay porn, at least thats what Zavier tells me smile.gif

[1Quik7]

Originally posted by 500HP RX-7:

Steve

It doesnt take a high end machine to look at gay porn, at least thats what Zavier tells me smile.gif

hah, true. he told me him and Mike use the shop PC's to look at gay porn.(PS- wipe down your mouse in the morning)

[Guest RdHondaSi]

Each card has it's own strengths and weaknesses:

Video Cards:(ones that have been released, there are other models than these)

ATI X850 PE 256MB Ram

Nvidia 6800 Ultra 256 MB Ram

ATI X800 PE 256 MB Ram

Nvidia 6600 GT 256 MB Ram

ATI X800 XL 256 MB (possibly best bang for the buck in My opinion)

 

MB/CPU:

Socket 478 MB are going down a bit

LGA 775 is going pretty good as stated above

Athlon64 FX-55 is pretty darn fast(not running quite as fast as some of the extreme P4's though)

If you are into OC'ing, people are starting to experiment with the Pentium M and get pretty good speeds with Water Cooling.

Larger L2 cache the better

Dual core CPU's not out yet but it screams

 

Memory:

I guess people like LED's on the memory now, It says the temperature and how much is in use.. etc..(not fo me though)

They(manufacturers) are starting to get pretty good timings on DDR Ram recently OCZ has DDR500 with 2-2-2 timings and rated at 3.3 volts.

 

Hard Drives:

Raptors

SATA

Maxtor has the Ultra16 drives out now(has 16MB cache) and comes close to the raptor in some tests. The cache made up for the lack of the 10K rotatioanl speed.

 

Cooling:

Water cooling

Thermalright XP-120 Heatsink (uses 120mm fan)

Zalman CNPS7700-Cu or Al/Cu (uses 120mm fan)

Artic Cooling ATI Silencer (for ATI Video cards)

Artic Cooling NV Silencer (for NVidia Video cards)

 

Cases:

Still researching this one cause I am upgrading.

 

My upgrades will be here either Wed or Thurs.

I am getting:

ATI AIW X800 XT

ATI Silencer 4

XP-120 Heatsink

Still looking for a good 120mm fan to get that has good airflow and low noise(maybe a papst or panaflo)

Researching case now

Looking for exceptionally good deals on quality DDR500(might take a while though)

 

 

my .02 hope it helps make some kind of decision.

[JaSSon]

If money is no Object, I'd go with an nForce 4 SLI based mother board. These boards have two PCI-E x16 slots. That means you can run 2 PCI-E video cards. Imagine running 2 6800 Ultra vid cards.

 

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?submit=property&DEPA=1

 

I'd power the system with either an AMD FX-55 or an AMD 64 4000+ then OC the shit outta the processor. Smack down the P4's.

 

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?submit=property&DEPA=1

[Guest RdHondaSi]

Actually in raw speed the P4 is whooping the Shit out of the FX-55 Here are some Overclocking results and the time on the 32Mb Pi program.

 

21m 46s - P4 3.6E @ 5.22GHz

22m 58s - A64 FX-55 @ 3.30GHz

24m 46s - A64 3000+ @ 3.00GHz (No 4000+ posted)

 

Yes it is pretty close considering the P4 is clocked a lot higher.

[Nate1647545505]

Originally posted by 1Quik7:

money is no object

 

i don't need anything "state of the art" just something somewhat up to date. i have been looking and it seems everything is 'onboard' anymore.

 

what are these 'Sempron' CPU's?

is there a noticeable difference between EIDE/SATA?

EIDE is kinda old. (It peaks out at 133mb/s) I think that is ATA133, anywho SATA hits 150mbs/sec. SATA is on par with SCSI, mostly because of the bus structure. Access time are about half of EDIE, 5.x seconds, where I think the faster 7,200RPM EIDE drives are still chugging with 7 or 8ms times. I have the 36gb WD Raptor for windows and core programs, and have my good old WD 80gb for music and such holdin down the EIDE.

 

As far as the Sempron CPU, stay away from it. You'll always want L1 and L2 cahce as big as possible. The standard is about 1MB right now for gaming/high end rigs. Both the Pentium 4 and Athalon series have what you want. It looks like AMD phased out the Duron and are replacing it with the Semperon.

 

HTH,

Nate

[iwishiwascool]

dollar for dollar:

 

AMD > Pentium

NVIDIA SLI > ATI ETC

DFI LANPARTY > *

[Veritas]

DFI lanparty ='s the MSI Mobo equiv, I was looking at both and went with the msi just because I was familiar with them, but they both seem to offer the same thing. I'd like to check out the differences myself and see which is better then the other.