Preserved Topic: looking to upgrade...the whole darn thing

well, ok, not the WHOLE thing, but my box is painfully outdated and needs a kick in the butt. right now i'm running an athlon 800mhz with 384mb RAM, geforce3, older sb audigy sound card. i've got a decent cd-r drive (plextor 24x) and dvd-rom so i'm not looking to upgrade those immediately, and the monitor is still good (19" mitusbishi diamondtron, still gorgeous and its like 4 yrs old).

i'm looking for the best bang for the buck and figure i'll be upgrading my cpu, mobo, and RAM, getting a new case and hard drive (just need something bigger, prob a 60 or 80 gig) and possibly a new vid card. as far as apps i'm getting more into 3d and will be running maya ple (and will hopefully get a full version at some point) and some lightwave 6.0, after effects, and photoshop, as well as a bit of flash, illustrator, and dreamweaver. may get into some video editing as well, and i do very little gaming (that's what consoles are for, my tv is a lot bigger than my monitor ). budget is, well, as little as possible

as i'm browsing it looks like the best price break comes around the athlon 2700/2800 (and there's a few different flavors of those as well) but i wouldn't mind spending more on another athlon or p4 if the performance is worth it. any advice or recommendations on cpu's, mobo's, memory, vid cards, and anything else you can think of would be greatly appreciated. thanks.

chris


KAIROSinteractive | tangent oriented

(Edited by Fig on 05-04-2004 16:41)

For AU$2000, I could build you a damn good system, perfect for almost anything you'd want to do with it. I've bene working up the specs for an upgrade I'd like to do myself, and here's what I currently have:

3.2GHz Pentium 4 Processor (800MHz FSB)
ASUS P4P800 Deluxe V2 MoBo
512 Meg Twin-matched ram (2 x 512 sticks, so a Gig of ram made to work with a hyper threaded processor)
Powercolor ATi Radeon 9600 XT Bravo 128MB video card
2 x 120GB Seagate SATA HDDs
Liteon 811S 8x DVD-RW+ drive
Audigy 2 Platinum XE Sound card
Gigbit LAN card
Logitech Wireless Duo MX (keyboard and mouse)
Creative Inspire 5600 6.1 surround speakers

Tha'ts more or less what I want to put in my PC, and it's a good package...a good number of those components are known to work quite well with each other


Justice 4 Pat Richard

I would recommend that if you have the extra $50 that you go with the Athlon XP 3000 with the 400 MHz FSB over the XP 2800. Or if you only have $20 extra try going for the 2800 with the 512 kB cache, often refered to as a Barton core (The 3000 is also a Barton core.). The extra cache from the Barton core and the higher FSB will be nice to have for doing memory intensive 3d work.
Around $330 should be able to get you a nForce3 motherboard and the FX 3000 in a bundle.

But you will notice that a lot of the 3d work is optimizewd for use with either the Intel chips or the AMD 64-bit chips. If you can take the price go for a P4 2.8 Ghz or higher with Hyperthreading, if possible try not to get a Presotte core as those can be trouble.

If you want to cannibilize the old PC for parts the Geforce 3 and Audigy should be good for now so I would reccomend waiting to see the new Nvidia Geforce 6800 and ATI's Radeon X800 XT do as they are very impressive in the jump above previouse card's performance, though very close to each other.
Also since you do little gaming on the PC you might want to look into a workstation graphics card such as the Quardro line from Nvidia.
Sounds cards have not changed much since yours, you can stick with it.

RAM is cheap. Get DDR that runs at 400 MHz, PC3200, and a motherboard that supports it. At least 512 but you would be happier with 1 gigabyte. My dad's shop does 3d CAD work and they are reccoemded to use at least 512.

__________________________
"Show me a sane person and I will cure him for you."-Carl Jung
Eagles may fly high, but beavers don't get sucked into jet engines.
tj333- the semi-Christ

thanks for the info guys. i've actually been doing some browsing in some 3d forums and it looks like there's a lot of folks that are VERY happy with the new athlon 64 and its performance with maya. checking on pricewatch i'm finding cpu/mobo combos with the athlon 64 3000 starting at $265, doing a bit of searching now to see what some of the higher rated motherboards are.

tj, i like your idea of hanging onto the video and sound cards for now, if i can get the motherboard and cpu for around 300-350, add a hard drive, RAM, and case for another 150 or so and then spend whatever to upgrade to winXP that shouldn't break the bank too much. and definitely at least 512mb of RAM, prob get one stick to start with then add another later on.

appreciate the info, if y'all have any other thoughts fire away...

chris


KAIROSinteractive | tangent oriented

On harddrives to get if you don't mind spending a bit for one of the best harddrives that I have seen is the Western Digital RAPTOR WD740GD. The Raptor has either 36 GB or 72 GB models and it is one of the fastest hard drives that you can get. It is intended for the midrange server or high end desktop. At around $120 it is nearly twice as expensive as slower same sized harddrives but its damn fast.
It runs off serial ATA (SATA) but that shouldn't be a problem if you are getting a new MB.

But for slower harddrives most anything with 2 MB of more cache and 7,400 RPM should be good.
__________________________
"Show me a sane person and I will cure him for you."-Carl Jung
Eagles may fly high, but beavers don't get sucked into jet engines.
tj333- the semi-Christ

(Edited by tj333 on 05-04-2004 22:16)

quote:

---

Fig said:
right now i'm running an athlon
800mhz with 384mb RAM, geforce3, older sb audigy sound card.

---

If you think thats painfully outdated, you have seen nothing.

__________________________________


Sexy Demoness cel

He, he, mine is a P3-733, but I'm about to build a whole new system as well. Not because I need it, my P3 does everything I need (even deals with video, but need some hours now and then), but because I'm going back to my country and buying computer parts here is much better than there.

ASUS P4C 800 E Deluxe MoBo with a P4 2.8 HT strapped on, add some paired Corsair TWINX1024-PC3200 (P3500 or even PC4000 if you have the bucks) and "you will not be dissapointed"

I was chuffed and the prices for the mobo and processor have recently gone down.

fr

heh, i know it could be worse but considering this is what i do for a living i figure i should be progressing a little more speedwise. my box does do what i need it to for now, but it does really drag at times (esp with big print work) plus its fun to rebuild stuff

interesting thought fatrod, i'll do some checking on those parts, thanks.

chris


KAIROSinteractive | tangent oriented

FatRod, if the ASUS mobo is set up for 800MHz, so it's okay for a 400MHz pair of memory sticks, PC3200 specs, if I buy sticks that are PC4000, do I have to overclock my system to make this memory work better?

I mean, I am about to buy an ASUS P4 C800-E Deluxe, with a P4 3.2 GHz (the "C" not the "E" one), and I am not going to overclock my system. Does it still make sense for me to buy memory PC4000 instead of PC3200, if I have the bucks??

The higher speed memeory is only needed if you are overclocking.
It lets the RAM go faster with the rest of the PC, if the PC is only being used at stock speeds anything beyond its max memory speed will remain unused. PC3200 should be all you need at stock speeds and will do alright for slightly faster, if you want to try a bit of overclocking.
__________________________
"Show me a sane person and I will cure him for you."-Carl Jung
Eagles may fly high, but beavers don't get sucked into jet engines.
tj333- the semi-Christ

(Edited by tj333 on 05-07-2004 19:14)

tj, another question, if I buy a PC4000 and I use it at stock speed, will it perform just like a PC3200 or worse?

Some of the overclocking RAMs will increase the CAS latency on the RAM so they can up the speed. With the FSB increase this allows on the CPU you won't notice the lower CAS latency's performance hit.
This would be slower if you are not overclocking it or you are unable to set the CAS latency to a lower value in the BIOS.

So you could buy some PC4000 RAM and most likely lower the CAS latency on it and have it perform just the same.
But if for some reason you can not lower the latency you would take a minor performance hit.


But if the PC4000 has the same latency as the PC3200 then it will work just the same.

I can check an article on www.pcstats.com when I get home tonight to see exactly what the performance difference is. I don't think its more then 5% anyways.

__________________________
"Show me a sane person and I will cure him for you."-Carl Jung
Eagles may fly high, but beavers don't get sucked into jet engines.
tj333- the semi-Christ

no point getting more than PC3200 memory if you are never going to use it. If you are going to overclock make sure you have a decent case (airflow and cooling wise - i.e. a few fans) and enougth power (PSU) with good quality branded memory (like corsair).

The ASUS P4C 800 E - Deluxe has a neat feature in BIOS (Jumper-free config) that makes overclocking very very easy - i.e. it sets the CAS latency, power and FSB speed accordingly. you can select overclock 5%, 10%, 15% and so on...

If you do go for it, its important to get so called *Paired* memory - 2 sticks of exactly the same memory tested together so the have identical timings and get along very well together.

I am not sure if overclocking is really worth the extra money on memory, unless you do a lot of processor intensive tasks, you probaly wont notice much difference but it does feel nice...

<edit> then again check this out http://www.tweaknews.net/reviews/cor4400/ - about the 4th or 5th page of the review give PC3200 vs PC4400 bench mark... also check out the memory manafactures recomended specs for your MoBo ie. http://www.corsairmemory.com/corsair/products/guides/Asus-1203.pdf <edit>

Ben

(Edited by FatRod on 05-12-2004 14:26)

ya know, as i've looked at overall cost to upgrade and a roommate who's in the living room watching tv (which is where my computer is) way too much i'm seriously considering a laptop

chris


KAIROSinteractive | tangent oriented

if you shop around you would be suprised what you can get your hands on. Post a budget and what HW you want for that limit then i am sure someone will come along and offer some surgestions. They might even offer to sell you something.

i hate laptops, which im pretty sure are more money, less powerfull, less expandable and those gay touch pads wind me up, even worse are the ibm finger sticks that sit randomly in the keyboard. PANTS.

the new athlon 64's are own.


My Artwork - BMEzine.com

fatrod, not necessarily disagreeing, but you don't have to sit in my living room and hear someone upset at the tv about how Ben Affleck played his hand on celebrity poker

chris


KAIROSinteractive | tangent oriented

see your point. yer laptop.

As an aside, and my own personal $0.02, don't buy a new system with intents to overclock it right away. Look into buying a system that runs as fast as you'd like at stock. That way, down the road another 2 years or so when you think about upgrading again, or you just aren't happy with the computer's current performance - then you overclock your system.

"Nothin' like a pro-stabbin' from a pro." -Weadah

A little show off time.

Today, arrived the second part of my new system.
The first was the case, an Antec P-160 Aluminum case.

Now, it's the monitor, my new Samsung 213T Silver.
It's dazzling me right now at 1600x1200 px, digital input. It's so big that moving the eyes is not enough, one has to move the head also. I found out that my current graphics card is pretty capable of handling the necessary signal.

Next, it'll be the time to acquire the CPU (P4-3.2C GHz), the MoBo Asus P4C-800E Dlx, the memory (corsair 1GB, probably PC-3200), the power supply (silenX), some silenX fans and the heat sink (thermalright, swiftech or zalman, still researching).

I've been postponing these acquisitions for months, expecting for new releases of MoBo's and CPU's, so those would have lower prices, but I can't wait anymore. I'll be leaving the USA very soon. I'm pretty sure that as soon as I buy all the stuff I want, new stuff will arrive and the ones I bought will have lower prices, but I can't wait any longer...

I already have two Maxtor ATA-133 200GB hard disks and an extra wireless keyboard (I don't plan to use RAID, although the Mobo accepts it). I thought about that new SATA Raptor HD, from Western Digital, spinning at 10k, but I've read it has a high pitch constant noise that wouldn't please me at all. I want pure silence.

It won't have neon lights, it won't have window to see the internals, it won't be overclocked. My goals ares stability, silence, pleasure, power and stock speed.

Then, put it all together and pray to the Great Lord Above that they work fine. I'll let you people know - read, I'll brag about it - when it's up and running.