New PC help (yes, another one of those threads!)
 

So I've decided to finally build a new desktop system for myself.

My old system was an Athlon 1700, with a UWSCSI 10Krpm 18Gb disk as the system drive and plain old ATA133 60Gb as data drive.

I recently bought two 120Gb ATA133 drives for US$60 when I was last in the US, as it seemed like a good deal.

I have a few questions for those more familiar with system building than me.


1) Would a RAID-0, using the two ATA133 120Gbs drives be better than a single 10K rpm UWSCSI disk as my system drive?

2) Are the new 64bit AMD processors really that much better than a P4? I was going to go for a 2.8 or 3Ghz HT Pentium, but now I'm not so sure. What exactly uses the 64bit processors these days?

3) I guess the most important question will revolve around what video card I buy. The PC will be used mostly for gaming (I'm the little boy who never grew up!), obviously some internet surfing and then some image editing (by Mrs Mephisto, who has recently emerged as somewhat of a Photoshop expert). So, I only really need the video processing power for some games. And to be perfectly honest, I'm only really interested in a few of those; Doom2, HalfLife2 and Total War Rome.

So, would a A$400 9800Pro from Powercolor be sufficient? Or should I spend a bit more and go for the 9800XT. To be honest I don't really understand the difference. Of course, I'd like to go the whole hog and buy an XT or a 6800, but I don't really know if I can justify spending upwards of A$800 on a glorified video game (which is mostly what this PC will be).

Will the 9800Pro be "out of date" very soon?



The rest of the system, for those that are interested will be as follows.

I'll reuse my aluminium case (8 fans, but I don't think I'll power them all). I'm going to buy a decent DVD burner; probably one of the newer x12 versions. I have a choice between a brand-new HP 19" TFT or a Compaq 21" flat-screen CRT. I even have another 17" TFT lying around, but I'll probably set that up as a workstation for my laptop, along with docking station etc.

Desktop, both laptops, printers etc will all be networked wirelessly. And I'll settle for a 1.5Mbs DSL link.

So what do you guys (gurus!) think?


Mr Mephisto

1. Fuck if I know about the hard drives. I have no RAID experience. I do have a 10k RPM SCSI drive, but I couldn't tell a difference between it and my ATA HDD. I assume the RAID-0 would be better, but I'm not certain.

2. The Athlon 64 processors kick ass. Are they used for 64-bit applications? No way. They won't be for a long time. What are they good for then Lasereth? GAMING OF COURSE!! These processors kick ass in gaming...there's no way around it. I suggest either a socket 754 Athlon 64 3200+ or a socket 939 with a 3500+ if you want to spend a ton of money. The Athlon 64 won't be outdated for a very long time. You can go with a Pentium 4, but the only P4's that can keep up with the Athlon 64's is the E-Core 3.2 GHz + and Extreme Editions which tend to be expensive. A P4 would certainly be a good choice, however! A 3.0 GHz P4 would be cheaper than an Athlon 64 3200+, but you wouldn't see as much power.

3. I hope you're from the not-USA because those prices are terrible. I assume you're from overseas, possibly Australia? Anyway, a Radeon 9800 Pro 128 MB 256-bit would last a long time in gaming. They kick ass in the games you listed and will be great videocards for a good two years. It's the best deal on the market. Of course, if you want to spend a ton of money on a videocard, the new X800's and 6800's are actually worth their hefty price tags. The raw increase in power is uncanny.

-Lasereth

Video Card choice: Non-Ultra 6800 ($280)
Way better than ANY 9800 and is cheaper than the GT and Ultra version.

Processor: I would go with the P4 because it will do better with Photoshop and other applications and it will run the games you play perfectly especially with the 6800. Unless you want to play the brand new games on full resolution with everything turned up, I wouldn't get the AMD 64 just for the gaming. P4 is the better all around processor and will still kick ass in gaming.

Yeah, the prices are in Australian dollars; hence A$

One other quick question. Is it worth "waiting" for PCI Express video cards?

Also, what's the actual difference between the 6900, FX6800, NX6800, 6800Ultra etc?


Mr Mephisto

computer....
 

As far as the drives go, RAID 0 would give you fast output, but not as fast as SCSI. The SCSI will run warmer (slightly), but SCSI drives are handtouched at the factories. This "hand-touching" is why SCSI drives have a longer warranty and can withstand a little more abuse than IDE drives. I personally would stick with a SCSI, even maybe a 15,000 RPM drive.

As for the video, what are you going to do with a 64-bit processor
? Windows XP 64-bit is in very early beta, but there are several Linux distributions that offer 64-bit versions. The only thing is, if it's for games and graphics, which programs do you know of support 64-bit queueing and extensions? None really that I can think of. If you get a Pentium 4 with HT (hyper-threading), then you essentially get a dual processor system with only one processor. There are many programs that take advantage of SMP (symmetric multi-processing). Photoshop is one of these programs. As much as I support AMD, Intel's P4 is the faster consumer chip on the market. I would just tell you to get it. I just don't see the need for you to buy a 64-bit chip with a 32-bit OS running on top of it, because you really end up just wasting the 64-bit part of it. You pay extra for it, but get nothing out of it.

As far as the video goes, the Nvidia SLi cards for the PCI Express bus look very promising. Nvidia is creating cards with SLi (Scalable Link interface) that will allow two video cards in the system to work in tandem with each other. Both cards will be PCI Express, have the SLi connector connected to both of them, and the monitor will have two inputs on it. One video card will control the bottom half of the screen while the other video card controls the top half. You have a very powerful video card now only having to do half of the work as compared to if it were a stand-alone card.

A couple of last thoughts......you are going to want to look at SATA drives instead of IDE. The cables are MUCH smaller and will allow more airflow and there is no jumpering of the drives. Also, SATA drives start at 133mbit transfer bus whereas IDE tops out at 133mbit transfer rate. As far as the video, I currently am using an ATI 9800 Pro 128mb video card in my desktop machine and it performs extremely well. You should be able to find one quite cheap now that newer video cards are coming out. Lastly, I would not purchase the fast things on the market. Save some money by purchasing conservatively as new things come out all the time, especially processors. When the P4 3Ghz processors first came out, they were ~$600 more than their 2Ghz+ counterparts. Image $600 for 200Mhz that you really would not notice.

Any questions, email me at bendsley@gmail.com and I will try to answer what I can.

There are three versions of the 6800
Nvidia 6800 Normal (what I have) with (mostly) 128 MB 256-bit memory (one version has 256MB), most under $300 (256MB is $400)

6800 GT - all 256MB memory, all over $400

6800 Ultra - Supreme card, cream of the crop, all around $590

Nothing worth the wait for PCI-express as the AGP isn't the bottleneck yet. i.e. no performance gain between the same cards if one is PCI-express. All newer cards, however, will be PCI-express

You pay extra for it, but get a processor that's the fastest on the market. :) Athlon 64's are worth their price for the power they deliver. Are you "wasting" the 64-bit aspect of the processor? Until 64-bit applications are the norm, yes. Are you getting a processor that beats every Athlon XP and most P4's on the market? Yep.

-Lasereth