Going to build a new PC, comments please.

Dida

Dida

YHWH
Joined
Sep 11, 2003
Messages
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CPU Athlon 3500+ $265.00
MOBO ECS nForce4 $70.25
CASE w. 350 Watt PS $29.00
HDD WD 200 GB SATA $105.00
DVD-RW Rosewill 16x DVD-R $46.00
VIDEO Radeon X800 256MB PCI-e $255.00
SOUND Will use onboard 7.1 sound $0.00
KEY/MS Logitech Key, wireless mouse $20.00
RAM 2x1 GB DDR400 $190.00
MONITOR Sangsum 19" 8ms $350.00

Total $1,330.25

The power supply comes with the case, for only $29. I don't think the brand name and generic PS would have much diff. in performance, only the brand name ones might be quieter.
 
Great setup! :thumbsup: Only thing I would suggest changing is the motherboard. Asus and Gigabyte are much better. I have an Asus board in an old K6-2 450, a 6 year old computer and it works like a charm!
 
Dida said:
The power supply comes with the case, for only $29. I don't think the brand name and generic PS would have much diff. in performance, only the brand name ones might be quieter.
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A PSU with a good brand name is far more reliable and gives a much more stable output. Whilst a generic PSU can reach its rated wattage for a short time, and branded PSU can happily run at the peak wattage for a long time.

I would also recommend a Radeon X800XL if you can push the budget by $20-$30. These cards are the best available in terms of price/performance. Here is an example:

LINK
 
Thanks for the reply. I can see the XL model has 4 more pixel pipeline than the X800 Pro, but the core speed is actually slower on the XL than Pro, 400 mhz for XL but 475 mzh for Pro.
Does extra pipeline makes up for slower core?
 
Dida said:
Thanks for the reply. I can see the XL model has 4 more pixel pipeline than the X800 Pro, but the core speed is actually slower on the XL than Pro, 400 mhz for XL but 475 mzh for Pro.
Does extra pipeline makes up for slower core?
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The thing with the Pro is, although the clock runs faster, the memory isn't really up to delivering the data to the GPU. On the XL the performance is more closely matched, so it spends less time twiddling it's thumbs waiting for data to be fetched.

Net effect effct, the XL can produce graphic updates nearly as fast as the Pro - for about half the price.
 
Basically, the Pro's 12 pipes x 475mhz gives you a max fill rate of 5700 Megapixels/second; the XL's 16 pipes x 400mhz give you a fill rate of 6400 megapixels/second. Also, the XL has faster memory as well - 980mhz vs 900mhz, giving the XL a memory bandwidth of 31.4 gigabytes/second, compared to the Pro's 28.8 gigabytes/second memory bandwidth. Both have a 256 bit memory controller.

The XL is overall the better card - I just ordered one myself, and will be getting it in the mail next week.
 
Cool, that is nice infor. I heard one can easily overclock the XL to XT speed. I don't know how to overclock video card or system memory. Can anyone give some insight
 
Is that 2GBof ram there?? lol... i wondered how long before i started seeing people talk about that. Only got the 1Gb ram myself "grumble"!
 
If you have the money to burn then go for it, it won't cause any noticable decrease in performance as that board can easily cache 2 GB of RAM. You probably won't ever use it unless you multitask a lot of memory intensive applications though.

I would definately suggest a name brand PSU.

Not sure about the ECS board, and if that is an onboard AC97 codec I would be wary, as many have been known not to work right out of the box. This is more of a problem with some boards than others but I've seen it personally. If you are going to drop that extra gig of RAM you should have enough to upgrade to the X800 XL and a nicer board. However, sticking with ECS wouldn't be terrible, as they've improved their rep dramatically over the past couple years.
 
If you ever run a Counter Strike: Source server (any online games server for that matter) it will prefer to have lots of RAM.

I don't think I've ever seen a PC with too much RAM. Plus there's the spectre of future Operating systems to consider.

Maybe get a 1Gig module now and buy another later?
 
CruddyLeper said:
Maybe get a 1Gig module now and buy another later?
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This is not a good idea with a S939 A64 cpu, as you are negating the advantage of dual channel RAM. You must have two matched sticks to get full performance.

I think that 1GB (2x512MB) is enough for now, but if you have the money you should go for 2GB (2x1GB) as it will mean you probably won't need to upgrade the RAM before you need a new cpu and mobo as well.
 
You could always buy 2x512 now, and an additional 2x512 later. If it means being able to afford an upgrade of other components now that are more expensive to replace later on I would definately recommend it.
 
gonzo_for_civ said:
You could always buy 2x512 now, and an additional 2x512 later. If it means being able to afford an upgrade of other components now that are more expensive to replace later on I would definately recommend it.
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The memory controller on that cpu can't run 4x512Mb at DDR400 though, that's one of the improvements in the new Venice/San Diego chips.
 
Ah, I thought I saw an athlon 64 in the original post.
 
Zelig is right. If you put 4 sticks of RAM in a mobo with a S939 A64 it will still run in dual channel mode, but the speed will drop from DDR-400 to DDR-333. Therefore if you get 2x512MB sticks now, when it is time to upgrade you should take them out and put in 2x1GB and sell the 2x512MB sticks.
 
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