*** new system, comments appreciated ***

[zagat]

Hi Folks,

I've decided to upgrade my old machine and I would appreciate any
comments/suggestions on my setup. This is a bit long so I apologize
in advance.

First off, let me explain that I am not into gaming, but use my
machine primarily for s/w development, some graphics work (mostly
Illustrator), and some large database (almost 2 GB) work. I tend not
to upgrade often, so I can afford to spend a bit more on a machine
I'll probably keep for around 3 years.

The components I've chosen so far (along with some rationale) are:

ASUS P4P800-Deluxe motherboard
The P4C800 doesn't add enough (for me) to justify
the added price. Also, people report good results
in overclocking with this board.

P4 @ 2.6 (800 MHz fsb).
I may overclock (hoping to get to around 3GHz)
and this CPU seems to be the best bang for the buck.
From what I read, the 2.8 also OC's to about
3, so there is no great benefit going to it.

1GB (2x512) Corsair PC3500 DDR RAM.
Great memory with some room for overclocking.

Matrox G550 dual-head video
As I said, I am not into gaming and don't need blazing
3d performance. I do want superb 2d for the graphics
work.

Disks:
Here I need some suggestions.

I will be using Win2K as my main OS but because I need
to do regression testing on the s/w I develop, I need to
test with other Windows OS's, such as Win95, 98, ME, NT,
and XP. I will only be running these other OS's when I
test software, all my serious work will be done under Win2K.
I also play around a bit with Linux.

I am currently planning on running two WD(800 or 1000)JB
(80 or 100 GB, 7200, special edition Caviar's w/8meg buffer).
Because I need to test on a variety of Windows OS's, I plan
to install a boot manager on the first disk, allowing me to
boot up either Win95, 98, ME, NT, 2K, XP, or any of a
couple flavors of Linux (if I can get away with that many
OS's on one machine). I plan to allocate about 6-8G
to each Windows OS (to allow for the system and whatever
tools I might need) and about 10-15G for each Linux
OS. I realize that these are somewhat large but I want
to be able to install all the tools I need for each OS
separately so as to not cause registry corruption or
other problems.

The second disk will hold my data and applications. This
disk will be on the second IDE controller. I'll plan on
having a fairly large NTFS partition (as I said, my main OS
is Win2K) and smaller FAT32 (to swap files between Win2K,
Linux, and the Win9x OS's) and ext-3 partitions.

Now the silly part...
I have an Adaptec 2940UW controller and a spare 9GB, 7200
SCSI drive. I was thinking of using this drive to hold
the Windows and Linux swap partitions. I would format the
Windows swap partition as FAT32 so as to be able to be used
by both Win9x and Win2K OS's.

With this configuration I separate the OS's from the data/
applications and keep the swap files separate from other
disk activity. It sure looks like overkill but since the
controller and disk are free, why not?
destroying data.

I do not plan to use a RAID configuration.


Lite-on 52x32x52 (or something like that) CD-RW
Good quality, low price.

DVD - I'll deal with this later

Case - Already have this

Antec power supply, probably a 430 or 480 watt supply.


Well, that's most of it.

Any comments/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks and sorry for the long posting,
Zag

 

[ToolPackinMama]

Matrox G550 dual-head video
As I said, I am not into gaming and don't need blazing
3d performance. I do want superb 2d for the graphics
work.

OK, if that is true, then IMHO this makes no sense:

P4 @ 2.6 (800 MHz fsb).

I mean, why do you need the major hardware for 2D work? Couldn't you
save some cash and settle for a system that is half this proposed sys in
speed and power?

 

[Ancra]

OK, if that is true, then IMHO this makes no sense:



I mean, why do you need the major hardware for 2D work? Couldn't you
save some cash and settle for a system that is half this proposed sys in
speed and power?

Compilation times are annoying.
And he's looking to keep the system for 3 years. (So he thinks he will
be happy with 32 bits for so long. )
( AMD may compile faster, but not much and if he does SSE2 software,
he would want to be able to test that. Anyway, there's imagework and
looking at 3 years, might be nice to support SSE2.)

2.6GHz@800 looks pretty OK to me. Below that, P4s doesn't really get
much cheaper, only slower.
He's doing the full system, I think. Not just cpu&mobo. $200 cpu
doesn't mean that much on a full system cost.


ancra

 

[zagat]

Thanks for your comments, but I have some question....

OK, if that is true, then IMHO this makes no sense:

Why not? From what I've read, the G550 dual-head card has superb 2d
and, even though it might be "old" technology, it's still among the
best out there. What card would you recommend instead and why?

I mean, why do you need the major hardware for 2D work? Couldn't you
save some cash and settle for a system that is half this proposed sys in
speed and power?

The 2d work is only one part (and not the major part) of what I do. I
also do a lot of software development (C, C++, Java) and some database
work. The software projects can sometimes involve a few hundred files
and over 100,000 lines of code. In addition, the DBs are large
(typically approaching 2 Gigabytes in size). Reducing the CPU speed
won't save me much money and will slow things down considerably. The
2.6 seems to be a good compromise between speed and price, though by
the time I get around to putting this thing together, the 2.8 might be
at the "sweet spot".


Thanks again for the comments. If you know of a better video card,
given my needs, I would be glad to hear of it. If you have some
better idea as to how to arrange my disk setup I would also be glad to
hear of that.

Regards,
Zag

 

[Flor]

I was about to get the G550 but noticed at the last minute that it
only goes to 1280x1024 on the DVI output. The P650 for about $60 more
supports 1600x1200 and has many other improvements as well, including
64MB RAM, DX8.1 support and 8x AGP. It's also a fan-less design like
the G550 which is a plus for me.

 

[zagat]

Compilation times are annoying.
And he's looking to keep the system for 3 years. (So he thinks he will
be happy with 32 bits for so long. )
( AMD may compile faster, but not much and if he does SSE2 software,
he would want to be able to test that. Anyway, there's imagework and
looking at 3 years, might be nice to support SSE2.)

2.6GHz@800 looks pretty OK to me. Below that, P4s doesn't really get
much cheaper, only slower.
He's doing the full system, I think. Not just cpu&mobo. $200 cpu
doesn't mean that much on a full system cost.


ancra

Ancra,

Thanks for the comments. I am building a new system and compilation
speed, as well as the database crunching that I occasionally need to
do, are the prime reasons I am going with a faster processor. The 2.6
seems to give the most bang for the buck right now (though that might
change any day now).

Thanks again for your comments.

--Zag

 

[zagat]

I was about to get the G550 but noticed at the last minute that it
only goes to 1280x1024 on the DVI output. The P650 for about $60 more
supports 1600x1200 and has many other improvements as well, including
64MB RAM, DX8.1 support and 8x AGP. It's also a fan-less design like
the G550 which is a plus for me.

Flor,

Thanks for the excellent suggestion, I think I will go with the P650.

Thanks again,
Zag