Please help with New build

[Vaughn]

Have built a few PCs, and all have been ok. Need a new build, as may
last one was built some 5 years ago, so thought I'd have a look as to
what is a available, and this is now my problem.

Have not kept up to date with all advances in motherboard, processor,
graphics, and sound changes to name just four, so getting the correct
components is proving to be a real pain.

Like all Home builders I want a pc capable of driving the entire world,
but biting the bit and restraining my WANTS to what I really NEED, I am
baffled as to what to go for.

So some questions please:

As I do some gaming, and work on the pc, including Photo stuff, at the
top of the range we have Duel processor boards running 2 CPUs, then duel
CPUs same thing but all in one package, and finally single boards
supporting only one CPU.

I'm guessing that I don't need the top model, especially at over £300
for a start. But is Duel CPU technology something I should look into or
stick with just the one?

I like AMD, never had a problem with them so which version. Sempron,
Athlon, or Opteron?

I did consider the Opteron, but it was a Socket 939, and I could not
find a Gigabyte board to support this. Again I like the Gigabyte as it
has never let me down.

Now I did read a little on system building and quite rightly they
suggest including upgrade-ability, so should I go for AGP, or PCI, or on
board? I'm guessing the latter not a good choice as some boards are hard
to modify with third party cards.

As for RAM I thought 1G, and around 160GB for the hard drive. OK not a
large hard drive if doing the graphics, but I can always add to this later.

Really spoilt for choice, so please any help would be most kind.

Many thanks Vaughn

 

[John Doe]

As I do some gaming, and work on the pc, including Photo stuff,

should I go for AGP, or PCI,

Unless you have a very fast AGP video card, you need PCI Express.
The selection of PCI Express is huge in comparison to AGP now.

As for RAM I thought 1G,

Leave at least one memory slot open with that.

and around 160GB for the hard drive. OK not a
large hard drive if doing the graphics, but I can always add to
this later.

I use a 37 GB 10,000 rpm Raptor. I do some big PC games but no
graphics design.

Good luck and have fun.

 

[VanShania]

Gigabyte K8N-SLi nForce4 Socket 939 Mainboard, 4DDR3200, 2xPCI-Ex16, 2xPCI,
4xATA133, 4xSATA300, 8Ch Audio, 10/100/1000Lan, 10xUSB2.0 $112.84

AMD Athlon64 3500+ Socket 939 CPU 800FSB, 2.20Ghz, 512k L2 - retail box
$117.84
AMD Athlon64 3800+ Socket 939 CPU 800FSB, 2.40Ghz, 512k L2 - retail box
$143.84
AMD Athlon64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ Socket 939 CPU, 2.0Ghz, 2x512k L2 - retail
box $201.84

Kingston HyperX 1024MB (2x512MB) PC3200 400Mhz DDR Memory Kit, Dual Channel
optimized w/Aluminum Heat Spreader - CL2-3-2-6 $149.84
OCZ Enhanced Latency Platinum 1024MB (2x512MB) PC3200 400Mhz Memory Kit -
Dual Channel optimized w/Platinum Heat Spreader - CL2-3-2-5 $162.84

Western Digital 250GB 7200rpm SATA300 Hard Drive 16MB Buffer - RAID Edition
$135.84

ASUS Radeon Extreme Silent AX1600XT 256MB DDR3 PCI-Ex16 Graphics Card - VGA,
DVI, Video-Out $194.84
Sapphire Radeon X1800GTO 256MB DDR3 PCI-Ex16 Graphics Card - 2xDVI,
Video-In, Video-Out $237.84

Couldn't find a gigabyte board for AM2
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[Jeff]

Couldn't find a gigabyte board for AM2

Gigabyte GA-M59SLI-S5 is their top of the line. ...just bought one. I think that the S4 is a step down, but has most of the same
features.

Jeff

 

[Paul]

Have built a few PCs, and all have been ok. Need a new build, as may
last one was built some 5 years ago, so thought I'd have a look as to
what is a available, and this is now my problem.

Have not kept up to date with all advances in motherboard, processor,
graphics, and sound changes to name just four, so getting the correct
components is proving to be a real pain.

Like all Home builders I want a pc capable of driving the entire world,
but biting the bit and restraining my WANTS to what I really NEED, I am
baffled as to what to go for.

So some questions please:

As I do some gaming, and work on the pc, including Photo stuff, at the
top of the range we have Duel processor boards running 2 CPUs, then duel
CPUs same thing but all in one package, and finally single boards
supporting only one CPU.

I'm guessing that I don't need the top model, especially at over £300
for a start. But is Duel CPU technology something I should look into or
stick with just the one?

I like AMD, never had a problem with them so which version. Sempron,
Athlon, or Opteron?

I did consider the Opteron, but it was a Socket 939, and I could not
find a Gigabyte board to support this. Again I like the Gigabyte as it
has never let me down.

Now I did read a little on system building and quite rightly they
suggest including upgrade-ability, so should I go for AGP, or PCI, or on
board? I'm guessing the latter not a good choice as some boards are hard
to modify with third party cards.

As for RAM I thought 1G, and around 160GB for the hard drive. OK not a
large hard drive if doing the graphics, but I can always add to this later.

Really spoilt for choice, so please any help would be most kind.

Many thanks Vaughn

As near as I can tell, this benchmark is single threaded (only one core
of the two cores in the dual core processors, does any work). The
benchmark appears to only depend on CPU core clock. You can see that
for the Intel E6400 dual core ($220) and the AMD FX-55 ($205) from S939 days,
you might be better off with the E6400. Since it is dual core, when both
cores are working on a problem, like Photoshop, then you get additional
speedup. (I picked the FX-55, since I believe the price dropped on it
only recently. In its day it was a worthy but expensive processor.)

http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html?modelx=33&model1=433&model2=482&chart=179

There are two Photoshop benchmarks here. One is a rendering benchmark,
and I think the other one is doing downsampling. The rendering should run
on both processors, and yet the scaleup I was expecting, just isn't there.
The E6400 wins, but didn't win by as much as I was expecting. I guess
I need to go research whether Photoshop really has perfect scaling or
not. I thought scaling worked pretty well in Photoshop.

http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html?modelx=33&model1=433&model2=482&chart=186

On checking one of the Macintosh sites, Photoshop actions are divided into
SP aware and MP aware ones. If you select only the filters that are
MP aware, then you can get good speedup. If you selection only filters/actions
that run on a single processor, then the dual core doesn't buy you
anything. So I guess the answer is, Photoshop is not monolithic, and
some filters get more speedup from dual core than others. And I don't
know whether Tomshardware selected SP or MP aware filters in their
script.

There aren't a lot of gaming benchmarks, but they also seem to
favor the E6400.

The solution might be an E6400, an overclockable motherboard, 1GB
of DDR2, and a PCI Express video card. For RAM, you might go for
some cheaper stuff, like DDR2-533, since money spent on RAM
doesn't improve performance as fast as money spent on processor.
At least some of the DDR2 is quite overclockable, and if the
DDR2-533 had a low CAS value, it might also be used later for
running at a higher clock rate. Having an adjustable Vdimm on
the motherboard, makes it possible to feed the RAM a little
extra voltage, if overclocking memory. Like a bump from 1.8V to
2.1V.

The overclockable motherboard, is for the day that you get bored
with stock performance.

Paul

 

[Vaughn]

Have built a few PCs, and all have been ok. Need a new build, as may
last one was built some 5 years ago, so thought I'd have a look as to
what is a available, and this is now my problem.

Have not kept up to date with all advances in motherboard, processor,
graphics, and sound changes to name just four, so getting the correct
components is proving to be a real pain.

Like all Home builders I want a pc capable of driving the entire world,
but biting the bit and restraining my WANTS to what I really NEED, I am
baffled as to what to go for.

So some questions please:

As I do some gaming, and work on the pc, including Photo stuff, at the
top of the range we have Duel processor boards running 2 CPUs, then duel
CPUs same thing but all in one package, and finally single boards
supporting only one CPU.

I'm guessing that I don't need the top model, especially at over £300
for a start. But is Duel CPU technology something I should look into or
stick with just the one?

I like AMD, never had a problem with them so which version. Sempron,
Athlon, or Opteron?

I did consider the Opteron, but it was a Socket 939, and I could not
find a Gigabyte board to support this. Again I like the Gigabyte as it
has never let me down.

Now I did read a little on system building and quite rightly they
suggest including upgrade-ability, so should I go for AGP, or PCI, or on
board? I'm guessing the latter not a good choice as some boards are hard
to modify with third party cards.

As for RAM I thought 1G, and around 160GB for the hard drive. OK not a
large hard drive if doing the graphics, but I can always add to this later.

Really spoilt for choice, so please any help would be most kind.

Many thanks Vaughn

Many thanks for all the posts.

Have been looking for the parts , some of those suggested in the earlier
posts, but being in the UK, and short of cash thought I'd ask if anyone
had any other ideas on Motherboards?

OK Gigabyte are good, but surly there are others that can match up?

Thanks Vaughn

 

[Paul]

Many thanks for all the posts.

Have been looking for the parts , some of those suggested in the earlier
posts, but being in the UK, and short of cash thought I'd ask if anyone
had any other ideas on Motherboards?

OK Gigabyte are good, but surly there are others that can match up?

Thanks Vaughn

So what have you decided to build ? Going S939 or AM2 ?
Which processor ? If you give us a hint as to what you
are focussing on, maybe we can suggest something.

While I don't shop at the Newegg site (they don't ship to
Canada), I find the site is a good source of information.
Boards have customer reviews, and those reviews can give
some idea as to whether there are a lot of DOA (dead on
arrival) motherboards, or whether the BIOS really sucks.
If you use those customer reviews, you may be able to find
something which is both cheap, and acceptable.

What are you using for video ? Going AGP or PCI Express ?
That too will make a big difference as to what is
available.

Customer Reviews for GIGABYTE GA-K8N-SLI Socket 939
http://www.newegg.com/Product/CustratingReview.asp?Item=N82E16813128306

They also have search settings, so you can narrow down the
list of candidates. That is why you need to know what kind
of video you want etc.

http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/Subcategory.asp?Subcategory=22

This is an S939 board for $53. When you get down in that prioe
range, not everybody is happy.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/CustratingReview.asp?Item=N82E16813131035

Paul

 

[John Doe]

While I don't shop at the Newegg site (they don't ship to
Canada), I find the site is a good source of information.
Boards have customer reviews, and those reviews can give
some idea as to whether there are a lot of DOA (dead on
arrival) motherboards, or whether the BIOS really sucks.
If you use those customer reviews, you may be able to find
something which is both cheap, and acceptable.

In my opinion, Newegg's search capabilities are second to none.

I haven't seen anything close to a better designed web site for
browsing/finding technical information.

Even the path to your current location is listed at the top with
small X marks you can click to remove any part of the path. Amazing
IMO. Almost like the RTS game Total Annihilation's interface was for
the time.

 

[JAD]

In my opinion, Newegg's search capabilities are second to none.

I haven't seen anything close to a better designed web site for
browsing/finding technical information.

Even the path to your current location is listed at the top with
small X marks you can click to remove any part of the path. Amazing
IMO. Almost like the RTS game Total Annihilation's interface was for
the time.

obviously a newegg shill
http://groups.google.com/groups?lnk=hpsg&hl=en&q=john+doe+newegg

 

[John Doe]

A troll who is so technically inept he doesn't know enough to put
quotes around "John Doe" when referring to my handle.


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In my opinion, Newegg's search capabilities are second to none.

I haven't seen anything close to a better designed web site for
browsing/finding technical information.

Even the path to your current location is listed at the top with
small X marks you can click to remove any part of the path. Amazing
IMO. Almost like the RTS game Total Annihilation's interface was for
the time.

obviously a newegg shill
http://groups.google.com/groups?lnk=hpsg&hl=en&q=john+doe+newegg

 

[Vaughn]

So what have you decided to build ? Going S939 or AM2 ?

Sorry felling very embarrassed at the moment should have given more info :-(

AM2

Which processor ?

Not too sure but was thinking of the AMD Athlon 64 x2 3800 AM2 2 GHz
1000FSB as it has 1Mb Cache Dabs quicklinx: 435lws
or the
AMD Athlon 64 3800 AM2 2.4GHz with 512Kb 1000FSB. Dabs quicklinx: 435rws

But if you more experienced builders have any suggestions please feel
fee to comment. Price is critical, but do want something that will last
a little.

If you give us a hint as to what you

are focussing on, maybe we can suggest something.

While I don't shop at the Newegg site (they don't ship to
Canada), I find the site is a good source of information.
Boards have customer reviews, and those reviews can give
some idea as to whether there are a lot of DOA (dead on
arrival) motherboards, or whether the BIOS really sucks.
If you use those customer reviews, you may be able to find
something which is both cheap, and acceptable.

What are you using for video ? Going AGP or PCI Express ?

Now I really do not know. I was led to believe form the past that AGP
was the best but this PCI Express I have little Knowledge of. Was
thinking of something like this:

Sapphire Technology Radion X1600 PRO 256Mb DDR2 AGP DVI TVO. On
www.dabs.com quicklinx: 3ywxws
But again please offer help if you can.

Only using DABS as this is a site I know well as we use this at work for
most of our pieces. Again if you have better please offer them. I said I
was in the UK so this may be an issue as taxes here are a real pain.

Many thanks for the help

All the best Vaughn

 

[Michael Hawes]

Sorry felling very embarrassed at the moment should have given more info
:-(

AM2
Not too sure but was thinking of the AMD Athlon 64 x2 3800 AM2 2 GHz
1000FSB as it has 1Mb Cache Dabs quicklinx: 435lws
or the
AMD Athlon 64 3800 AM2 2.4GHz with 512Kb 1000FSB. Dabs quicklinx: 435rws

But if you more experienced builders have any suggestions please feel
fee to comment. Price is critical, but do want something that will last
a little.

If you give us a hint as to what you

Now I really do not know. I was led to believe form the past that AGP
was the best but this PCI Express I have little Knowledge of. Was
thinking of something like this:

Sapphire Technology Radion X1600 PRO 256Mb DDR2 AGP DVI TVO. On
www.dabs.com quicklinx: 3ywxws
But again please offer help if you can.

Only using DABS as this is a site I know well as we use this at work for
most of our pieces. Again if you have better please offer them. I said I
was in the UK so this may be an issue as taxes here are a real pain.

Many thanks for the help

All the best Vaughn

As you are in UK, checkout www.scan.co.uk They will give technical
advice. I and my family have used them for years.
You need to say what you are going to do with system, games photo
editing etc.
Mike.

 

[Vaughn]

As you are in UK, checkout www.scan.co.uk They will give technical
advice. I and my family have used them for years.
You need to say what you are going to do with system, games photo
editing etc.
Mike.

Will check out the site thanks.

As for what to do with the machine I did give a little info on this:

'As I do some gaming, and work on the pc, including Photo stuff, at the
top of the range we have Duel processor boards running 2 CPUs, then duel
CPUs same thing but all in one package, and finally single boards
supporting only one CPU. ', taken form first post.

Ok very vague, but this is whit I do, mainly work, not too much number
crunching very simple stuff, but the photo stuff s the real need for a
new pc. I know I should have a very high spec machine, but this is out
of my budget, so looking for help on how to get the best for may money.

Thanks for the help much appreciated

Vaughn

 

[Shannon]

Vaughn wrote:
|| Have built a few PCs, and all have been ok. Need a new build, as may
|| last one was built some 5 years ago, so thought I'd have a look as to
|| what is a available, and this is now my problem.
||
|| Have not kept up to date with all advances in motherboard, processor,
|| graphics, and sound changes to name just four, so getting the correct
|| components is proving to be a real pain.
||
|| Like all Home builders I want a pc capable of driving the entire
|| world, but biting the bit and restraining my WANTS to what I really
|| NEED, I am baffled as to what to go for.
||
|| So some questions please:
||
|| As I do some gaming, and work on the pc, including Photo stuff, at
|| the
|| top of the range we have Duel processor boards running 2 CPUs, then
|| duel CPUs same thing but all in one package, and finally single
|| boards supporting only one CPU.
||
|| I'm guessing that I don't need the top model, especially at over £300
|| for a start. But is Duel CPU technology something I should look into
|| or stick with just the one?
||
|| I like AMD, never had a problem with them so which version. Sempron,
|| Athlon, or Opteron?
||
|| I did consider the Opteron, but it was a Socket 939, and I could not
|| find a Gigabyte board to support this. Again I like the Gigabyte as
|| it
|| has never let me down.


http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/kl.asp?bn=10717

http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/ki.asp?sku=323805 £99.95

Socket 939 is End of Life. If you plan to go with AMD, Socket AM2 is the way
to go.

||
|| Now I did read a little on system building and quite rightly they
|| suggest including upgrade-ability, so should I go for AGP, or PCI,
|| or on board? I'm guessing the latter not a good choice as some
|| boards are hard to modify with third party cards.


Socket 939 and AM2 boards generally use PCI-Express video cards.

DDR2 will be required with AM2 boards.



A good quality Gainward GeForce 7600GT 256MB is £109.00


||
|| As for RAM I thought 1G, and around 160GB for the hard drive. OK not
|| a large hard drive if doing the graphics, but I can always add to
|| this later.


Photoshop can be memory intensive. Figure 1GB minimum.

Storage is pretty inexpensive. A 320GB SATA2 drive can be had for £65.00





(I am in no way associated with Komplett. I've merely used their website for
comparative UK pricing.)