My New 'puter
Narfwak
Join Date: 2002-11-02 Member: 5258Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS1 Playtester, Playtest Lead, Forum Moderators, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Gold, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow, Subnautica PT Lead, NS2 Community Developer
Join Date: 2002-11-02 Member: 5258Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS1 Playtester, Playtest Lead, Forum Moderators, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Gold, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow, Subnautica PT Lead, NS2 Community Developer
Well, the parts have come in, so I'll start construction of my new desktop tommorrow. Here's the current parts summary (lots of things are going to change, see below):
* MSI "K8N Neo2 Platinum" NVIDIA nForce3 ULTRA Chipset Motherboard For AMD Socket 939 CPU
* AMD Athlon 64 FX-53, 1MB L2 Cache, Windows Compatible 64-bit Processor 939 Pin
* 1x Corsair XMS Extreme Memory Speed Series, 184 Pin 1GB ECC Registered DDR PC-3200
* 2x Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000RPM SATA Hard Drive (Set up in Raid 0/1, haven't decided which yet)
* Plextor 12X DVD+/-RW Drive, Model PX-712SA/SW
* Sapphire RADEON X800 XT Platinum Edition 256MB DDR AGP8X VIVO/DVI
* Thermaltake Xaser III Super Tower Case, Model "V2000A"
* Thermaltake W0010 Silent Purepower 480W with Black housing - Xaser Edition ATX 2-Fan Power Supply
* Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS GAMER
* Alps Silver 3.5inch Floppy Disk Drive
* Mouse, Keyboard, Monitor - see below
I'll be getting an NEC/MITSUBISHI FE2111SB-BK 22" SuperBright Diamondtron CRT Monitor for this rig, but it was not practical to have it shipped to Minnesota and then again to Worcester. Instead, we're going to use an LCD monitor to get the box set up then order the CRT and have it shipped directly to Worcester.
I want to get a Built-By-ATI X800 XT PE video card, but not a single store I've looked at has a BBA card in stock. Sapphire's XT PE seems to be the only version online stores are carrying, and I may purchase one if I can find a good deal (I'm looking at cards this very moment). If not, I'll take the 9800 Pro from my old Dell for use in the new box, and put a spare 9700 Pro in the Dell. - <b>*EDIT*</b> - I finally managed to find one of these suckers, albeit OEM and a tad pricey.
I'll also be using the same keyboard and mouse as my old Dell, hopefully with a KVM switch if I can find one that works well with USB devices.
Oh, and for those that are wondering - yes, it's expensive; and no, I'm not paying for it.
Edit: Forgot about the optical drive, list updated.
* MSI "K8N Neo2 Platinum" NVIDIA nForce3 ULTRA Chipset Motherboard For AMD Socket 939 CPU
* AMD Athlon 64 FX-53, 1MB L2 Cache, Windows Compatible 64-bit Processor 939 Pin
* 1x Corsair XMS Extreme Memory Speed Series, 184 Pin 1GB ECC Registered DDR PC-3200
* 2x Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000RPM SATA Hard Drive (Set up in Raid 0/1, haven't decided which yet)
* Plextor 12X DVD+/-RW Drive, Model PX-712SA/SW
* Sapphire RADEON X800 XT Platinum Edition 256MB DDR AGP8X VIVO/DVI
* Thermaltake Xaser III Super Tower Case, Model "V2000A"
* Thermaltake W0010 Silent Purepower 480W with Black housing - Xaser Edition ATX 2-Fan Power Supply
* Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS GAMER
* Alps Silver 3.5inch Floppy Disk Drive
* Mouse, Keyboard, Monitor - see below
I'll be getting an NEC/MITSUBISHI FE2111SB-BK 22" SuperBright Diamondtron CRT Monitor for this rig, but it was not practical to have it shipped to Minnesota and then again to Worcester. Instead, we're going to use an LCD monitor to get the box set up then order the CRT and have it shipped directly to Worcester.
I want to get a Built-By-ATI X800 XT PE video card, but not a single store I've looked at has a BBA card in stock. Sapphire's XT PE seems to be the only version online stores are carrying, and I may purchase one if I can find a good deal (I'm looking at cards this very moment). If not, I'll take the 9800 Pro from my old Dell for use in the new box, and put a spare 9700 Pro in the Dell. - <b>*EDIT*</b> - I finally managed to find one of these suckers, albeit OEM and a tad pricey.
I'll also be using the same keyboard and mouse as my old Dell, hopefully with a KVM switch if I can find one that works well with USB devices.
Oh, and for those that are wondering - yes, it's expensive; and no, I'm not paying for it.
Edit: Forgot about the optical drive, list updated.
Comments
2) RAID 0 FTW.
3) <a href='http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=29-118-102&depa=1' target='_blank'>This is a better sound card.</a>
Now all I need is your home address so I can steal it. ^_^
I just replaced my burnt processor with a 2500+ Barton lately, and I was happy about that until now <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/sad-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Oh, and Xaser cases are the ugly ones.
2) RAID 0 FTW.
3) <a href='http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=29-118-102&depa=1' target='_blank'>This is a better sound card.</a>
Now all I need is your home address so I can steal it. ^_^ <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
After my universally negative experience with a Turtle Beach that came with my father's Dell, I won't be buying from Santa Cruz anytime in the forseeable future. Seriously, the thing wigs out all the time, and has been nothing but a headache for me. Besides, the creative card gets me copies of four games I already own and can sell for profit in my dorms.
As for the RAID, RAID 1 is just as fast reading as RAID 0, but has slower writing. This is because the data is redudant across both drives. This limits your total available space, but prevents you from losing all of your data if one of the drives fails. RAID 0 stripes data across both drives, so if one goes down, it's time to say goodbye to anything important you may have had on the array. However, you do get twice the available space, and the lack of redundancy translates into faster write times. Either way, you get wicked fast access speeds, so I'll be happy with either one.
And he gets a free computer <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/sad-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
And he gets a free computer <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/sad-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad-fix.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
As if you didn't already know that life was completely unfair in terms of what you get for how hard you work <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/confused-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
<!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Overkill.
So you get the same size as raid0 and if 1 drive fails you still have the other one.
Win.
Oh, and it's only a few bucks more to get a silver floppy drive. I didn't even get one of those uber multi-media reader drives.
Edit: Forgot to mention the optical drive, editing original post.
And he gets a free computer <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/sad-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad-fix.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
As if you didn't already know that life was completely unfair in terms of what you get for how hard you work <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/confused-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused-fix.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm in no place to complain but I can whine
edit: and I don't see why you'd go for Raid 1 on a home system. Any sensible data will be backed up and for the rest, a disk failure is probably as bothersome with or without Raid mirroring.
Its not 7.1 Surround sound.
Something which Creative cards do have.
I live in a dorm, so chances are that we'd just ruff you up and throw you out on to the roof (it wouldn't be the first time).
I finally managed to find a Sapphire X800 XT PE, albeit OEM and a tad pricey. It should get here by Wednesday or Thursday, well within my time constraints for getting this PC up and running.
Dataloss for teh lose.
My main drawback is that I want an x700 (my favorite local store has pros with 256 megs of GDDR3 now at a great price) and I believe that they'll only be comming in the pci express flavor, which is cool, but I don't feel like waiting for a pci express board from nvidia.
Anyone know the timeline on nforce 4?
<i><b>Edit:</b> Does getting pci-e limit me to intel cpu's? <shudder></i>
kthx
But, then again, I'm a producer. It's my job to hate crappy sound cards.
Well, it does beat onboard sound though. So that's cool.
Dual channel owns :/
Dual channel owns :/ <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Does not improve performance on AMD CPUs that much.
That PC is pretty good.
Should bench as fast as my friend's similar system. Cept he is on socket 940.
Dual channel owns :/ <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Does not improve performance on AMD CPUs that much.
That PC is pretty good.
Should bench as fast as my friend's similar system. Cept he is on socket 940. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
940's are slower than 939's. Its an architexture issues.
Dual channel owns :/ <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Does not improve performance on AMD CPUs that much.
That PC is pretty good.
Should bench as fast as my friend's similar system. Cept he is on socket 940. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
940's are slower than 939's. Its an architexture issues. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Not so much slower to see a noticable difference.
You pretty much hvae to see benchmarking software like SiSandra to see the slight differences.
Dual channel owns :/ <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Does not improve performance on AMD CPUs that much.
That PC is pretty good.
Should bench as fast as my friend's similar system. Cept he is on socket 940. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
940's are slower than 939's. Its an architexture issues. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Not so much slower to see a noticable difference.
You pretty much hvae to see benchmarking software like SiSandra to see the slight differences. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Depends on the function. Several common functions of the 939 pin chips take 1 or 2 less clocks to compleate then they do on the 940 chips, so for many functions which involve repeating those functions many many times 939 chips run much faster. But you are right thought that for graphical benchmarks the difference is hardly knowticable.
Bear in mind this is a straight install of XP with SP2 (It came on a funky holographic disk thing) but make sure you get XP OEM (As if you didn't know that <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->)
And Intel were very nice and gave me Internet Security on my Motherboard driver disk....
Bear in mind this is a straight install of XP with SP2 (It came on a funky holographic disk thing) but make sure you get XP OEM (As if you didn't know that <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->)
And Intel were very nice and gave me Internet Security on my Motherboard driver disk.... <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Theoretically SP2 shouldn't do any damage if it is the first thing installed on an XP machine...
(Also XP with SP2 was cheaper for me than without, that and I think they only do XP with SP2 now anyway....)
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Overkill. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
quoted for emphisis