Hi again,
Applications: Office, moderate to high amount of gaming, home video
editing, DVD burning, MP3, movie watching(home theatre)
(am I describing a typical "Media center"
appliation here?)
To a fair degree, yes. Some of these are fairly easy to handle. MP3
playing, for example, is trivial for any processor out there and any
halfway decent sound card (even most integrated sound cards on
motherboards) will do the trick, though you might want to invest in
speakers. DVD burning is even easier, as again any processor will be
able to handle it, all you need is a DVD burner, though here you have
some choice.
For office applications you should have no trouble once the
requirements for the others are satisfied. Same goes for movie
watching, once you've got a setup that can do even simple video
editing you should have no trouble at all playing back very complex
movies.
So, the real trick here will be gaming and video editing.
Links: To sites having information about various system configurations
based on Intel as well as AMD,
sites with comparisons, technology, trends, etc
You might want to check out some of the comparisons at
www.anandtech.com They do a reasonably good job at comparing how
current setups using a variety of hardware compare for some common
tasks. There are plenty of others as well, though always take
anything you read on ANY site (and this newsgroup for that matter!)
with a *LARGE* grain of salt. Some people have their own agenda that
their trying to push. Some are writing articles for the sole purpose
of getting page hits and advertising money. But by far the biggest
problem is that a lot of people out there just plain don't know what
the hell they are talking about but will scream and yell as if they
do.
DIY: Well, yes and no, Yes because what I need is advice on good choice
and combination of components which make a great, stable system
No - because, I have never built a system myself, I' am posting from
India, here we have a fair amount of choice in hardware and trained
people who custom build the systems on commercial basis but they
generally do not provide good choices or do not experiment beyond
standard setups.
Fair enough. FWIW choosing the right components is about 99% of
building a system. Actually assembling the things is fairly trivial
(only one step beyond your common kids puzzle... if the pieces fit,
that's almost certainly where they go!).
My personal liking is for an AMD Athlon 64 based system but the lack of
software and Windows support is a worrying factor.
By "lack of software and Windows support" are you specifically
referring to 64-bit support? If so, it's on it's way, though I
wouldn't hold my breath for Microsoft to deliver anything if I were
you. There is PLENTY of 64-bit software available for Linux, in fact
nearly ALL software running under Linux has been successfully ported
over to AMD64.
If you're worrying more about software compatibility on the 32-bit
side of things than it's a total non-issue. AMD's Opteron and
Athlon64 processors are fully compatible with all existing 32-bit x86
software.
How does Athlon 64 and/or Athlon 64 FX based system compare with the
latest Intel systems in the 32 bit environment?
VERY well. Generally speaking the Athlon64 FX is the fastest 32-bit
x86 processor you can buy, followed closely by the regular Athlon64.
Intel's Pentium4 and Pentium4 Extremely Expensive Edition tend to fall
behind for the most part, though obviously this will vary from one
application to another. Unless you have a specific application in
mind which you know runs better on a P4 than an Athlon64, I can't
think of any reason to put much thought into a Intel-based system.
They tend to be slower, more expensive and they consume more power.
Given that the average temp. in most of India is rather high, I would
guess that added heat Intel's chips is generally not very beneficial
(I, on the other hand, could probably use it right about now as it's
currently about -15C where I'm living :> ).
You did forget one rather important thing though: what kind of budget
are you working with? Pretty much any mid-ranged PC (and even a well
designed low-end PC) out there today should be able to handle the
tasks you're looking at, throwing a bit of money at the task can help
in some areas. There are a few general rules I would mention to start
with though:
1. IMO, a Socket 939 Athlon64 processor is pretty clearly the choice
for moment. The performance and price of these chips makes them a
pretty obvious candidate to base a system around. The only exception
to this rule is if you have a fairly substantial budget and are
looking at a dual-processor system, in which case a dual Socket 940
Opteron 2xx setup is the clear choice.
2. Get a minimum of 1GB of memory in the form of 2 x 512MB DIMMs.
Memory is fairly cheap and for video editing having lots of memory is
your most important step. If you're going to be doing at all heavy
video editing than 2GB would probably be the minimum I'd recommend and
here a dual-processor setup would be something to strongly consider
(again, budget permitting).
3. Put some money behind a good video card. This is critical for
gaming, where the video card has a bigger impact on performance than
the processor.
4. Be sure to factor into the budget all the external stuff, in
particular a monitor and speakers. It sounds like one of your main
goals involves playing music and watching movies on this system, so it
will probably be a good idea to invest some money in a good monitor
(or alternatively a TV and a video card with TV-output if you want to
go that route), some good speakers and a decent amp. Here is one
place where your budget will play a BIG role, since you can go from
small time for a couple of hundred US$ to the HIGH tens of thousands
of dollars for a top-end setup. It's important to remember though
that speaker and monitor/TV technology are moving forward at a MUCH
slower rate than computer technology. On my own system, which is
hardly top-of-the-line, virtually every component inside the computer
is less than 2 years old (most are less than 1 year old), but my
monitor is going on 5 years old now and the speakers are older still.
It might be worthwhile to get a lower-end computer now and put a bit
more money towards the monitor and speakers with a view to upgrading
the computer a year or two down the road.
