Help with new system

  • Thread starter Thread starter Greg Sumner
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Greg Sumner

I'm building a new system for my wife, looking for some help. I've built
lots of Intel systems but never an AMD, thought I'd try it out since I want
it to be as cheap as possible. But, there's a catch. I also want to
capture some old Hi8 video to it. I'm using an older All-in-Wonder AGP
video card that's a dinosaur for any modern games, but it'll cap the
relatively low rez Hi8 very nicely. So here's what I figure.

1 ghz memory,
fast drive, 120gb +
NEC 16x dvd writer - I have one in my system, it's great
old ATI AGP video
WinXP

Where I'm suck is the board and CPU. I'm not too concerned about
performance, I figure the target equiv Intel machine would be around 1.5ghz.
The AGP card asks for min 800mhz, so why not double it. Otherwise it's just
the standard email & Word/Excel stuff.

Motherboard and CPU recommendations are very welcome. Built-in audio and
ethernet a plus. At first I was looking at the Sempron chips for the price
but I've no idea if they'll handle the work OK.

Thanks much,
GS.
 
I'm building a new system for my wife, looking for some help. I've built
lots of Intel systems but never an AMD, thought I'd try it out since I want
it to be as cheap as possible. But, there's a catch. I also want to
capture some old Hi8 video to it. I'm using an older All-in-Wonder AGP
video card that's a dinosaur for any modern games, but it'll cap the
relatively low rez Hi8 very nicely. So here's what I figure.

1 ghz memory,
Click to expand...

Err, should that read 1GB of memory? 1GHz memory does exist, but is
not really usable as main-memory for any PC I know of.
fast drive, 120gb +
NEC 16x dvd writer - I have one in my system, it's great
old ATI AGP video
WinXP

Where I'm suck is the board and CPU. I'm not too concerned about
performance, I figure the target equiv Intel machine would be around 1.5ghz.
Click to expand...

Err... I don't think AMD sells anything that slow anymore, so this
part shouldn't be that tough!
The AGP card asks for min 800mhz, so why not double it. Otherwise it's just
the standard email & Word/Excel stuff.

Motherboard and CPU recommendations are very welcome. Built-in audio and
ethernet a plus. At first I was looking at the Sempron chips for the price
but I've no idea if they'll handle the work OK.
Click to expand...

The Sempron chips and the new Intel Celeron-D chips perform about the
same when matching rating vs. clock speed. ie a Sempron 2500+
(clocked at 1.75GHz) and the Celeron D 325 (clocked at 2.53GHz) chips
would perform about the same. As for how they would compare to a
Pentium4, that's a bit tougher to guess, especially since it depends
on just which version of the P4 you're comparing too. However suffice
it to say that they will both be noticeably faster than the 1.5GHz P4
in essentially every task out there.

So, that being said, the Sempron 2500+ would probably be a very good
choice for a CPU, given you're relatively light processing needs.
It's the second-cheapest Sempron that AMD sells as a retail-box chip
(there are cheaper OEM chips, but they do not come with heatsinks or
much of anything in the way of warranty, stick to retail box chips).
The Sempron 2400+ is still cheaper, but only by $4 according to
Newegg. Given that tiny price-difference, you might as well go for
the small performance boost of the 2500+.

As for motherboards, I'm currently using a Sempron 2400+ chip in a
Chaintech 7NJL6 motherboard. This board sells for a great price
(Newegg lists it for $53), has built in NIC and audio (the audio is by
no means studio-quality, but decent as far as on-board audio goes) and
has been rather problem-free for me.

Combine that with 2 x 512MB of memory of some brand-name and you
should have a pretty solid base of a system. Just remember to make
sure that the case and power supply you get are of decent quality
(low-quality power supplies can cause all kinds of headaches with
modern PCs). For the hard drive, my choice would probably be a
Seagate Barracuda. The above-mentioned Chaintech board supports both
ATA and SATA hard drives, though I have never actually tested it's
SATA capabilities (don't have a drive), so I can't really vouch for
them.

With all of that, plus the NEC DVD burner and ATI video card you've
got, you should be all set.
 
Tony said:
Err, should that read 1GB of memory? 1GHz memory does exist, but is
not really usable as main-memory for any PC I know of.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I was sleepy when I wrote it.
So, that being said, the Sempron 2500+ would probably be a very good
choice for a CPU, given you're relatively light processing needs.
Click to expand...

Good deal. I think the only thing to be gained by a better chip would be
faster video encoding. Since I'm just going to let it run overnight it's
probably not that big a deal. I think I'll run down to Fry's and see what
they've got for cheap. Online they have combo 2500+/ with mb for $79US (!).

Thanks for your feedback.

GS.
 
Greg said:
Good deal. I think the only thing to be gained by a better chip
would be faster video encoding. Since I'm just going to let it run
overnight it's probably not that big a deal. I think I'll run down
to Fry's and see what they've got for cheap. Online they have combo
2500+/ with mb for $79US (!).
Thanks for your feedback.

GS.
Click to expand...

Just a note to anybody following along. I did some research and found that
the Intels pretty much get whooped by the AMD chips in every category EXCEPT
video encoding. Intel actually wins on that one. On top of that the
el-cheapo Fry's deals on AMD combos are on back order until approximately
2008. So I got a P4 2.5ghz with motherboard for $139. Not too shabby.
It's amazing the system you can put together these days for about $350.

GS.
 
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