coolsti said:
Hi,
its been more than 3 years since I built my PC, and now its time to
upgrade my wife's. But I can see much has happened since, and I am quite
confused about which hardware to choose.
I am quite content with what I have now on my last home-built. It has an
Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz CPU, an ASUS P4PE motherboard with onboard sound
and netcard and 533 bus speed and AGP 4x video card slot.
I would like to build something that is like this, but of course using
today's technology, but within a reasonable price.
I intend to stay with the Pentium 4 CPU (not the extreme, too expensive
for me) and probably with ASUS for the motherboard (unless there is
something as good or better). But I am confused about the following points:
1) what type of RAM is best for today?
2) what chipset to use for the motherboard?
3) what bus speed to look for (again, within reasonable expense)
4) PCI-express or AGP (I think the answer is PCI-express)
I should mention that this is to be an ordinary gaming computer, with only
1 CPU and not 64bit.
Can anyone give me some tips on the motherboard? Netcard and sound can be
onboard, but not the video card. Links to places which give good overviews
would also be much appreciated.
Thanks for any help!
Steve, Denmark
Single core (netburst) Intel processors tend to have Hyperthreading.
When Hyperthreading is enabled, Windows shows two processors in
Task Manager, but there is only about a 10% performance boost
available with Hyperthreading. The latest dual cores (the
cheap ones) tend to not have Hyperthreading, but as they have
dual cores, you still see two (real) processors in Task Manager.
The duals are priced to move right now, and maybe if you were
to wait a month, the pricing would make some of the others
a better option from a price perspective. (The Cedar Mill 661 3.6GHz
single core at $183 on July 24 would fulfill your single core
wish, but is too expensive right now. I'm kinda curious what
the sale price on a 670 would be, when July 24 comes.)
(Note - there are some typos in this table - PD 820 is listed twice,
and one instance in the table should have been PD 805.)
http://www.hkepc.com/hwdb/x6800vsfx62-7.htm
If we are talking "dirt cheap", you can get a dual core 805
(2.66GHz/FSB533/2x1MB L2, 90nm) for $111. These are overclockable
but cooling is an issue if you try to overclock too far.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819116001
http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SL8ZH
Presler 940 dual core 65nm (3.2GHz/FSB800/2x2MB L2) for $220
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819116239
The Newegg 940 is a B1 stepping, and a C1 stepping would be better,
if it has started shipping (I don't see the C1 yet on
processorfinder, and I guess only the EE version is shipping C1).
http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SL94Q
As for RAM, there are two types. DDR400 you are familiar with,
as you could plug that into your P4PE. DDR2 is the newest RAM
standard, and to match the performance of DDR400, you would
use DDR2-533. Other speeds available are DDR2-667 or DDR2-800.
Some manufacturer play games, and there are a couple other
odd-ball speeds listed as well. Much of the DDR2 is overclockable,
if you loosen up the timing parameters, so there should not
be much of a premium for clock rate. But tight timing
(like CAS3 instead of CAS5) would bin a lot thinner than clock
rate, so finding high speed RAM at CAS3 should cost a lot more.
Use two matched sticks for dual channel operation. Many boards
support dual channel, and if you want 1GB total RAM, buy two
512MB sticks.
These are JEDEC DDR2 values (CL = CAS Latency):
DDR2-800 CL-tRCD-tRP = 4-4-4, 5-5-5, 6-6-6
DDR2-667 = 4-4-4, 5-5-5
DDR2-533 = 3-3-3, 4-4-4
DDR2-400 = 3-3-3, 4-4-4
N.B : Some Intel chipset do not support DDR2-667 4-4-4. Don't
be surprised if it runs at 5-5-5 instead. I haven't seen much
in the way of comments about this issue.
Enthusiast memory suppliers will supply a whole lot of
other varieties, but the SPD on the DIMM should contain
one or more of the above standard values. When an enthusiast memory
is plugged into a motherboard, the "Auto" setting would
result in one of the above values showing in the BIOS.
Using a "manual" setting, allows entering the enthusiast
values, like 3-4-3-9 or whatever.
On the motherboard front, things at Newegg are a mess. Things have
been so thin on the Intel side of things, for so long, that with
the drop in price of the Intel processors, that has tended to clean
out the reasonable motherboards.
This P5LD2-VM DH is $116. It is a microATX board. If you use a
fat-ass PCI Express video card, it is hard to get at the PCI
slots. Memory speed limit is DDR2-667. I presume, if you lift
the FSB speed, the memory would go higher. It does have built-in
graphics, but they are disabled when you plug in a real video
card. So the built-in is a hidden bonus.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131006
I don't think there would be much point recommending a P5WD2-E
at $240. If you were buying further up the price chart for a
processor, then it would hurt a bit less to buy a motherboard
like that.
Rather than drag this on, the way to shop is - use the
CPUsupport page, to list all the motherboards that support the
processor you are interested in - then try and find them at
retail. I tend to recommend Intel chipset, as there are fewer
surprises. If you have the time, you may be able to track down
an acceptable non-Intel board.
http://support.asus.com.tw/cpusupport/cpusupport.aspx?SLanguage=en-us
The master list of boards is here, and this will give you some idea
as to how many models are missing from retail. Personally, I like
to spend a bit more on a motherboard, but there are not many
customers like me
I would recommend a full sized ATX motherboard
rather than microATX. The microATX has limited slots for
expansion. Due to the dimensions of some video cards, and the
lousy choice the motherboard designer made for slot layout, you
are not left with much in the way of slot options on some of the
microATX boards. I like to see room for at least one PCI slot,
for an Audigy or something a bit better than onboard sound.
http://www.asus.com.tw/products2.aspx?l1=3&l2=-1
The main benefit of PCI Express video card slots, is more choice
in cards. There are some recent AGP cards that are still worth
getting, but they've been de-clocked on purpose to make the
PCI Express cards more desirable. With the wider range of
performance options on PCI Express, it is a bit easier to
find something that supports DX9c in hardware, and fits the
budget.
With a board like the P5P800 SE, you could reuse more of your
old hardware, but I don't know if that is the direction you
should be moving or not. At some point, you have to "move on",
hardware wise, and depending on your gaming aspirations,
maybe having another AGP slot is not the right answer. Easier
I think, to get new RAM, and have more choice in video cards.
If you need more feedback than the Newegg customer reviews,
you can look in these forums:
http://vip.asus.com/forum/topic.asp...5WD2-E Premium&page_size=100&page=1&count=446
Paul
