A few more questions... :)

[caLLous]

Hello there!

I'm thinking about ripping the guts out of my computer and starting again. I was just browsing scan and saw a SATA2 hard drive, but for the life of me I can't find a supporting motherboard or controller card...? Is this a brand new standard in it's infancy or am I just being blind?

I'd like a socket 775 motherboard because I'm casually looking at the 3.8ghz Pentium - I've only seen one SATA2 motherboard and it's an AMD 64bit one, which I don't want.

Firewire doesn't matter as I have a Firewire card already and I don't need onboard audio/lan.

To summarise (and add a bit):

- I want a wicked fast graphics card.
- I want a wicked fast CPU (preferably the one mentioned above, I feel like going with Intel this time around).
- I want a wicked fast - but not excessively big (60gb max?) - system drive (is 300mb/s overkill?).
- I want a motherboard that natively supports the above.

Fill my shopping basket!

 

[Jonty]

Hi caLLous

SATA2 is very new, so don't worry if you can't find many supporting motherboards. I *think* like USB2 it's backwards compatible and merely runs at a slower speed, but please don't quote me on that.

As for graphics, ATI's forthcoming 'Fudo' graphics core will be available in the Autumn, most probably, and will likely be a 512MB card, with 24 pipelines and Shader Model 3 support (compared to most of today's ATI cards which are 128/256MB with 16 pipelines and Shader Model 2 support). Similarly nVidia's new G70 design, the details of which no-one actually knows, is likely to be available in the Autumn. There was speculation the G70 would be a dual-core design, but no proof as yet. Both sets of cards will feature higher clock rates than todays cards, with potential support for Windows Graphics Foundation which is the new moniker for DirectX when Longhorn comes along.

If you don't want to wait that long (and it may be months yet) then the ATI x850 XT PE is about as fast a card as you'll get, followed closely by the GeForce 6800 Ultra. Both have 512MB variants now, but whether you'll really need that much is debatable (no doubt in the future you'll need it, similarly with Shader Model 3 support). As a budget solution (if ~£199 is budget ) the ATI x800 XL is proving a great performer for its price bracket, often beating the otherwise powerful GeForce 6600GT in the mainstream market.

As for CPUs, Athlon 64s remain the fastest in many games. Intel's new dual-core chips are on the horizon, but as yet these 800-series chips aren't proving particularly fast in non-optimised games, so you may as well stick with the 600-series Pentium 4s which now ship with 64-bit support (Windows XP x64 Edition is due out soon). Intel's Pentium M 700-series CPUs are also great performers, with a 2.3Ghz 'Dothan' Pentium M often outperforming Intel's 3.xGhz chips. The only snag is the lack of motherboard support, as the chipsets are older and lack PCI-Express/DDR2 RAM support etc. I'd also leave Intel's Extreme Edition range alone, as they don't really offer the performance the extra price implies (although they now have 1066Mhz FSB).

As for storage, SATA2 is undoubtedly very fast, but a 10,000rpm SATA(1) drive should be more than sufficient (not to mention expensive) for most people, and newer drives support some of SATA2's advanced features such as Native Command Queueing (NCQ) which is designed to speed up drive access.

Motherboards which support SATA2 are, as yet, fairly rare but that should change in time. If you're going with Intel then you really want a board which features Intel's 900-series chipset, which supports PCI-Express, 7.1 HD audio, DDR2 RAM etc. If you do go down this route, though, you'll need a PCI-Express graphics card and DDR2 RAM, as the older AGP and DDR RAM are not compatible.

Kind Regards

Jonty

P.S. You could also consider SLI, nVidia's two-graphics cores in one system techology (soon to be matched by ATI), but this adds further complications in selecting a system, so it's your call

 

[Danya]

I want a wicked fast - but not excessively big (60gb max?) - system drive (is 300mb/s overkill?).

You won't find a drive that supports even half that speed, so speed of the interface is largely irrelevant.

 

[caLLous]

Thanks so far!

570J Intel Pentium® 4 LGA 775 CPU (3.80 Ghz 800FSB) HT 1MB Cache *Retail*
Gigabyte GA-8I915P-D Pro i915P, ATX, DDDR2-533, Gbit Lan, USB 2.0, 1394, Audio, SATA
1Gb Value Select DDR2, 533 MHz PC4200, 128Mx64, non-ECC, 240 DIMM, unbuffered, CL4

I need to know if the above will work together in perfect harmony... I'm not 100% on the mobo and it's been so long since I've bought new guts for my computer that I'm completely out of touch with various standards and the like. I'm sitting here reading through pages and pages of reviews and stuff, but a quick yay or nay wouldn't 'alf help!

Thanks again.