New computer

[Durzel]

Following on from my recent column update.. What would be the best possible motherboard/CPU/memory combination to get for maximum performance. Assume price is not a "massive" issue (by that I mean don't suggest Xeons or anything of their ilk)

Any/all suggestions welcome!

 

[Testin da Cable]

get that dual-athlon mb, stick 2 1200Mhz tbirds in there, add 512MB or so and you're done such a system will rule [and be less expensive than a P3 based one too ]

some things:
mindless barbarians will try to dissuade you by claming that amd,nvidia,all kinds of dimm,all midrange psu's is/are/have the potential to be/ crap
I submit: get a good psu, good [important] ram and [very important] read the fscking manual and j00 will rocketh without strange probs.

also: if for some strange reason you are going to run W2k, make sure you have dl'd the _designated w2k drivers_ for your hardware. really important that, trust me


-tdc

 

[Durzel]

Dual Athlon mobo?.. thought Dual Athlon motherboards were "being looked into" at the moment - are they actually out yet?

 

[Testin da Cable]

shipping is commencing _very_ slowly I hear

more info:

Dual Processor Athlon Motherboard Soon
Athlonmb.com has the scoop on a new motherboard being developed by Tyan, makers of many popular lines of PC motherboards, which will come with dual Athlon support. The first of its kind,
the board will feature Dual 462-pin Socket A Processor Support, Dual 10/100 On-board NICs, Dual Channel Ultra160 SCSI, Server Management, 64-bit PCI Slots, Intergrated Graphics, and more.

http://athlonmb.com
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/17789.html
http://www6.tomshardware.com/business/00q4/001114/index.html last page

An educated guess would be 3rd quarter earliest chance

 

[old.Quorthon]

Durzel m8,

I too like you have always had Intel chips in my machine. That is about to change soon. I'm sure Bodhi or someone will chip in now with stuff about reliability etc but frankly this is just propaganda and a thing of the past. I have a number of friends who have bought amd bundles of varying speeds from the 2 overclocking stores and all of them are extremely happy. Couple this with the fact that they are unquestionably faster & enormously cheaper than the intel equivalents and I think that there is a rock solid case for AMD at the moment. Only reason I can see to go for Intels is to get a dual system. Unlike TDC, I dont believe that the dually tbird's are available yet - only being developed. Even if they were, I would steer clear as this would really be AMD's first foray into the dual proccy arena - there are bound to be problems.

Other than that it depends what you want the machine for. If you want a server or some incredibly intensive workload machine, then a dual PIII 1ghz machine would be excellent. If its just for games, wp, surfing etc then get a tbird 1.2, o/c to 1.4, couple it with a pair of IBM deskstars on a ABit KT7A-Raid or Asus A7v133 in RAID 0 and you've got yourself one incredibly fast machine, plus some change over to get that Geforce Ultra Embattle was talking about.


Q

 

[Durzel]

Indeed.

I've long extolled the virtues of Intel processors, I've owned Intel CPUs since the beginning of time itself but nowadays I'm finding it more and more difficult to convince myself that it is truly the best platform to own. AMD have had a number of incompatibility issues in the past, as have VIA (the only chipset manufacturer besides the prohibitively expensive ServerWorks that make dual-CPU motherboards) with Pentium III's.

I would quite happily shell out the money for a Pentium 4 1.5Ghz+ if I knew that it trounced Athlons of all descriptions. The realist in me, having seen many benchmarks on many different sites, knows that this is simply not the case and the only thing stopping me buying an Athlon-based system nowadays are long-forgotten issues that have arisen in the past.

I think given what my expectations will be of the new system, I would be better off with an Athlon 1.2 TBird - as you suggested. Is there any benefit in getting a 1.3 or 1.33 TBird, or is the 1.2 a better beast to play with?

 

[Testin da Cable]

Durz, I don't think a normal human can differentiate between 1.2 and 1.3 m8
and if you're going to drive a gF with one of them, it will prolly mean the difference between 200 and 220 fps.

but, speed addict that I am, I'd say go the fast route

 

[*Kornholio*]

Originally posted by testin_da_cable
but, speed addict that I am

I KNEW IT !!!!

 

[Testin da Cable]

caught heehee

I'll change it to "Mhz addict" for the purists then

 

[*Kornholio*]

k

 

[old.TUG]

Dual athlon mobo's aint in production yet me dont finks.

Gotta say, Intel is dead now... gonna have to be an AMD based system Durz, that's what I'll build next and I've always used intel up to now aswell...

For not that much cash, you can get something based around an Abit KT7A-RAID, TBIRD 1200@1500MHz, nice air cooling, 2 30gig IBM HD's in RAID0 mode, GF2 video etc etc... AMD really are cheap now, shame mobo's aint cheaper but all in all, somink like that above would be frickin' quick!

 

[old.Quorthon]

Durzel,

In terms of the speed difference between 1.2 and 1.3 or 1.33, I dont think there is much of a noticeable real-world performance difference. At that point the limiting factor in your system will probably be your graphics card, rather than the processor. If you run Seti or something, then you should see a linear % perf diff directly related to the processor speed.

The main other difference will be if you want to run it at 133mhz FSB on a board such as the Kt7A Raid or Asus A7v133. I think the old tbirds dont officially support the 133 mhz FSB, even though most people get them unlocked and change the fsb speed themselves (or get them pre-done by OCS or OCUK). Once unlocked they will quite happily run at 133 fsb. If however, you are not getting an overclocked or unlocked cpu, then the old 1.2 cpus will not natively support the 133 mhz fsb. In this case you would be better getting the 1.33 or else you would have to run the Cpu on a 100 mhz fsb.


Q

 

[*Exor*]

AMD is for skivs.

 

[bodhi]

Intel are the Armani of the CPU world

AMD are the Marks and Sparks

I was thinking about going down the AMD route, then I saw what P4 can do at higher clockspeeds than its operating at now. I'll stick with me P3 thanks.

 

[Wij]

I saw a nice article on Anand (I think it was in the TBird 1.33 GHz review, might have been on Tom's tho) comparing P3s, P4s and Tbirds on today's platforms. The conclusion seemed to be that if you are looking at a system that will last a couple of years P4 or Athlon is the way to go. Their higher bus speed will be more and more important over time. On the newest benchmarks the P3 is starting to lag behind and this will get worse. Don't get me wrong. My P3-1gig is great but I plan to upgrade to a totally new system in 6 months or so anyway so I'm not too fussed about future performance. If it's a choice between P4 and Athlon I'd go Athlon. Firstly because of cost, secondly because P4 will be getting a totally new package when Northwood arrives which will be incompatible with current motherboards.

As for there being teething problems with the new Athlon dual proc boards I don't think this will be a big issue since it's based on the 760 which works fine in single processor form and it's based on the EV6 bus which has been multiprocessing for a while.

Whatever you do don't buy one of those 'budget' P4 systems from Dell or similar. Shitty PC600 ram plus a TNT2-M64 gfx card don't equal gaming fun

 

[dazzl]

Cheapest + Fastest + Reliability = Money well spent

aye!

 

[*Exor*]

AMD's aren't reliable though.

 

[Wij]

Originally posted by *Exor*
AMD's aren't reliable though.

proof ?

 

[Embattle]

No AMDs just have more compatibility problems than Intel chips.

 

[Testin da Cable]

Originally posted by *Exor*
AMD's aren't reliable though.

system number 1:

AMD 900 Mhz TBird
384 MB cas-2 dimm 133Mhz
KT-7 non-raid
nVidia gForce 256ddr pro
sb live
2xquantum fireball 17Gb
adaptec 2904 scsi >plextor burner and cdrom
3com 3c905 100Mbit

never had a problem
uptime is: 62 days 13 hours 23 minutes
last reboot : can't remember

system number 2:

AMD 750 Mhz Duron
512 MB cas-3 dimm 133Mhz
KT-7 non raid
nVidia TNT-2
adaptec 2940UW >6 seagate barraccuda 4Gb
3ware escalade IDE-raid controler > 4 maxtor diamondmax 30.3Gb
3com 3c905 100Mbit

never had a problem
uptime: 16 days 3 hours 53 minutes
last reboot: memory upgrade



Now, cos both the above systems are driven by AMD technology, they are inherently CRAP and UNSTABLE so thats why the uptimes are probably a fluke =P

 

[Ch3tan]

I'm a intel zealot, but looking around at prices and technologies for a new summer system i find myself drawn to amd. Pentium 4 seems to offer you nothing NOW, and thats why you really buy a new system you want to see performance increaces now not 2 years down the line. Having had two friends build systems from ocuk, one with a 850@1.g and one with a 1.2 which aint been pushed yet, i know that the new amd's are quality processors at a reasonable cost. And system stability and compatibility? Well they had no compatibility issues, stability is only a factor when u start overclocking and dont cool properly but thats the same with intel. The only thing that makes me look towards p4 systems is the RAMBUS RAM, overpirced? Yes but its fast stuff people, fast stuff indeed.

 

[old.Quorthon]

Guys

I think in the past that many of the compatibility problems were actually caused by motherboards chipsets, typically produced by VIA, and not the processors themselves. Via have really smartened up their act though, and boards such as the KT7A-Raid and Asus A7V-133 are getting rave reviews all over the web, for their speed, reliability and tweakability at an acceptable price.

If you buy a current P4 plus board plus RDRAM, you will be paying over twice the price, for a system that is slower in all current applications, and finally which is not upgradable!!!!!! In addition you have to change your power supply in your case.

So for the best performing machine now, its got to be AMD.


Q

 

[Durzel]

RAMBUS is very expensive, and also very fast (it blitzs everything else including DDR RAM by a factor of 5) - but the memory bandwidth is unlikely to be noticeable in any "real World" situations (ie. gaming, office apps, etc).

Pentium 4 seems to offer you nothing NOW, and thats why you really buy a new system you want to see performance increaces now not 2 years down the line

This is my exact problem (although not any more since I've bought my new PC now) - it simply doesn't make common sense to buy a Pentium 4 at the present moment in time, especially in light of the fact that Intel will very soon release the Northwood revision of the core, which will support DDR RAM. As Ch3tan rightly said, I don't want to buy a CPU now on the pretext that it may operate faster within a year or so - by that time we'll have Pentium 4's running at 2Ghz, Athlons at god knows what and Geforce 3 Ultra's retailing for £200.

 

[old.Quorthon]

Originally posted by Ch3tan
The only thing that makes me look towards p4 systems is the RAMBUS RAM, overpirced? Yes but its fast stuff people, fast stuff indeed.

This is not technically correct Ch3tan. Rambus gives you unbelievable memory bandwidth, which is a different thing entirely from speed. This is the reason why the P4 shows massive scores in Sandra memory benchmarks (I think it is something in the 1800's compared to 650'ish for current AMD/VIA boards. Only problem with this is that there are practically zero actual programs which currently use such bandwidth (other than benchmarking programs) and because Rambus has a much higher latency than regular SDRAM, real world performance is actually lower. This is not to say that such bandwidth consuming programs will not exist in the future, but by the time they do, there will be a latest and greatest iteration of the P4 around which is incompatible with any motherboards available for the current P4.

So still, go with AMD


Q

 

[Wij]

Indeed Q. However P4 is designed for higher mem bandwidth more than Athlon and P3 are (check the linpack scores) so it is in a greater postion to benefit. Still doesn't change the fact that it has a high latency tho. I'd bet my money on DDR and DDR2.

 

[*Exor*]

AMDs are for pikes.

 

[Mr B]

Intels are for Halibuts.

 

[Testin da Cable]

where was that great handbag pic again?

 

[Wij]

Isn't it amazing how the quality of the debate always degrades as soon as we reach page 2

 

[Testin da Cable]

hehe you noticed it too wheee