need some advice on my pc build

[Tiger]

i bought a nice new pc case a while back but never got round to building the thing. just wondered what would peoples advice on cpu/motherboard.

i was just gonna go the full hog and get a p4 3.0 but im not sure, i dont have a clue about AMD processors, would i be better goin down that road? not looking to spend crazy money, i might get back into the online gaming so ill need a decent graphics card too but again nothing top spec thats crazy money

any suggestions?

cheers

Tony

 

[Darren S]

Ah, the joys of PC building! You'll probably have several suggestions on what's best, but personally, I like Asus & AMD combinations - even though I'm running an MSI mobo at the moment.

This in mind, I think the best Asus board you can get is the following:-

http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?l1=3&l2=15&l3=226&model=744&modelmenu=1

And sells for around £125 or so. If you needed it up and running straight away, I'd probably opt for a relatively cheap 939-socket AMD 64 CPU and a cheapish PCI-X GFX card - just to tide you over until the prices come down.

It supports true x16 SLi graphics too - so when those gfx cards come down in price - chuck two of them in there and see that thing fly! If you can afford it too - I settle for nothing less than 2GB memory in there....

D.

 

[Tiger]

got any suggestions for the cheapish amd 64 cpu or even better links? ill prob buy the majority of the stuff from ebay and micro direct.

ive never had an amd so i know nothing about them, basically just looking for a half decent combo that will run most games at the cheapest possible price!

 

[d4ve86]

use overclockers, aria or scan they are pretty good for components, i got an amd 3500+socket 939 the other week its fine for what i need. i dont play games but i spent 100 quid on graphics ati x800 gto card becuase i watch movies off my pc. its all good and would probably play all games out there with ease!

 

[ViolentJ]

i would advise against buying hardware on ebay... if you have something that's faulty you may find it impossible to exchange.

Faulty NEW motherboards are common!

 

[Darren S]

Tony,

I use MD a fair too. I'll have a look at some part numbers in the morning for you. AMD are great, stable and powerful processors SO LONG as you give them decent cooling. Intel with their P4's (a bit like Heinz, in 57 varieties :clown: ) are arguably a lot better built are more resistant to things like fan failure, etc. An AMD CPU will have a life measured in seconds without decent cooling.

I'm on my 5th AMD CPU now. None have failed and I've just bought each as a natural upgrade from the previous CPU. I doubt I'd switch to Intel in the near future....

D.

 

[Griff]

LMAO about the comment "Intel's are better built than AMD's"....

http://www.cliosport.net/forum/showthread.php?t=105907

 

[Darren S]

Come on Griff - you have to admit that they are. I'm out-and-out pro-AMD, but I know their limits. Build quality isn't one of them!

D.

 

[Griff]

Completely disagree... Intels have thermal throttling so they merely "underclock" themselves to a ridiculous level to stay intact.

Perhaps I and the wider gaming community are wrong but AMD is by far the prefered CPU these days.

Ofcourse if you want to demonstrate a 1.8ghz Intel CPU reaching 2.7ghz on a stock heatsink then I'll be happy to take a look.

 

[Darren S]

Take a HSF off a running Athlon and a running P4 and see which one lives! Ok, so the Intel throttles back whereas the AMD will redline to oblivion, but surely that's a useful feature to have? I'd rather have a CPU running at 2% but still working than one that went pop because it wasn't cool enough.

Of the twelve servers here - all are Intel based. I wouldn't dream of buying a business-critical server with a couple of Opterons in it - I just don't think they have been proven enough yet.

For gaming - of course - AMD kick arse and like I said in my previous post, I doubt I would switch to Intel for that purpose alone. If I had the money, a socket-939 CPU would be heading my way ASAP...

D.

 

[wozzaa]

Amd's can the cool and quite feature which will knock the cpu down to very low clock speeds when not in use keeping temps down. They also do have thermal throttling if you set it up in the bios.

P4's run hotter than athlon 64's as well. Id love to see the P4 dual cores running at full load under 50c they idle higher than that. My A64 X2 idles at 37c And the fan is only running at 800rpm at that point.

The P4 is old architecture now and is showing its age more and more in comparison to the AMD cpu's. The opterons systems from playing with them are bloody brilliant and stable as well.

The current generation of cpu's AMD without a doubt wins hands down. Theres only a few things the intels do better in and there usually sythetic benchmarks and take advantage of the HT technology. However compare like for like say a dual core amd and a dual core intel and the amd wipes the floor with it.

To be honest AMD have come a long way before i woulda said all your arguments were valid but not anymore the amd 64 is a superior cpu to the intels. Not only in performance but they run cooler. They run cooler than intel cpu's. Built in memory controller gives much better speed. They do more per mhz than the intel have more instruction sets helping to speed things up.

And intel use AMD's 64bit instruction set if i remember correctly or it is based off amd's system. And taking heatsinks off either the P4 or AMD im pretty sure the P4 if it was one of the higher end cpu's would cook its self in the socket. Especially if at the time it was doing somethign they get up to over 70c when there being taxed hard. An AMD usually doesnt get above 50c

 

[Griff]

Amd's can the cool and quite feature which will knock the cpu down to very low clock speeds when not in use keeping temps down. They also do have thermal throttling if you set it up in the bios.

That's available on some motherboards and is not implemented by AMD. It's not "Thermal Throttling"

 

[wozzaa]

Its in pretty much every new board i have looked at. On my board then again my board has literally hundreds of bloody options to set. DFI SLI DR board though.

 

[Griff]

You're not the only one with a DFi board...

http://www.cliosport.net/forum/showthread.php?t=105907

 

[Darren S]

I think we're going slightly too deep for Tiger's original request, here though!

D.

 

[Woodentop]

DFI boards own

 

[wozzaa]

yes they do, Got my 4400+ runnin on air at 2.7ghz (x2) although it was running rather a little toaster considering it was on the stock heatsink and fan will need something a little better when i have some money to spend on the computer. Next lot of money i get is getting spent on my car.

 

[Tiger]

DFI boards own

was just thinkin that.... lol