Windows XP Pro x64 for a Shuttle - Help me!

[d4ve86]

Thinking about buying a shuttle bareboans system, shall i get windows xp pro x64 bit opperating system or is it better to stic with xp pro?

This is the spec so far, need a monitor aswell, what do u all think, and any advice would be good.

Cheers

Shuttle XPC ST20G5 Aluminium Barebones System - AMD 64 (Socket 939) (FS-047-SH) 1

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3800BVBOX) (CP-134-AM) 1

Corsair 1GB DDR XMS3200XL Pro TwinX (2x512MB) CAS2 (MY-050-CS) 1

Western Digital Raptor 36.7GB WD360GD 10,000RPM SATA 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-007-WD) 1

Akasa Serial ATA 45cm Silver Data Cable (CB-053-GE) 1

Logitech diNovo Laser Media Desktop - Retail (KB-076-LG) 1

Western Digital WDXUL2500BBNU Essential 250GB USB2.0 External Hard Drive (HD-063-WD) 1

Linksys WMP54G Wireless-G PCI Adapter (NW-003-LS) 1

Shuttle CR40 DVD-RW Silver

 

[David]

i have the same ram as u have up there...expensive but worth it...although i'm strugglyiong with it nowadays thinkign about another gig really...

i also have a raptor...mayaswell get the 70gig... everything else seems good, but where's the gcard?!?! surely not worth spending the money if it can't play any games!!

 

[Lee]

I'm running XP Pro X64 here. It's fine for work. It took me a while to find working drivers for some things, mainly printers/scanners etc.

I've got an nForce 3 board and a GeForce 6800, both of which are supported, although the drivers for the mobo are old, and not great. The latest 64bit video drivers gave a huge performance boost, but again driver support is still pretty poor from most vendors.

You are best to check around the net to make sure all those components are supported and how mature the drivers are.

My PC is slower in games with x64 on than it was with XP Pro due to the current drivers.

Just out of curiosity, why a Dual Core system? We've got them here with Athlon 64 X2 4800s, and very few apps use them other than some of the artists tools.

For gaming you would be better off with an Athlon FX series chip.

 

[McBunny]

i was wondering why you would bother with a dual core or twin cpu sytem as bugger all apart from windows and photoshop and other photo/3d stuff can use it

 

[d4ve86]

well i was looking at the AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3700BNBOX) (CP-121-AM) or

AMD Athlon 64 4000+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA4000BNBOX) (CP-120-AM)

my mate said the venice core ones are rubbish,

not worth gettin 74gb raptor as i got a 250gb external drive on there to store all my sh1t on.

I dont really play games, gunna use the onboard graphics untill next months then get a gcard.
im just going for something that i wont have to upgrade for a while and i use my pc all the time, last year i had a desk top with 1gb ram not i got a laptop with 512ram. but its really slow now.

 

[McBunny]

socket 940's arnt too far away

 

[d4ve86]

how long tho? and how long for someone like shuttle to have a bareboans system out?

 

[d4ve86]

also what chipset do people think is good?

 

[wozzaa]

Its worth going dual core now actually. Already games are starting to pop up to take advantage of them. Plus for the price they are getting down to now there getting much more worth it when you start overclocking them. Just think a 4400+ with a 200mhz overclock gives you dual FX53 speeds. for under £350.

Although quite a few people are hitting FX57 speeds on air with them so this makes them worth the cash. The FX series isnt really that different from the other CPU's the only difference really is the multiplier can be increased so is fully unlocked where as all the other chips you can only decrease the multiplier. Again not important unless your gonna overclock.

Your mate isnt really right about the venice cores either there cracking chips just the sandiego has more cache but its doesnt make that much of a difference. to be honest.

I know my new system im going dual core though getting a 4400+ myself because they are going to be used more soon. You can buy the FX and the single core chips now but which gives you more headroom when programs start properly taking advantage and what people fail to remember is while your playing a game on 1 core you can still have music programs virus scanner etc in the background running on the other core and not get any slow down at all. And there cheaper than the FX cpu's

Think about it this way FX cpu is 2.8ghz yet a 4400+ is 2 x 2.2ghz so when programs are designed to take advantage you have 4.4ghz of processing power to use whats gonna be faster? And as said many games are supposed to be coming out supporting them think a few already do one of the colin mcrae games does. the aging quake3 does. fear was said many times to support it and the new unreal engine is built around taking advantage of it.

In the next couple years single core cpu's will hardly be coming out will all be dual core and more. Xbox 360 is 3 cores with 2 logical threads each giving it 6 way processing. PS3 has 7 way etc all the next gen consoles take advantage of more than 1 core so the games that get designed for them and moved over to PC etc will be better on multicored systems.