I Want to Build a Computer

[Worm]

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDe ... ory=BROWSE

What do you guys think of that board? I need something to replace my house brand 19.99 board that just won't work.

[Debaser]

This, I think, is my "final answer," Regis.

BONUS ROUND:

1. Just curious, but why the 128MB card for the higher price? Just a brand thing, or am I out of my depth?

2. I've got a DVD drive and a CD R/W Drive from my old comp. Is CD Read speed even an issue anymore?

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

1. Just curious, but why the 128MB card for the higher price? Just a brand thing, or am I out of my depth?

The 9800 jobber runs faster... I think that'll do you more good than the onboard RAM it has. There are probably some graphs which show how Radeon cards run at different speeds -- it would be worth looking into to see if it's an effective tradeoff. I think it is, from what I remember, though.

2. I've got a DVD drive and a CD R/W Drive from my old comp. Is CD Read speed even an issue anymore?

Right, they got as fast as they are going to get. Your DVD-ROM probably functions as a 48x CD-ROM or something similar. I wouldn't worry too much about getting a new CD burner -- you can get a great Lite-On that burns everything for less than $40 if I remember right. They'll be around forever. But yeah, you're good there with a CD burner and a DVD drive.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDe ... ory=BROWSE

What do you guys think of that board? I need something to replace my house brand 19.99 board that just won't work.

I have never used that board, but Asus makes great stuff. You'd be tough to go wrong with them.

[Debaser]

Sounds good, thanks!! I'll commence to shopping when I get home and then I'll probably be back here when I can't figure out how to assemble it all. But, for now, sounds great.

[Debaser]

Okay, now that I've been home and gotten to look at this stuff seriously, I'm dithering between your XP recommendations, your 64 recommendations, and what's available on Cyberpower. Looks like ultimately it's cheaper to build than get built by a tiny bit, if only because I'm not buying a HD twice.

So, really, it's just about the XPv64. I honestly have only the vaguest idea what I'll be getting for the 150 or so I'll be spending for the better chipset and requisite board. Question:

Could I compromise and get a faster XP? Would it do me any good? Is the 64 bit bit going to ever be neccessary for anything in and of itself, or is it just a speed boost?

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Okay, now that I've been home and gotten to look at this stuff seriously, I'm dithering between your XP recommendations, your 64 recommendations, and what's available on Cyberpower. Looks like ultimately it's cheaper to build than get built by a tiny bit, if only because I'm not buying a HD twice.

Cyberpower won't sell their systems without a hard drive, will they? That really sucks. Just give me what I ask for, "Cyber Power." But no, they gotta get their stinking hooks into you somehow.

So, really, it's just about the XPv64. I honestly have only the vaguest idea what I'll be getting for the 150 or so I'll be spending for the better chipset and requisite board.

I think you're mainly buying time -- you're going to want to upgrade sooner if you go the XP route. If you don't mind doing it, then getting an XP is certainly a defensible solution.

(Good ole AMD calling their chips "XP"s... between that the and the fact that the numbers they choose just happen to be a little faster than the speed of the chip they really have a crack marketing squad there.)

Could I compromise and get a faster XP? Would it do me any good? Is the 64 bit bit going to ever be neccessary for anything in and of itself, or is it just a speed boost?

Microsoft is coming out with a 64 bit version of Windows XP at one point, so you'd have that. But yeah, getting a faster XP chip would be solid as well. There's no bad choice you can make here, I don't think -- and there's certainly something to be said for getting the quick XP chip and being able to run everything flawlessly right now.

[Debaser]

Ok, I recommend the following:

Asus K8V motherboard. : $118


Athlon 64 3000 w/ fan: $175

MSI ATI RX9800PRO Video Card, 128MB: $194

ATX Case with 400 Watt Power Supply: $25 + $12.99 shipping

512 MB of 3200 DDR RAM: $125.99

$650.98 total.

And just like that, I am $650 poorer! Whatever becomes of this it will still lot better than the... yeegad, I think it was like $3,000 I spent on this piece of crap. Ah, back in the days when I thought I'd have money.

Hopefully it'll all arrive by Friday and I can put it together over the weekend.

[Jethro Q. Walrustitty]

Ath64 is great. No arguement. But if you think you'll be able to take your current Ath64 motherboard and use it in three years - you're dreaming.

That's not the argument.

He will not have to upgrade his system for a set amount of time (call it three years) if he gets an Athlon 64 system.

He will have to do it much sooner if he gets an XP system. Or else he can't, if he gets the fastest XP.

Not true! Not true!

The XP and the 64 will be the same performance - they're not like eggs, where one is about to go rotten in a couple days and the other is fresh from the chicken's ass and has a halflife of five years.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

The XP and the 64 will be the same performance - they're not like eggs, where one is about to go rotten in a couple days and the other is fresh from the chicken's ass and has a halflife of five years.

When Windows XP, 64-bit edition comes out he won't have to upgrade hardware. Granted, you and I don't care... but this entire thread started off with Debaser not wanting to do this all the time.

Maybe he'll like it when he sees how easy it is. I don't know. But still.

[Jethro Q. Walrustitty]

Ye Gods! I walk away for a minute and Debaser tosses an extra $180 down the toilet!

OK, not really. Just trying to help out Jonsey's New World Order than all people are basically assholes.

Debaser: You get absolutely nothing by going with the 64 over the XP. I've built more PCs that Jonsey's eaten pizzas. I know this shit. The one and only advantage is that it might run slightly cooler. The 64-bit Windows XP will not make Far Cry (or Doom 3 - which SUCKS ASS by the way) run any better, it'll just let you address more memory - in case you were planning on dumping more than four gigs into your system. Of course, the motherboard can't handle that much, but that's besides the point, I suppose.

Oh, and going with a Via instead of an nForce 2 chipset is definitely a mistake. Not a fatal one - but definitely not the best choice.

Finally, I don't think the performance differential to a 9800 Pro is worth $80 - I would have suggested a 9600 Pro for now, and when you find a game that doesn't run fast enough, cough up the bread then for the fastest $100-150 video card. In the long run you'll have spent $20-70 more, but you can probably get that back easily by tossing the 9600 on eBay, and you'll end up with probably a significantly faster card.

(The next generation of cards - the X800s - are much, much, much, much faster than the 9x00 series, and will probably be affordable in a year or two.)

Don't worry about the video card memory too much. 128m should be fine - only the real whopping-huge games want more. Doom 3 has a mode that supposedly only works with 512m on your card - but it's an unoptimized mess; Far Cry produces comparable (better overall, I think) graphics with far less demand on your system.

Assembling it is easy-peasy - if you get stuck, take a peek at some of the guides on AnandTech or Tom's Hardware Guide or where have you. The motherboard manuals are usually pretty good nowadays, too - do look at it and follow along.

[Jethro Q. Walrustitty]

The XP and the 64 will be the same performance - they're not like eggs, where one is about to go rotten in a couple days and the other is fresh from the chicken's ass and has a halflife of five years.

When Windows XP, 64-bit edition comes out he won't have to upgrade hardware. Granted, you and I don't care... but this entire thread started off with Debaser not wanting to do this all the time.

Maybe he'll like it when he sees how easy it is. I don't know. But still.

WHY would he care about Windows 64-bit? The only possible reason that anyone would want to upgrade is if they have an Ath64 (or the comparable Intel processor) and want to feel like they're using it. It won't provide real-world benefits over WinXP.

I don't have to upgrade when WinXP 64 comes out. You don't have to upgrade when WinXP 64 comes out. It's a non-event unless you already have such a processor. And again, the way it's being delayed, there's really no rush.

I love them Athlon 64s - but if you're looking at 3000+ performance levels or below, it's not worth the money unless you're just after "bragging rights."

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I've built more PCs that Jonsey's eaten pizzas.

I would hardly state that you have "built more PCs" than me. I had a job with Cyrix where that is all I did all day long in order to get testing configurations set correctly. And I'm building them constantly out here for friends of mine.

I'm not saying this as some sort of geekcred thing, but to reassure Debaser that I've done this professionally and kept up with the times. There isn't a week that goes by that I'm not putting a system together either at work or home.

Oh, and going with a Via instead of an nForce 2 chipset is definitely a mistake. Not a fatal one - but definitely not the best choice.

Again... Debaser will be assembling this on his own. I can't get up to Illinois to help him out. I had a laughable experience with an nForce chipset. I get nothing but success with VIAs. I got several solid recommendations for that motherboard. It's not a mistake by any means.

You're completely in the mindset that Debaser is local to you or me or whoever. This is different from how you'd normally put a PC together. If something doesn't work, Debaser doesn't have eight rooms of extra shit flopping around like we do to isolate what the problem is. I don't think you're keeping that in mind at all.

If the nForce chipset that he gets DOES suck then where is he? I'm not going to recommend anything that I can't vouch for.

Finally, I don't think the performance differential to a 9800 Pro is worth $80 - I would have suggested a 9600 Pro for now, and when you find a game that doesn't run fast enough, cough up the bread then for the fastest $100-150 video card.

You've totally missed the eight times that I've said that Debaser doesn't want to put shit into his PC constantly. Yes, you and I can upgrade. Yes, Pinner could upgrade because I'm 15 minutes away from putting a new card in his system. I have no idea what sort of support Debaser has locally. If he's not feeling up to moving that stuff around what are his options? Getting Best Buy to do it for $40 an hour?

Assembling it is easy-peasy

It's easy for you and I and people who have done this tech shit for 15 years. I don't know what else I can say that would drive the point home that to someone who has never done it before it's not straightforward. There's nothing remotely intuitive about knowing that the IDE cable has to be plugged in with the red line next to the power supply port or that on some motherboards you can use either DIMM slot and on others you can't or that some motherboards even come shipped with the need to yank the CMOS jumper off so that the thing will frigging boot (one mobo I was reading about on Newegg DID do that).

I'd use the car analogy but you're good with cars. So I'll use sports. If someone threw you out into a football field and said "go play safety in a cover two zone," well, that's obvious what that is to someone who has been doing it for 15 years and knowing just when to shift to man-to-man or a cover three or whatever (troubleshooting, in other words) is obvious. I'm trying to cut down on variables here and be cautious because the stakes are so high. I don't think you're operating with much empathy here.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

or Doom 3 - which SUCKS ASS by the way

You're going to have a tough time convincing anybody of anything with phrases like that.

Jeff is biased against id because he decided he had to support either id or 3D Realms back in 1996 during the whole Duke Nukem - Quake thing. Now that 3D Realms has become a complete laughingstock most of us have moved on, but the torch of horror still burns bright for some of us.

[Guest]

(Oh, and Waldo is specifically wrong on one point - whether you get an AthXP or Ath64, you'll get the same memory - DDR400)

Well thats good to know.. I wasn't sure what the new boards did in the way of memory.. I assumed they had different memory.. stupid me!

ATI/nVidia? whats the scoop here folks? I used nVidia GeForce 2 cards at home and at work and they're pretty swell.. i'm no FPS hog, and i'm not up on the new cards, so whats the state of affairs these days?

[waldo]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

that was me.. damn forgot to login

[Jethro Q. Walrustitty]

Jonsey: You get so damn hung up on the past. As I recall, you wouldn't even touch Athlons for a long time because you had a bad experience with (you'll love this one, guys), an AMD 486 CPU.

Or something equally ridiculous. (OK, maybe one of the K6 Pentium clones for your brother.)

Point being: like I said, the nForce was not great. No one is debating that. The nForce2 is great, and clearly superior to the Via. It's also better for the average first-timer as all the drivers come in a single package. (Well, if you have SoundStorm - otherwise, audio is separate as it's not a standard part of the chipset.)

And, if you're talking Ath64 (which apparently we ended up with), then yeah, Via's probably the way to go at the moment. But their Athlon chipsets have long been full of headache-inducing issues. I know! I use one every day!

Re: Video. He was trying to get to a specific price point. An extra $80 for a 9800 is not worth it.
Now, were he shooting for a real game system, then the way to go would be an Athlon XP with a 9800, which'd easily beat a comparable-speed Athlon 64 with a 9600. But, the fact is, you went 30% over what he wanted to spend with your configuration. SOME FRIEND!

Re: Doom 3. I played it. I was fully prepared to say if it was any good. See my review over at groucho for details, but suffice to say, it's no good. It's a total paper tiger. Far Cry is far better, and from what I've seen of HalfLife 2 (in video and playing the beta), HL2 is going to blow Doom3 away.

Re: ATI/nVidia. Waldo, I have a GF4 Ti4200 in my system - but that's because there was a short window of time when they had the best card for the money. Nowadays, ATI is the way to go. nVidia's made almost as many mistakes as Intel has, with cards that run too hot, cards that are slower, cards that take two slots, cards that take two power connections and a 460w power supply, etc...

If all you play is OpenGL games (Quake-engined stuff), then nVidias are generally a little bit quicker. For pretty much everything else, ATI wins. ATI is also rewriting their OpenGL code now (which they admit they've neglected) to make up the difference in Doom 3 (which uses OpenGL.)

ATIs also have superior 2D quality and better scaling, so they're pretty much used exclusively in media PCs. My home theater PC uses an ATI 9600 Pro on an nForce2-chipset motherboard.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Jonsey: You get so damn hung up on the past. As I recall, you wouldn't even touch Athlons for a long time because you had a bad experience with (you'll love this one, guys), an AMD 486 CPU.

Or something equally ridiculous. (OK, maybe one of the K6 Pentium clones for your brother.)

Yes. That system was terrible. It DID NOT WORK out of the box... that also soured me on getting stuff from jncs.com for a while as well.

However, right after that time we were overclocking our Celerons from 300A to 464 and you weren't grabbing AMD systems either. I never avoided an XP system (argh, Christ -- an Athlon XP system) because of how crappy the K6 was.

Point being: like I said, the nForce was not great. No one is debating that. The nForce2 is great, and clearly superior to the Via.

... How is it "superior"? I just want to not notice the motherboard.

I'd be more than happy to try an nForce2 on the next system I make. I just didn't want it to be Debaser.

But, the fact is, you went 30% over what he wanted to spend with your configuration. SOME FRIEND!

Wait, I offered up a 64, XP and Intel system at various price points and then he picked one. I didn't tell him what to get, he decided for himself.

Re: Doom 3. I played it. I was fully prepared to say if it was any good. See my review over at groucho for details, but suffice to say, it's no good. It's a total paper tiger. Far Cry is far better, and from what I've seen of HalfLife 2 (in video and playing the beta), HL2 is going to blow Doom3 away.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sure you were real prepared.

Anyway, get a load of this: I'm finally with you in regards to warezing quality software. I tried to buy Doom 3 yesterday and EB WOULD NOT SELL it to me. Yesterday was for "pre-orders." Today they'd consider selling it to everyone else. Fuck this. When I can not legitimately buy software any more, yeah, I'm going to go ahead and pirate it.

[Jethro Q. Walrustitty]

Jonsey: You get so damn hung up on the past. As I recall, you wouldn't even touch Athlons for a long time because you had a bad experience with (you'll love this one, guys), an AMD 486 CPU.

Or something equally ridiculous. (OK, maybe one of the K6 Pentium clones for your brother.)

Yes. That system was terrible. It DID NOT WORK out of the box... that also soured me on getting stuff from jncs.com for a while as well.

See, that just makes no sense. Jerry was (and presumably is) a totally stand-up guy who would surely do whatever he could to make it right. Ya can't blame him for a bad component - if it were consistently bad, he wouldn't carry it any more (I remember several products he refused to carry because of too many complaints.)

However, right after that time we were overclocking our Celerons from 300A to 464 and you weren't grabbing AMD systems either. I never avoided an XP system (argh, Christ -- an Athlon XP system) because of how crappy the K6 was.

The 300a-to-450 on the BX motherboard was a great, affordable combination. After all these years, my wife is still using hers and it's still 100% reliable. However, once the Athlons came out, they were a better bargain. For some reason, I ended up with a Pentium 700 in my system (now running groucho.org), but apart from building one or two low-buck Celeron systems, that was the last Intel stuff I've touched - and I was extolling the virtues of AMD CPUs for quite a while before I actually got one for myself. (Kind of like I like ATI cards yet my main system still has nVidia.)

Point is, I specifically remember you refusing to touch the original Athlons (and possibly Via chipset mbs, too) because of the K6.

Point being: like I said, the nForce was not great. No one is debating that. The nForce2 is great, and clearly superior to the Via.

... How is it "superior"? I just want to not notice the motherboard.

Faster, easier from a user prospective (one driver), some features unavailable elsewhere.

Wait, I offered up a 64, XP and Intel system at various price points and then he picked one. I didn't tell him what to get, he decided for himself.

I'll have to assume that happened off the board - on here, except for early musings about 64 vs XP and someone else's Intel quote, it was all 64.

(re: Doom 3) Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sure you were real prepared.

Sure I was. I'd admit it if I enjoyed it. Heck, I went into Far Cry not sure about how I'd like it (and being grumpy about the save system) and the game absolutely blew me away.

Fact is, there was basically no fun. It's just a showcase for a 3D engine, and one that is apparently only suited for tunnelrunning, at that. The games media is kissing its butt and pretty much every review tells you that of course you should be going out and dropping at least $300 in system upgrades just to play this overwrought turkey. I don't think so!

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

See, that just makes no sense. Jerry was (and presumably is) a totally stand-up guy who would surely do whatever he could to make it right.

Yeah. Actually, I ordered lots of things from him later on, especially when I got the corporate card at NatSemi.

But my point is this: I was leaving for Colorado so I couldn't babysit my brother's computer and get it working correctly. I have even less opportunity to do so with Debaser. Gotta go with what works.

Point is, I specifically remember you refusing to touch the original Athlons (and possibly Via chipset mbs, too) because of the K6.

What did it cost me? You make it sound like I really missed the boat on something. It wasn't like I went and bought a Mac in the meantime. Intel was making perfectly good chips. Abit was making perfectly good motherboards during that time.

If you bought a crappy Nissan during that time you wouldn't keep going back to them for the hell of it, would you?

Faster, easier from a user prospective (one driver), some features unavailable elsewhere.

I'm going to have to see some significant differences when it comes to speed, especially when you're telling me that the highend XP and 3000 Athlon 64 run "the same" when in fact the Athlon 64 runs faster in everything in all the graphs I've seen. It better be pretty severe if I were to go break my vow against nForce.

Wait, I offered up a 64, XP and Intel system at various price points and then he picked one. I didn't tell him what to get, he decided for himself.

I'll have to assume that happened off the board - on here, except for early musings about 64 vs XP and someone else's Intel quote, it was all 64.

Fact is, there was basically no fun (in Doom 3).

Well, I repaired XP and installed a replacement motherboard (I'd say "new" motherboard, but I shocked the crap out of my previous one so it's really a replacement; i.e., I didn't upgrade for Doom I just had to repair) last night, which of course takes for fucking ever once you get all the patches and updates and shit. Doom's ready to go, so I'll see how much fun I'm not having. Everyone else who's opinion I value disagrees with you on this.