Quick question: Building a new PC, AMD or Intel?

[Piru]

@quarkx

If you look at any quad core, each core speed is (and I could be wrong) I think the highest speed is around 2.6-2.8. IIRC the fastest single core speed was 3.8- 4 Ghz.

Single C2Q core at 2.66 GHz runs circles around single core P4 CPU at 3.8 GHz.

And you have 4 such cores, running much cooler and with less power usage.

I stopped paying any real attention to the intel processors since the Dual core change over

That's exactly when intel crushed AMD.

[zylesea]

quarkx wrote:

If you look at any quad core, each core speed is (and I could be wrong) I think the highest speed is around 2.6-2.8. IIRC the fastest single core speed was 3.8- 4 Ghz. When you are running a multicore CPU, unless the software utilizes it, it will only run on one core.

I have a PIV maschine myself (no, I didn't chose it, it was provided me at work, *I* wanted an AMD back then), these PIVs have the worst performance/cycle you can think of. In fact I guess those PIVs were the worst fate silicon ever suffered. Intel did a dramatic turn and the Core architecture was really a huge step ahead. In the mid range AMD is still there, but Intel drives the market today more than ever.

[Methuselas]

redrumloa wrote:
I'm way behind on PC hardware, my mind is in about 2006 technology. Who is the leader atm in price/performance ratio right now? I don't do cutting edge, I like the most bang for the buck or slightly better.

AMD or Intel? Which CPU and MB do you recommend?
Video card suggestion under ~$250? Dual head prefered.
Hard drive?

Thanks.

You mean *ALL* those people in that alternate dimension you keep in your pocket, where you get all your Amiga products from don't have any PC sh!t you could get off them?? Pssh, what losers. That's disappointing, Red. You just lost some cool points!

EPIC FAIL!


 :lol: :roflmao:

*runs and hides*

[redrumloa]

redrumloa wrote:
I've placed my order. After being an AMD buyer for 10+ years, I have gone Intel. Here's what I got, feel free to critique.

ASUS P5Q3 Deluxe (Intel P45 Dual DDR3 2000, SATA 3Gb/s, RAID, CrossFireX Ready, PCI-E 2.0)
Intel Core 2 Quad 2.66GHz
Patriot Viper 4GB (2 x DIMM-PVS34G1333LLKN 2GB 240-Pin DDR3 Dual Channel)
CoolMax 700W ATX PSU (20+4 pin, Supports SATA, SLI and Cross-Fire)
1TB HD (Perpendicular Recording, SATA 3Gb/s NCQ, 7200 RPM, 32MB Cache, Model: ST31000340AS)
Diamond HD4870 (512MB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 Video Card.)

 :-o

Well, scratch this system completely. Directron botched the order process, for various reasons I didn't have the patience to hold their hand fixing it. I've bought all the components at CompUSA(Tiger Direct) locally. The system will be similar, but slightly better imo. I'll list the components here tomorrow.

[redrumloa]

Methuselas wrote:
You mean *ALL* those people in that alternate dimension you keep in your pocket, where you get all your Amiga products from don't have any PC sh!t you could get off them?? Pssh, what losers. That's disappointing, Red. You just lost some cool points!

EPIC FAIL!


 :lol: :roflmao:

*runs and hides*

Hey be careful! I'm bigger than you! :smack:

[Methuselas]

Well, scratch this system completely. Directron botched the order process, for various reasons I didn't have the patience to hold their hand fixing it. I've bought all the components at CompUSA(Tiger Direct) locally. The system will be similar, but slightly better imo. I'll list the components here tomorrow.

Next time you want something from Directron, Red, lemme know. I can just go down there, pick it up personally and mail it to you.

[Atheist]

wrote redrumloa:

ASUS P5Q3 Deluxe (Intel P45 Dual DDR3 2000, SATA 3Gb/s, RAID, CrossFireX Ready, PCI-E 2.0)
Intel Core 2 Quad 2.66GHz
Patriot Viper 4GB (2 x DIMM-PVS34G1333LLKN 2GB 240-Pin DDR3 Dual Channel)
CoolMax 700W ATX PSU (20+4 pin, Supports SATA, SLI and Cross-Fire)
1TB HD (Perpendicular Recording, SATA 3Gb/s NCQ, 7200 RPM, 32MB Cache, Model: ST31000340AS)
Diamond HD4870 (512MB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 Video Card.)

Hi redrumloa,

Okay, I see that you have made an alternate purchase, but I'd like to comment on your choice:

Since you have RAID, you may want to buy 2 drives (maybe 2 500GBs, or 750 GBs), and go in striped mode. Reading, writing, booting should all be faster. (Be aware, if one drive dies, you're screwed. I've been using striped for 6 years now, no problems. 2*40GBs.)

I am surprised that you went with the 4870, when it's so much more than an ATI 4850 which I believe to be the best bang for buck video card right now.

I really think that going Quad is the right thing to do, it's current, and there are low cost options for it now and SW is only going to take more and more advantage of that feature.

This you can probably use until it literally falls apart as I think computers MUST be just now plateauing in raw CPU power needs, at least for common desktop usage.


It's no Amiga (or NatAmi) but it'll do what you need it to.

[Darrin]

Hey Jim,

Do what I do which is to nip over to Tiger Direct and buy a really good refurbished desktop for a few hundred bucks then add another hard drive, extra RAM and a good graphics card.  You'll end up with a kick-ass brand name machine which wont cost the Earth.

Edit:  Ooops!  I'm a bit late.  :-D

[Darrin]

A nice machine for $600 if anyone is interested:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4087047&CatId=2628

"HP Pavilion Media Center m8457c Refurbished Desktop PC - AMD Phenom X4 9500 2.2GHz., 5GB DDR2, 640GB HD, DVDRW Lightscribe, NVIDIA GeForce 8400 HD, WiFi LAN, Vista Home Premium"

[Atheist]

Don't buy a used or 6 month old system you don't know the history of.

It seems like you might be spending about $1200, then expect this to last 8 years because it's very, very fast, so, that'd be $150 per year.

That seems reasonable for such a reliable system.

[Karlos]

Atheist wrote:
Hi Karlos,

But, you can get a 4850 for $189, and a GTX280 is a whopping $389, including a $30 mail in rebate. Is the GTX280 twice as fast as the 4850? I don't think it is. (I don't know.)

The 4870 is $269.99, including $20 rebate.

This is from newegg.com.

The cards might be even cheaper, if you look around.

My good friend GadgetMaster happens to have a very similarly specced system to myself, albeit with the HD4850 and X38 chipset (everything else pretty much identical).

It's true that you can't really notice the difference in most cases, though when you put Crysis on the highest detail settings, my GTX260 definately has the advantage over the HD4850. I should point out that it cost considerably less than the full blown GTX280 and was pre-overclocked by XFX.

I picked nVidia over ATI principally because I was interested in writing code using CUDA. Otherwise I might have gone for the HD4870.

[redrumloa]

Here it goes, final purchase:

EVGA nForce 790i Ultra SLI motherboard
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 (2.66Ghz, 8MB cache)
4GB Corsair DDR3 1333Mhz
GeForce GTX 260
Ultra X3 800 watt power supply

:banana:

And with that, the main PC is going offline to be gutted and updated.

/me crosses fingers

[smerf]

Hi,

@redrumloa,

The best place to even think about going is to:

www.tigerdirect.com

Here you can find good pricing on just about all types of PC's.

I am using a quad core Q6600 intel chip. These are a very fine game chip, I also have two nvidia 9600 cards running in the SLI mode. I am a very heavy gamer and find that this setup is great for all the latest games. ATI right now has the best video cards I believe the 4850 or 4870 or something like that. Somebody else on the board gave the right numbers. I would stay away from AMD for right now there chips have fallen way behind Intel for speed. If you must get an AMD chip go with the new Phenom. Anyhow take a good look at tigerdirect, they have a lot of specials on, and a lot of parts so that you can make your own computer. If you get a new computer go with at least 2 gig of memory, hard drives are open to your choice (I like SATA drives). Don't try to waste your money on more than 3 gigs of ram because windows will not recognize more than 3 gig. If you get a chance try Ubuntu with a dual boot with windows xp, my recommendation is don't even try VISTA it is the most aggrevating OS on the market, unless you like calling India on MS's toll free line and talking to some one from India to reactivate your computer, I gave up after the 9th time and stick with windows xp. Another nice feature of dual core and quad core is that you can try 64 bit systems. Windows is just about useless in the 64 bit mode, but I hear Ubuntu works quite well.

If you have any questions, please let me know, I will try to answer if I know. PC computing has come a long way, and is just about as much fun as the Amiga as long as you like using Ubuntu, Ubuntu is free, has a lot of stuff, and a lot of eye candy. It has just about every program that you can ever use, and if you like playing games, you can use either wine (not so good for PC games, but fun to see if you can get one running, I have half life and Castle wolfenstein running on wine) or you can join Cedega and get the use of about 75% of window games. You can also use e-uae the amiga emulator on Ubuntu, or get Amiga forever that will run on windows xp, runs really great on a quad core Q6600. One thing though get yourself one of the newer 3D graphics cards, don't go to cheap in this area, 3D graphics are the coolest.

smerf

[smerf]

Hi,

Here it goes, final purchase:

EVGA nForce 790i Ultra SLI motherboard
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 (2.66Ghz, 8MB cache)
4GB Corsair DDR3 1333Mhz
GeForce GTX 260
Ultra X3 800 watt power supply

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Excellent choice, I would have gotten the ATI card though, although th GTX 260 is a good choice, but slower than the new ATI cards.

You should be very happy with this choice. Remember try Ubuntu 8.04, with a dual boot with windows xp. I use Ubuntu for stuff that I want to keep, and use windows for gaming only. By the way Ubuntu also has a nice server package. Take  a look, it is free, it is cheap, it works great, it is easy and fast to load, easy to add applications on, and did I mention that it is free. It is even cheaper than windows, and works better, I have been using it for 3 years now, and have not lost any data, it has never crashed, and it is free. You can even put it on as many computers as you want without breaking any EULA's. and it is still free.

smerf

Remember Ubuntu is free

smerf

[amiga_3k]

Can't see any reason why not to use ECS. Over the past 8 years I've build a couple of ECS based systems, all at the low end of the market (read: cheapest AMD-motherboard without onboard video available) and all five are still up and running without trouble. I've read about ECS troubles but most came down due to trying to run the boards beyond specification speeds (extreem overclocking). You can't really fault ECS on that, afterall, if you want Ferrari performance you won't buy a Fiat Punto and try to stretch its performance to match the Ferrari's.

Just for the fun, you could build your PC and can proudly tell it has ECS and AAA. ECS for the mainboard, AAA being AMD, ATi and Antec.

 

[stefcep2]

Smerf have you tried mandriva?  I did a lot of distro hopping including  Ubuntu but Mandriva is the only one that i would recommend to windows user wanting to migrate to linux.  The KDE gui is very windows-like, its hardware detection works very well, it installs rpms that aren't in the repos just by double-clicking out of the box.  Lots of Linux disro's claim to "Just Work" but Only Mandriva did for me.  PCLinuxOS is also nice but I don't like its "meta-distro" business because you are ALWAYS updating your system and not all updates work with one another.