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

[Karlos]

I was considering OC'ing my Q9450, apparently it's stable on this board at 3.2GHz (from 2.66) with a beefed up cooler.

Then I read a few posts by people that had overclocked theirs for a few months only to discover it became unstable and remains so even at the stock speed.

Considering how much it cost, I think I'll give it a miss. My GTX came pre-overclocked by XFX, from a core speed of 576 to 640MHz, shader clocks up to 1363MHz and the memory speed to 2300MHz. That's fast enough for me considering my previous (PC) graphics card was a GeForce 4 MX...

[adolescent]

Why no Vista?  On a good machine it's a great OS.  In fact, Media Center alone is worth any trouble you might have.

[Karlos]

I have Vista 64-bit home premium on mine. I totally stripped all the services to the bone and turned off all the eye candy. Now it looks like Win2K I sort of know where I am with it.

I only use it for gaming though. For anything remotely serious, I run linux.

[adolescent]

Karlos wrote:
I only use it for gaming though. For anything remotely serious, I run linux.

Bah. Serious computing...  Where's the fun in that?

[adz]

Karlos wrote:

Then I read a few posts by people that had overclocked theirs for a few months only to discover it became unstable and remains so even at the stock speed.

My Q6600 ran at 3.2GHz for quite a while with no problems and my Xeon 3110 has been running at 4GHz+ for a bit. I just do it for the fun of it, in day to day use, you can't even tell the difference. BTW, the 280 is now running at 689/1483/1300, knocks over a F@H work unit in less than an hour and a half. I can't believe how fast this thing is :-o

[Karlos]

From what I read about it, apparently the GPU client that runs on the G200 series is also taking solvent interaction into account in the folding calculations. I don't think any other non CPU version does that. One to consider when comparing it to console folders

My Q6600 ran at 3.2GHz for quite a while with no problems and my Xeon 3110 has been running at 4GHz+ for a bit

Now wouldn't be a good time to have to replace any of it though :-(

[adz]

Karlos wrote:

...console folders

Console folders be damned! ;-)

[Karlos]

adz wrote:

Karlos wrote:

...console folders

Console folders be damned! ;-)

Now, now, any folder is a good folder. Just don't let them use their Cell (or whatever) optimised folding engine as a demonstration of how 1337 their hardware is. Any G200 core crushes it whilst doing significantly more complex calculations.

[motrucker]

AMD can be less $$$ and still powerful enough. But, right now Intel has for sheer power. (I'm still using AMD though)
Not sure about current mobo. The last one I bought was a BioStar - and I love it! It has jumpers to push every limit you can think of, and it was not expensive ($100 or so).
My last computer was built over a year and a half ago - so it's time again.
Video card wise - ATI and Nvidia are pretty close - except that ATI's drivers are MUCH better right now.
My last 2 windoze computers have been great! Both running XP.
As for prices - newegg is good, but check pricewatch.com for the best deals.
Good luck....
 

[redrumloa]

redrumloa wrote:

Update:
I got everything assembled last night and the computer would not turn on at all.
 :headwall:
Turns out, the brand new $200 power supply I bought is defective. I will be returning it today and finally be able to install WintendoXP 64bit and Ubuntu 64bit.

More :headwall: today. I was having major headaches getting this system set up. It was terribly unstable and finally started giving me BSOD's. I ended up running memory tests and 2 of the memory sticks failed the test, meaning another trip to CompUSA to exchange the bad RAM.

FINALLY I am up and humming. I picked up Dead Space and Fallout 3, gonna play some tonight. Tomorrow AmigaForever gets installed.

[nine3o]

@ Red

Nice system!  Yea I don't know why M$ windows is so sensitive to memory, I used to get BSOD's on XP and Vista64 bit regularly (but I would only run these OS's for games as I run OSX on my PC).  The only way I got rid of them is dumb down the memory (slower speed in BIOS).  In OSX I can over clock my Q6600 and the memory with zero issues...

[Piru]

@nine3o

Uh, if the memory is bad every OS will crash, including OS X.

Regarding overclocking: If your OC makes the system unstable "you're doing it wrong"(TM) and you should probably run your system at stock speed. Hint: You typically need to lower the FSB vs Memory ratio when raising the FSB (unless of course the rig supports insanely high memory clock and the memory chips are rated for the higher clock).

[Trev]

I think it's also often necessary to raise the memory voltage on consumer boards when populating more than two slots, regardless of whether or not you overclock. That's all dependent on the motherboard and memory being used, though.

[Piru]

@Trev

I think it's also often necessary to raise the memory voltage on consumer boards when populating more than two slots, regardless of whether or not you overclock.

I've never heard of that before, and I've worked on a lot of systems. Is this something that is only needed for DDR3 setups?

[nine3o]

Piru wrote:

Uh, if the memory is bad every OS will crash, including OS X.

Yes that is what I would expect, but for what ever reason if I leave all my bios settings to stock (not over clocking) it still BSOD's with an error reporting to the memory.

Running OSX (Hackintosh) never crashes nor does XP or Vista 64 crash when running in VMWare fusion in OSX.

Pire wrote:

Regarding overclocking: If your OC makes the system unstable "you're doing it wrong"(TM) and you should probably run your system at stock speed. Hint: You typically need to lower the FSB vs Memory ratio when raising the FSB (unless of course the rig supports insanely high memory clock and the memory chips are rated for the higher clock).

Thanks, I am aware of OC'ing machines, have been doing for years.

I just find windoze very unstable (on custom built machines) compared to other OS's.

[Atheist]

So Redrumloa,

How's she handling? Must be dreamy, having such a speed demon system!

Just ONE of your 4 cores is faster than my single core 2.26 GHz P4 with 400 MHz FSB.

I have 1 Gig of DDR1 ram.

And your video card is probably 15 times faster than my 128 MB Ti4600!

I know that it's waaaaayyyy to early to tell, but could you come back later with how long you think it would be comfortable using such a powerhouse?


I'm wondering if CPU power need is nearing a plateau yet?