Thanks for the input again Wim,

Im going to bear that in mind about the RAM, the only reason i had added that much was because i had read somewhere else on the forums that you should get as much RAM as possible, obviously then, you can get too much..

Im kinda at square 1 again with which processor to go for, now Derivative has cast some doubt over the fx-57, haha..
But if the only reason not to buy one of these is that there is something bigger and better coming out soon, well, i can live with that as this is always going to be the way with computers..

Im going to se how this pans out for a few days, but i could really do with ordering something by next weekend..

ta

Maxtor arent that good. They used to be but...

As for hard drives its really mixed. Low capacity IDE drives to go for would be the Seagate barracudas and the Samsungs as they are generally quiet and operate fairly cool. High capacity IDE drives - Western Digital Caviar 500mb is really quiet and its fast for an IDE drive.

You will probably have heard of the Western Digital Raptors. They are SATA/RAID drives that are very fast but they run hot as hell and are noisy. I personally dislike them but in RAID-01 they are very fast. You just need 4 of them. And they are expensive.

For memory, I would buy Corsair or OCZ. Avoid the value crap and go for an XMS kit with a heatspreader. They arent a whole lot more expensive and you can get down and dirty with memory timings and overclock more reliably provided the people who built your PC didnt lock up the BIOS and prevent you from making changes to it (I hate OEM's that do that).

Powersupply? This is important. Only buy a power supply with a 70% or greater efficiency and from a *reputable* brand such as Enermax. The liberty is a good bet.

Processor? You broadly have 2 choices. Wait for Conroe or go with an AMD AM-2 board and processor. I would recommend a top of the line X2 if you are on a tight budget or an Opti and a massive overclock. Spend the rest on a decent cooling solution.

I regard the FX-57 as a waste of money if you plan on spending that much cash as you can get an equivilant conroe after July 23rd for that money and it will draw less power, run cooler and run faster. The conroe will also overclock insanely well. Much more so than an FX-57 if thats your cup of tea.

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What is more than likely is that you dont have a choice about the brand of components that go into a pre built PC and they will pick the cheapest ones they can get away with.

I would advise building it yourself. It will be cheaper and you will get the components you want but you will have to assemble it and it can be scary if you havent done it before.

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About AM-2.

You will have to bear with me for a second. One of the reasons why the Athlon 64 (K8) beats the living shit out out of the Northwood and Prescott Pentium 4s is that AMD integrated the memory controller onto the CPU. The pipeline on the A64 isnt that long either. This meant pending a branch prediction failure, A64s didnt need a fucking huge amount of Level 2 cache to fall back on. Memory access was obviously faster because it was part of the CPU.

The drawback is that any change to the memory controller would require a new motherboard and a new processor. This is what AM-2 is. And yes this does mean that the next time a new memory standard comes out, you wil lhave to junk your old AMD motherboard and CPU.

AM-2 is for all intents and purposes identical to the current socket 939 A64s except it has a new memory controller and supports DDR2 memory. Intel didnt have to rerelease all their CPUs again to support the new standard because they never put the mem controller onto the CPU in the first place.

Basically there will be little to no performance gain using an AM-2 board/CPU over a 939 board/CPU except for memory access. Its a small difference.

If you already have a 939 board (like me) its not worth upgrading. If you dont have a 939 board and want to go AMD you should get AM-2 as its a teeny bit faster, has better memory management and DDR2 memory is cheaper than DDR1 memory. AM-2 is also rumoured to have core multiplexing. AMD havent said anything on the issue but you may have heard rumours of 'reverse hyper threading'.

Basically, its supposed to multiplex both cores in a dual core CPU and use both cores for single threaded applications. Nobody know how this will work or how effective it will be (if it works at all) but its something to bear in mind and it costs nothing extra. This technology isnt built into existing socket 939 CPUs.

Finally. Conroe.

Conroe is Intel's bid to take the performance crown and its coming out on July 23rd. As a reaction to conroe, AMD consolidated their entire processor lineup and slashed prices on their dual cores up to 50%.

This means you will be able to get an AMD X2 3800+ for $169 on July 24th.

Regardless of whether you will buy Conroe or AM-2 - wait till July 24th before buying anything. When the prices go down, recheck and see what you can afford on your budget. You will be able to get a significantly better PC than you can right now for the same money.

Last edited by Derivative on Jul-02-2006 at 23:00

Derivative: The fact that Maxtor isn't good, where did you get this? I'm curious since I have never used anything else - I've had no reason since everything always went smoothly...


Shouldn't everyone be upgrading to an AM2 if they are planning to drop the Socket 939's completely? Seeing it goes so fast, one could get easily afraid of 'upgrading' his system on one particular day... Or I guess that's just the way it goes then?

For example, one could get the AMD FX62 X2 processor, XFX GeForce 7950GX2 512MB, 2GB PC8000 Crucial Ballistix for about €2400 right now - how much of that price would be left in 6 months?

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i would also recommend digital village music pc's. a uk company who made my pc. im not sure if i got the cheapest deal. but i am very happy with my pc. i got it turned on and everything worked so smoothly. i have never had a problem with it. check em out...

http://www.dv247.com/dvpc

and they were very helpful over the phone in telling me the facts etc..

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www.deresion.com

Thanks everyone and Derivative for the headache ... Seriously though, it is appreciated.

If i was to wait until the end of the month, i take it it would be a few more weeks before these new Intel core found their way into ready made shiny new towers? I really dont fancy tackling building one myself..
However, if the AMD prices are going to fall sharply, it may be worth the wait.

Im just getting a bit impatient now as ive been without a music pc for a few weeks already.

mm...what do you guys think about this setup:

cpu: Athlon 64 X2 4400+ DualCore 2.2GHz
mobo: DFI LanParty UT nF4 SLI-DR
ram: OCZ Enhanced Latency DDR PC3200 1024MB DualChan Platinum Revision 2
audio: M-Audio Audiophile 24/96
gpu: ATI ALL IN WONDER X600PRO 256MB PCI-E (not sure yet)
hd: Western Digital 250GB SATA-II 16MB 7200RPM WD2500KS
cooler: Zalman CNPS7700-Cu 120MM

(here in Israel it costs around 1000 pounds btw)

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quote:

Originally posted by Icone Derivative: The fact that Maxtor isn't good, where did you get this? I'm curious since I have never used anything else - I've had no reason since everything always went smoothly...

Oh its not that they are unreliable or anything. Its just that Seagate and WD just seem to leave Maxtor trailing a little bit in terms of operating temperatures, hard drive noise and speed.

Maxtor hasnt really released anything that can top a Seagate Barracuda for silent fast low capacity IDE. Or a WD Caviar 500gb silent, fast high capacity IDE drive. And Maxtor have nothing that tops the speed of a WD Raptor.

quote:

Shouldn't everyone be upgrading to an AM2 if they are planning to drop the Socket 939's completely? Seeing it goes so fast, one could get easily afraid of 'upgrading' his system on one particular day... Or I guess that's just the way it goes then? For example, one could get the AMD FX62 X2 processor, XFX GeForce 7950GX2 512MB, 2GB PC8000 Crucial Ballistix for about €2400 right now - how much of that price would be left in 6 months?

The only people upgrading to AM-2 will be people that dont have a socket 939 board. If you already have one its seriously not worth it because it offers almost no performance difference. If you have a socket 939 motherboard its not worth selling it to get an AM-2.

AMD's direct competitor to Conroe is K8-L and that isnt scheduled for release until spring 2007. In the meantime, AMD is going to slash prices to try and compete with Intel's shitty old Pentium D dual cores and take some of the sting away from Conroe.

Therefore it would be more prudent to stick with your socket 939 board until K8-L comes out. Or if you dont have one buy a budget AM-2 board now and bag a K8-L a year or 2 down the line.

Either way, dont buy an FX-57 or FX-62. They cost a crazy amount of money and the top end Conroes are all better. Its not even a competition.

If money is no object and you just want an absolute killer machine - get a conroe board and one of the top end conroes. If you have a couple thousand to spend I would still go with a conroe board.

If you are on a strict budget go with AMD AM-2 for this development cycle. You can get an X2 dual core real cheap pretty soon.

That may change when K8-L hits the market in 10 months time. But the conroes are about to ship and they are the best so far.

quote:

Originally posted by ronk mm...what do you guys think about this setup: cpu: Athlon 64 X2 4400+ DualCore 2.2GHz mobo: DFI LanParty UT nF4 SLI-DR ram: OCZ Enhanced Latency DDR PC3200 1024MB DualChan Platinum Revision 2 audio: M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 gpu: ATI ALL IN WONDER X600PRO 256MB PCI-E (not sure yet) hd: Western Digital 250GB SATA-II 16MB 7200RPM WD2500KS cooler: Zalman CNPS7700-Cu 120MM (here in Israel it costs around 1000 pounds btw)

The 24/96 is ok (you can get alot better) but the PC itself is a shit hot production rig. The board is good. The processor is good. The memory is good. Quiet HD. Cant think of anything else except to say get an enermax powersupply. They rock. Also make sure the case looks nice (drool SUGO SG-01) or you will be looking at a fugly box for the next few years ^__________^

quote:

Originally posted by Derivative If you are on a strict budget go with AMD AM-2 for this development cycle. You can get an X2 dual core real cheap pretty soon.

How about this mate, it seems to tick most of the boxes? http://www.cube247.co.uk/acatalog/EclipseST6.html

That is indeed a good PC. But you can get all of that alot cheaper if you build it yourself and buy your own case.

I can build a Shuttle PC with similar specs to that for less money. And Shuttle cases are expensive. If that PC came with a monitor it would be worth it. Because it doesnt, I have to say its way overpriced for what it is. It doesnt even have a soundcard so you will have to spend more.


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Also bear in mind the X2s cant compete with the FX-57. But they are a hell of a lot cheaper. They will be cheaper still come July 23rd. So hold out if you can.

I thought I was cashing in on Conroe's launch by sinking 300 quid into a new AMD A64 3200+ (single core) rig. That was about a month ago. Exactly 6 days after I received all the parts in the mail, AMD announced up to 50% price reductions on their entire processor line up on July 23rd

I suck at predicting the market. Now I am trying to find a way to get rid of my single core 3200+ and I am going to buy an X2 3800+ on July 24th.

Just looking at overclockers.co.uk you can get all of this:

AMD Athlon X2 4200 Retail / Asus A8N-SLi Premium / 2GB Geil PC3200 Dual Channel Kit - Bundle (BU-049-OK) [£485.10]

Zalman CNPS9500-AM2 Aero Flower (Socket AM2/939/754) CPU Cooler (HS-021-ZA) [£35.19]

Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (3.5g) (AC-000-AC) [£6.99]

Sony DRU-820A 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter - Retail (CD-052-SO) [£35.84]

Enermax Noisetaker 485W EG495AX-VE(G) SFMA ATX2.0 PSU (CA-007-EN) [£58.69]

Antec P180 Advanced Super Midi Tower Case - No PSU (Silver) (CA-039-AN) [£89.24]

Asus ATI Radeon EAX-X1600 XT SILExtreme NT/TVD 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-090-AS) [£105.69]

Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB 5000KS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-075-WD) [£171.49] ~(check out the silentpcreview.com review)


for £988.23

Spend the rest on some molex cables and you have a fairly good rig right there. Its 939 not AM-2 though but you should be able to get an AM-2 bundle for the same money. If you can, go for it.

This machine will overclock well. It will also be alot quieter. The hard drive is quieter, the CPU cooler is quieter. The graphics card has no moving parts and no fans so it is totally silent. The power supply is quality and has a quiet fan.

The hard drive gives you double the capacity. The graphics card is faster. The case looks fucking cool.

If a 250gb drive is enough for you, and you dont mind having a fugly case, you can save a hell lot of money. Over £100 which you can sink into a soundcard.

This doesnt even apply after the X2 price cuts. You can cut another £100 off the price on July 24th. At least.

With that money you can almost buy an E-MU 1212M. Bonus!

Last edited by Derivative on Jul-04-2006 at 17:17

ok mate, thanks for you advice in this thread..

Bearing in mind though i was using a Pentium p4, 3ghz HT, the X2 should be still able to eat that for breakfast?

And i could still upgrade sometime in the future, as long as i can work comfortably for now, i dont think i can get through a few more weeks without my music.