Building Budget System... 1 question

TOR_LordRaven · Post by **TOR_LordRaven** » Fri Feb 13, 2009 9:48 am

I am building a Budgest system out of spare parts, but of course - I want to get the best product out of spending the least amount of money.

Important to note, this will *not* be my primary system. It will be a spare machine that will be used as an extra computer for LAN Parties or when friends drop by the house and want to play for a while.

Anywhoo, here is the hardware I currently have:

CPU = P4 SingleCore (Northwood) @ 3.4ghz
RAM = 4GB PC-3200 DDR
Mobo = Older Model, only supports AGP.

There are still some good AGP Video Cards out there, but its still just an AGP Slot. The CPU seems to be super quick considering its a singlecore.

The Cheapest AGP Video Card that will work best in this sytem is about $100. A GeForce 7600GT 256mb. The Fastest AGP Card is about $200, ATI 3850 512mb(And from the reviews, can still compete pretty well against a GeForce 8800 GT PCIe). But still, its just AGP and even with that expensive card, thats pretty much as good as its ever going to get, so no upgrade room.

I can pickup a PCIe MoBo to support this CPU for about $75.

I am also planning on upgrading the video card in my Primary system (going from GeForce 7900GT 256mb to GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512mb )and can pass the 7900gt down to this system. However, the only boards I can find are DDR2 MoBos, so the 4GB of RAM I have may be useless and I may have to buy new Ram.

my is question: Will a DDR2 MoBo be backwards compatable with DDR(1) Memory? Never really tried it out or researched it. Either way, I was planning on upgrading my Primary computer anyway, so the money spent on the video card for that system will not impact the funds used for this spare.

1st Config:
PRO: I already have the MoBo and RAM, Cheaper Build
CON: AGP Bus, less upgradeable - but won't be used as much anyway
Spending: $100 (For AGP Video Card)

2nd Config:
PRO: Upgradeable!
CON: Will have to order additional parts (MoBo/RAM), Costs more
Spending: $150 ($75 for MoBo, $75 for DDR2 Memory)

I am leaning towards the 2nd Config - what about you guys.

AlphaDoG · Post by **AlphaDoG** » Fri Feb 13, 2009 10:00 am

A DDR2 motherboard will NOT accept DDR memory, if I'm correct the DDR2 memory has more pins.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Fri Feb 13, 2009 10:00 am

Try $40-45 for the DDR2 memory (and that's for 4 GB).

DDR1 is 184 pins, DDR2 is 240 pins.

TOR_LordRaven · Post by **TOR_LordRaven** » Fri Feb 13, 2009 10:04 am

Gotcha - yeah the price was an over-estimate. Should include shipping and stuff like that.

Im thinking I am going to go ahead and build the system with a new MoBo. Should be pretty stout - at least the \"weakest\" part of the system will be the CPU, which in itself is pretty fast still.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Fri Feb 13, 2009 10:17 am

Honestly I wouldn't even bother with a Northwood, just grab a LGA775 mobo and slap a Core 2 in it. It wouldn't take much to leave the Northwood in the dust, and a decent motherboard would accept massively faster multi-core CPUs.

TOR_LordRaven · Post by **TOR_LordRaven** » Fri Feb 13, 2009 10:31 am

Yeah - but then again, I don't want to spend more than $200 on this system in total.

The CPU I have should still be able to play most of the new games out there. Sure - not as fast as a Multi-Core system, but its still pretty quick considering I won't have to pay anything extra for it.

Admiral LSD · Post by **Admiral LSD** » Fri Feb 13, 2009 5:03 pm

I went through this a while back with my old Athlon XP system. All the halfway decent AGP upgrade options were significantly more expensive than their PCIe counterparts and just weren't worth it for a system that old. Your system is a prime candidate for such an AGP upgrade though: a higher-end last-gen AGP system that only really requires a graphics upgrade. The problem though is you'd be paying well over USD$100 for a card that'd get beaten by USD$80 PCIe cards not to mention has driver support that's patchy at best since ATi in particular never officially supported running their higher-end chips on anything other than PCIe. Long term, it'll be far easier to just junk it and move on as others have suggested. That's what I ended up doing.

AceCombat · Post by **AceCombat** » Fri Feb 13, 2009 7:19 pm

the AGP Card that i still use till i get enough saved up to build my newer system is a eVGA 7800GS.

does that northwood CPU support HT? if not, grab one of those Prescott 3.0GHz from newegg that have HT! while your losing 400MHz clock speed, the HT makes up for it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819116027

the only Skt 478 board left is a POFS BioStar, it has PCIe and DDR2 RAM. but tooo many negative reviews are coming in for this board. if you wanna try getting one, here it is:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813138079

Canuck · Post by **Canuck** » Sat Feb 14, 2009 7:11 am

Don't spend a dime on 400 MHZ bus, you'll love dual core and the faster bus speeds.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Sat Feb 14, 2009 9:35 am

Don't spend a dime on a Prescott, hyperthreading does NOT make up for 400 MHz (it actually makes things slower half the time). Even if you were planning on getting a new CPU, a $120 Core 2 Duo @ 2.8 GHz will significantly outperform a P4 at 3-3.4 GHz and require less power/cooling.

AceCombat · Post by **AceCombat** » Sat Feb 14, 2009 6:18 pm

i beg to differ, i have two identical machines one has a non HT CPU and the other has a slower clock with HT and the HT based CPU outperforms the faster clock CPU.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Sat Feb 14, 2009 7:02 pm

Perhaps in general day to day windows use, but when you get straight down to raw crunching in the average application the clock speed wins in the end. HT just feels faster most of the time because the Windows scheduler is far from perfect and HT helps to keep the processor working more rather than waiting.

But for running single threaded tasks (like the vast majority of older software), HT can and often does actually harm performance rather than improving it.

TOR_LordRaven · Post by **TOR_LordRaven** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 7:09 am

P4 @ 3.4GHZ - Northwoood (Single) Core - 800mhz FSB w/ HyperThreading.

What I think I am going to do.. is build a Personal Server out of this CPU - and just buy a new MoBo and RAM for my new build to support PCIe.

The MoBo for the P4 has on-board video, which is all you really need for a personal server.

Worst Case, I have an old GeForce3 AGP I can put in there, but don't really see a need for that except to free up some of the system memory.

I will be building my spare machine out of a new MoBo and CPU - possibly a DualCore Athlon - nothing expensive.

Can get an Athlon X2 5000+ with MoBo for about $150.

AceCombat · Post by **AceCombat** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 9:04 am

when did Northwood's have HT? im just asking because ive never heard of a Northwood with HT?

Admiral LSD · Post by **Admiral LSD** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 11:19 am

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_In ... 30_nm.29_2

AceCombat · Post by **AceCombat** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 11:44 am

did not know that, TY LSD

Admiral LSD · Post by **Admiral LSD** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 1:46 pm

Wait, didn't you have a 3.06GHz HT P4? You honestly never knew it was a Northwood? :wtf:

AceCombat · Post by **AceCombat** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 6:31 am

i didnt know it was a northwood, no

i didnt have CPUID either to tell me.

either way i dont have it anymore, now im running a Gallatin 3.4GHz Extreme Edition