DescentBB

It's time to build yet another computer for overpriveleged teenagers.


NOTE: Specification is several posts below.

Athlon 64 / Nforce 4 combo is the best.

Whip their a$$ seabass!! Get them an old 386 and tell them to be happy with it. "Back in my day we used 14k modems and walked uphill to school both ways in snow"

Zork on a TRS-80. Those were the days . . .

btw, I plan to get Athlon 64/Nforce 4 before long.

Should I go dual core yet? Or stick with single core?

Single for gaming, dual if you do lots of heavy multitasking. You won't see a difference in most gaming on the dual core, plus you can use the extra money on other components.

yes but newer engines support multi threading too.

nForce 4 Ultra

Avoid SLI. It's not the future.

Okay, we've heard from planet mobius.. now some advice from planet earth...

if you want to go the cheap (and sane) route i'd suggest an MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum, with a single-core processor.

I'm running that now on my gaming box ferno.

I'm having trouble sorting through the Athlon processors...What's the best bang for your buck in single-cores these days?

I'm looking @ 4000+ Athlon 64's and there's a San Diego and a Clawhammer, for example... And the San Diego is cheaper than the clawhammer by a few bucks...but looks like it has more features? What gives?

Clawhammer is the origonal Athlon 64 core, while San Diego is a die shrink to 90nm along with some memory controller tweeks and the addition of SSE3. Clawhammers are simply old stock that never got moved. Get a San Diego.

thanks!

Ok so here's the specification: Any final tweak suggestions before we pull the trigger? Does this system look like it will perform adequately for the next few years, maybe get the kid through college with a few upgrades?

MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum SLI Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard

AMD Athlon 64 4000+ San Diego 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor Model ADA4000BNBOX

OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200)

BFG Tech BFGR78256GTXOC Geforce 7800GTX 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card

Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6L300R0 300GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA133 Hard Drive

ViewSonic VP191B Black 19" 8ms (gray-to-gray) LCD Monitor

and a Fortron Source 500W Power Supply, of course.

WarAdvocat wrote:Ok so here's the specification: Any final tweak suggestions before we pull the trigger?

Sounds good to me but I still think the 386 option is your best bet. It will save you a load of money.

But really, doesn't that MB support SATA?

RC

I repeat: SLI will be more trouble than it's worth. It is NOT the future.

Ok Mobi. Can you elaborate? Is that motherboard utterly unsuitable, or is it fine but don't bother with buying a second graphics card for SLI?

As for the Hard Drive question from RC: That hard drive will come out and go back SATA in a year or so.

Yea, what's wrong with SLI? If you want to upgrade graphics, can't you just stick another card in there?

SLI is not a very effecitve upgrade path since most of the time when you would want to upgrade to SLI you could also just buy a single card for roughly the same price that would be faster then running two of your existing cards in SLI and would cause less problems. Think of it as a current ultra high end system, the only reason to use SLI is either if you are building a ultra high end system NOW, or you need to drive 4 monitors at once.

Reasons for not getting a motherboard that supports SLI: Zero, get the SLI chipset if you want it. Get the SLI mobo since it likey has the best support available currently. Just because you have a SLI board doesn't mean you have to use it.

Hate to break it to you Mobius, but Core Decision supports SLI.

so yes it's worth it.

Thanks fellas.

note to self: SLI is not an upgrade path.

Krom wrote:SLI is not a very effecitve upgrade path since most of the time when you would want to upgrade to SLI you could also just buy a single card for roughly the same price that would be faster then running two of your existing cards in SLI and would cause less problems.

Suppose you did get a single, fast card (say, 7800) in a SLI board. Later, couldn't you just add another card to upgrade? Eg, get another 7800 (which should be cheaper) rather than get a 8800 (or whatever the next one is called).

Let me be sure I have this right:

Historically prices on high-end cards don't drop much. "New" ti 4600 cards were still selling for $250.00+ for a long time after the release of the next gen GPU featuring cards at similar prices which were (either somewhat or much) faster in speed, with support for newer API features. Thus you COULD upgrade to another 7800 card for another 500 or so bucks, or you could buy ONE of the "latest" for $500.00 and probably do just fine without SLI and the attendant complications.

Sound accurate?

Should I devise a SLI configuration or just go w/ the single 7800?

Go with the single card config, by the time you are looking for more power it will probably be two or more generations down the road.

WA, the best bang for the buck goes to the 7800 GT right now. They've actually dropped in price. There was an ad at best buy this week for something like $350 (I tossed the ad already sorry.
they also had an ad for the GTX 7800 for $450 or so)

So, yes, the prices do drop...I'm thinking these two prices are to coincide with this week's release of a couple of high end gfx games, as well as the impending arrival of the holidays.

my 2 cents: buy one 7800GT right now, and watch the sales around December to see if you can pick another up for $300 or so.

Or you could go with something a little more sane like a 6600GT or 6800GT. Those are far cheaper and I doubt will be a bottleneck for some time. Besides, you can just hike the price up a little more on the cards to get some more cash out of them for your trouble.

when is planetmobius going online ????

go with the SLI/PCIe config mobo for a future upgrade path (second 7800 after holidays when prices drop)

heh... I PM'd Mobius for his reccomendation. Thus far no answer. He was probably just trolling again.

About the SLI issue: It has some pretty large drawbacks. A side from the quite valid points that Mobius brought up, I'd add a couple of highly relevant ones:

- Adding an extra card, like another 7800GTX, will add a significant amount of extra heat to the system. It's probably not a very good idea to do this, unless using pretty good (and rather noisy) cooling.

- The extra power of the second graphicscard will make the PSU run hotter and put a much larger strain on it. This can have several negative effects: More noise, higher likelyhood of failure and instability.

I guess my point is that SLI or crossfire are brute force methods of getting extra performance. Before going that route, one should be aware that these solutions are neither very elegant nor efficient.

Still, an SLI motherboard won't hurt. It's not like it isn't going to work with one card.

Mikael wrote:- Adding an extra card, like another 7800GTX, will add a significant amount of extra heat to the system. It's probably not a very good idea to do this, unless using pretty good (and rather noisy) cooling.

Can be well taken care of if you place your fans correctly, thereby optimizing airflow. OR you can go watercooling. Heat issue? what heat issue?

- The extra power of the second graphicscard will make the PSU run hotter and put a much larger strain on it. This can have several negative effects: More noise, higher likelyhood of failure and instability.

only true if you run a low wattage PSU.. which you really shouldn't be doing if you plan on using SLI.

I guess my point is that SLI or crossfire are brute force methods of getting extra performance. Before going that route, one should be aware that these solutions are neither very elegant nor efficient.

3dfx did this back in the day with their Voodoo2. and people ate it up in droves.

Ferno wrote:Can be well taken care of if you place your fans correctly, thereby optimizing airflow. OR you can go watercooling. Heat issue? what heat issue?

Ohh, I know a thing or two about this, having built quiet computers for quite some time. My point is that it isn't enough just putting the fans in the right places. You'll need a fair amount of RPMs on these fans too, especially with a high performance CPU in the system. I guess this if fine if you don't care about noise, though. I think I remember writing about this in my first post.

Ferno wrote:3dfx did this back in the day with their Voodoo2. and people ate it up in droves.

Yeah, but that was before top-end graphics cards were in the $500 range and dumped 100W in the case... The idea of SLI is becoming a less practical solution for every new bump in power consumption.

Mikael wrote:Yeah, but that was before top-end graphics cards were in the $500 range and dumped 100W in the case... The idea of SLI is becoming a less practical solution for every new bump in power consumption.

Yeah, but the thing is, people running these high end cards are going to be running atleast 450 - 500W power supplies to begin with. Power isn't going to be an issue for people with that kind of cash.

MD-2389 wrote:Yeah, but the thing is, people running these high end cards are going to be running atleast 450 - 500W power supplies to begin with. Power isn't going to be an issue for people with that kind of cash.

No, I didn't mean that the PSU would be much of a problem (if you have one good enough). It's the heat I'm talking about. I know perfectly well that you can get rid of the approximately 200W that two SLIed 7800GTX dumps in the case, though. What I am trying to say is that we're reaching the limits of what's practical, with heatink/fan combos becoming exeedingly large and noisy. It's just getting a little out of hand.

Ohh, and then add a 100W+ Pentium-D to a system like that...

wow, and u said you are building a computer for your kids.....that is a rather nice computer for kids...and how old are they???

The new SLI drivers will allow you to mix-n-match cards too, I believe.

Its all in how much money you want to spend, and how much speed you want, and if you want it done half-assed or not. If you're not worried about money, then go for the SLI, Just make sure you have a 600watt powersupply - and not an elcheapo version either. I also highly recommend an APC Battery Backup with AVR (Automatic Voltage Regulation) of 1000va or higher (I use the 1500, it costs 200 bux) so that your system is getting clean power which ultimately lengthens the lifespan of your system and provides for better stability (or at least, less likelyhood of instability due to bad power)


If money is a factor then know this - I can still play Half-Life2 with my GF4 Ti4200 64meg card and its smooth - in fact the only game I'm aware of that I can't play is Battlefield 2. So that 7800 is going to last you a long time regardless. (certainly long enough for them to get a job to pay for their own upgrades )


Also, I've had many bad experiences with MSI, you could probably say the same for any mb manufacturer, but Gigabyte, Abit and Asus (in that order b2w) seem to have less problems for me than MSI.

Mikael wrote:

MD-2389 wrote:Yeah, but the thing is, people running these high end cards are going to be running atleast 450 - 500W power supplies to begin with. Power isn't going to be an issue for people with that kind of cash.

No, I didn't mean that the PSU would be much of a problem (if you have one good enough). It's the heat I'm talking about. I know perfectly well that you can get rid of the approximately 200W that two SLIed 7800GTX dumps in the case, though. What I am trying to say is that we're reaching the limits of what's practical, with heatink/fan combos becoming exeedingly large and noisy. It's just getting a little out of hand.

Ohh, and then add a 100W+ Pentium-D to a system like that...

That actually all depends on how good your airflow is. If you're stuck with a cheap case, and a vid card that comes within inches of your hard drive(s), then yeah its definitely an issue. However, most of your good cases take that into consideration and have fan mounts or have the hard drive bays in another location. Like Ferno said, if you have your fans set right, the system will run just fine. We aren't at the limits for fan/heatsink combos yet, but we will reach that point in the near future.

MD-2389 wrote:That actually all depends on how good your airflow is. If you're stuck with a cheap case, and a vid card that comes within inches of your hard drive(s), then yeah its definitely an issue. However, most of your good cases take that into consideration and have fan mounts or have the hard drive bays in another location. Like Ferno said, if you have your fans set right, the system will run just fine.

As I said (I feel like I'm repeating myself now), I know that you can cool these components. It's just that it will produce quite a bit of noise, no matter how cunningly you place those fans. I just think this is something one should be aware of when looking at such high power systems.

MD-2389 wrote:We aren't at the limits for fan/heatsink combos yet, but we will reach that point in the near future.

Actually we are at the limit now. Even large heatsinks with fast running fans have a hard time cooling the dual core Pentium-D. Athlons/Opterons/Semprons don't really have these problems, though.

Also, you can be fairly certain that it will be a while before we get inefficient beasts like the current generation of Pentium 4/D CPUs again. Both AMD and Intel have publicly stated their commitment to more efficient solutions. The dreaded Prescott is getting ditched in the coming months, replaced by 65nm Cedar Mill, and the Netburst is thrown out the door completely in less than a year.

It seems the CPU companies are more aware of these problems than the general public, though.

The GPU chip designers have a bit of catching up to do. Current high end cards output stupid amounts of power and a look at the cooling solution of the coming 512MB 7800GTX indicates that we're approaching the limit here too.

Yeah, I agree with Anand from Anandtech: he guesses that Intel is probably just experimenting with NetBurst to see if they can manufacture a working 65-nm Pentium based on NetBurst.

Here's hoping that the G80 is architected from the ground up in order to be power-optimized, just like "Conroe" and any other microprocessor hereafter.