Finally Upgrading - must I really reinstall XP

Coriolanus · 08-26-2007, 01:53 AM

Ok I have finally decided to bite the bullet but I am in tears over it as it seems like so much work for so little.

Anyway just in case anyone has any thoughts -- here is my potential upgrade.

2.40 gigahertz Intel Pentium 4
Board: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. P4P8X Rev 1.xx
2GB Kingston Memory on Board
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 [Display adapter] – AGP – 256MB Memory
Adaptec AHA-2940U/2940UW/2940D PCI SCSI Controller
16X SCSI CD ROM DRIVE
Realtek RTL8139/810x Family Fast Ethernet NIC #3
4 IDE/ATA Hard Drives
Inkjet Printer on LPT1
SB PCI Sound Card – VERY VERY OLD.
USB HUB – have a Liteon DVD witers on the Hub and a Scanner.
500 Watt Power Supply

UPGRADES I AM BUYING

MB= ASUS P5KV
Intel Pentium 4 LGA 775 Prescott 3.2Ghz (Not dual core)
Or Intel Penium D 940 Presler 3.2ghz 775 (Dual Core)
2 GB Memory
Video :ASUS EN8600GT/2DHT/256M GeForce 8600GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16
SoundBlaster PCI Audigy.
2 Western Digital Sata Drives.

Hopefully I can use the NIC card on the motherboard for my Broadband.

I has been my experience that neither onboard video or onboard audio work with Games – esp. MMO.

I currently play EQ1, EQ2, and Vanguard ( but performance sucks). and am beta testing another game.

But my real problem is that I DON'T WANT TO REINSTALL XP.

I had this method cited as one that will work to avoid a reinstall of XP -- any comments on it:
READ THIS

Fozzik · 08-26-2007, 07:17 AM

What's your budget for this upgrade? I wouldn't get either one of those processors that you listed even if they were the last CPUs on earth.

I'd look at this CPU instead -
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115030

It will run cooler, provide better performance (much better), and just generally be much less crappy than the Pentium 4/D. Intel has moved to an architecture that is actually worth a damn... no reason to buy their old stuff from back when AMD was kicking their butt.

The motherboard you picked isn't bad... but there's really no reason to pay extra for onboard video that you aren't going to use. You can save some money getting a P35 chipset board, which is the latest from Intel and should provide for decent upgrades. Also, the motherboard you picked doesn't have a parallel port (IEEE 1284) for your printer. Check out this one instead-
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128059

There are plenty of other P35 boards, if you definitely want to get two physical PCI-Express X16 slots. Also, you could check out one of the many great boards with the Nvidia 650i chipset.

If you are going to get a soundcard, get an X-Fi.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16829102006
Be careful though, the cheaper versions of the X-Fi are not really the same processor and will NOT give you the benefits. The ExtremeGamer is as low as it goes, I believe, where you still get the full horsepower.

If you don't have the money for the X-Fi, just use onboard audio for the time being and upgrade when you can. Onboard should work ok... you'll lose a bit of performance in games like Vanguard, but buying an old soundcard like an Audigy is just shooting yourself in the foot. The processing power of an X-Fi is so far beyond anything the Audigy lineup could do...it's just not worth spending money on older tech.

Why two hard drives? Were you thinking about RAID?

I would take a close look at your Case and power supply, also. Even though a 500W power supply should be ok, if it's a generic brand, it may be unstable or provide bad power with newer components drawing so much juice. You really do not want to end up in a situation where a cheap power supply dies and takes all your new components with it (it can happen). If you aren't sure of the power supply, there are plenty of fairly low-cost models out there that will be very stable and even provide for future upgrades.

As far as the case goes, you want to make sure you have adequate cooling for the new components. You should be able to set it up with decent airflow (in the front and out the back) without relying on the power supply as part of the case's cooling (the power supply does not count as a case output

). You should have room to get cables and other obstructions out of the airflow as much as possible, and hopefully you've got the case somewhere where it fits and there's airspace on all sides.

As far as the video card...
I don't know how tight your budget is, but if you can possibly get yourself into an 8800GTS 320MB, it would be a very very good thing. Although the 8600GT is ok, the difference in performance between it and its bigger brothers is MASSIVE. I would honestly say that a last-generation card like the 7900GS would probably be a better buy than the 8600GT, because it performs better and the lack of DX10 support really doesn't matter at these price points. The way games are performing right now under DX10, there is really no hope of an 8600 card having the horsepower to run them...so the DX10 support is really wasted.

If you absolutely can't spend any more money, go with the 7900GS (my own opinion, others will argue I'm sure) and save up for getting a DX10 card next year sometime. DX10 is really just something tacked on to games right now... it performs very badly compared to DX9 and really doesn't provide much in the way of visual benefits (at least not that I've been able to see). If you have some extra cash, or can eat hot dogs and Mac cheese for a couple weeks, it would DEFINITELY be good to move up to the 8800GTS 320MB.

Onboard NIC should work great. I never buy NIC cards anymore unless I'm doing something special.

I hate to say it, but I think trying to move an existing Windows install to a new machine is just a really bad idea. Is it possible? Yeah, probably. But the trouble you can have, and the time you'll spend doing it, really make it worse in a lot of ways than just taking a bit of time and installing fresh. It is possible to really hose things up and end up with problems for as long as you own the computer...so I wouldn't recommend it at all. You're going to need new drivers anyway, and Windows always runs best and most stable when it is freshly installed. Do yourself a favor and take the time to back up your data and start fresh.

Coriolanus · 08-26-2007, 01:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fozzik

What's your budget for this upgrade? I wouldn't get either one of those processors that you listed even if they were the last CPUs on earth.

I'd look at this CPU instead -
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115030

It will run cooler, provide better performance (much better), and just generally be much less crappy than the Pentium 4/D. Intel has moved to an architecture that is actually worth a damn... no reason to buy their old stuff from back when AMD was kicking their butt.

The motherboard you picked isn't bad... but there's really no reason to pay extra for onboard video that you aren't going to use. You can save some money getting a P35 chipset board, which is the latest from Intel and should provide for decent upgrades. Also, the motherboard you picked doesn't have a parallel port (IEEE 1284) for your printer. Check out this one instead-
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128059

There are plenty of other P35 boards, if you definitely want to get two physical PCI-Express X16 slots. Also, you could check out one of the many great boards with the Nvidia 650i chipset.

If you are going to get a soundcard, get an X-Fi.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16829102006
Be careful though, the cheaper versions of the X-Fi are not really the same processor and will NOT give you the benefits. The ExtremeGamer is as low as it goes, I believe, where you still get the full horsepower.

If you don't have the money for the X-Fi, just use onboard audio for the time being and upgrade when you can. Onboard should work ok... you'll lose a bit of performance in games like Vanguard, but buying an old soundcard like an Audigy is just shooting yourself in the foot. The processing power of an X-Fi is so far beyond anything the Audigy lineup could do...it's just not worth spending money on older tech.

Why two hard drives? Were you thinking about RAID?

I would take a close look at your Case and power supply, also. Even though a 500W power supply should be ok, if it's a generic brand, it may be unstable or provide bad power with newer components drawing so much juice. You really do not want to end up in a situation where a cheap power supply dies and takes all your new components with it (it can happen). If you aren't sure of the power supply, there are plenty of fairly low-cost models out there that will be very stable and even provide for future upgrades.

As far as the case goes, you want to make sure you have adequate cooling for the new components. You should be able to set it up with decent airflow (in the front and out the back) without relying on the power supply as part of the case's cooling (the power supply does not count as a case output

). You should have room to get cables and other obstructions out of the airflow as much as possible, and hopefully you've got the case somewhere where it fits and there's airspace on all sides.

As far as the video card...
I don't know how tight your budget is, but if you can possibly get yourself into an 8800GTS 320MB, it would be a very very good thing. Although the 8600GT is ok, the difference in performance between it and its bigger brothers is MASSIVE. I would honestly say that a last-generation card like the 7900GS would probably be a better buy than the 8600GT, because it performs better and the lack of DX10 support really doesn't matter at these price points. The way games are performing right now under DX10, there is really no hope of an 8600 card having the horsepower to run them...so the DX10 support is really wasted.

If you absolutely can't spend any more money, go with the 7900GS (my own opinion, others will argue I'm sure) and save up for getting a DX10 card next year sometime. DX10 is really just something tacked on to games right now... it performs very badly compared to DX9 and really doesn't provide much in the way of visual benefits (at least not that I've been able to see). If you have some extra cash, or can eat hot dogs and Mac cheese for a couple weeks, it would DEFINITELY be good to move up to the 8800GTS 320MB.

Onboard NIC should work great. I never buy NIC cards anymore unless I'm doing something special.

I hate to say it, but I think trying to move an existing Windows install to a new machine is just a really bad idea. Is it possible? Yeah, probably. But the trouble you can have, and the time you'll spend doing it, really make it worse in a lot of ways than just taking a bit of time and installing fresh. It is possible to really hose things up and end up with problems for as long as you own the computer...so I wouldn't recommend it at all. You're going to need new drivers anyway, and Windows always runs best and most stable when it is freshly installed. Do yourself a favor and take the time to back up your data and start fresh.

As for the case I have an ANTEC server case with an ANTEC 500W power supply. I have also added additional fans to the case.

I selected an ASUS board as I like their support and have always had good luck with ASUS board quality. Another choice would be the P5B which does have a COM port. I really don’t like all the crap they put on their boards which I will never use. But I did check and Gigabyte seems to bre a reliable manufacturer of MB's. SO will take your advice on that one. How are their graphic cards?

I really don’t like PNY as I understand they have very poor tech support and quality. I have considered these other boards: ASUS EN7600 GS http://www.newegg.com/product/produc...82E16814121007

The ASUS EN8600GT http://www.newegg.com/product/produc...82E16814121068

Or the ASUS EN8500 GT
http://www.newegg.com/product/produc...82E16814121072
I usually buy ASUS again for quality and support.

Sound cards – Will definitely only buy an Audigy. I hate sound cards. I think PC sound sucks and I don’t use my PC for great sound. I have a CD and a DVD player for Great sound and visuals. I only play classical music so the sound on my PC is irrelevant to me. The Music in games is hardly comparable to a Verdi Opera or a Beethoven symphony, so the cheaper the sound card the better I like it.

As for the hard drives – I have 4 IDE hard drives now – will keep two of them and replace two with SATA drives as the Motherboards only seem to support 2 IDE drives.

My thoughts on the CPU are that games really do not have dual core support so is the dual core expense worth it at this time? I thought a faster single core CPU might be better.

Since I am no really too old ( will be 72 in June) I no longer can do these hardware upgrades myself. I have always found them difficult in a PC as the space is so tiny. I am really used to working on big mainframes with huge spaces. So I have to pay someone to do the hardware installs but I will stand over them them.

It looks like I will have to spend about $700 on the upgrade but I sure would like to do it as cheaply as possible. I am retired and on a pension so this is something I will have to pay for over several months. I do plan on buying everything from NEWEGG. Having to replace the memory really hurts as that really costs – I currently have 2G of ram installed – would 3G be better?

Again thanks for your supply -- will definitely research the MB. Look forward to your answer.

rhagz · 08-26-2007, 01:14 PM

Gigabyte is definitely a brand worth considering.

Dual core isn't always faster thansingle core, but the Conroe Core 2 Duo chips are faster on a single core at lower frequencies than an old P4. It's not always about speed but about effiecency and how well the CPU uses the clock cycles.

If you are paying for a sound card you should get an X-Fi, otherwise don't bother. The new Realtek onboard sound is high quality, comparable to a low-mid range Creative card.

Reinstalling XP is probably going to be necessary. It's not that painful really, just downloading updates sucks. If you are getting a DX10 card though, you may consider going to Vista at some point instead.

Coriolanus · 08-26-2007, 01:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rhagz

Gigabyte is definitely a brand worth considering.

Dual core isn't always faster thansingle core, but the Conroe Core 2 Duo chips are faster on a single core at lower frequencies than an old P4. It's not always about speed but about effiecency and how well the CPU uses the clock cycles.

If you are paying for a sound card you should get an X-Fi, otherwise don't bother. The new Realtek onboard sound is high quality, comparable to a low-mid range Creative card.

Reinstalling XP is probably going to be necessary. It's not that painful really, just downloading updates sucks. If you are getting a DX10 card though, you may consider going to Vista at some point instead.

Actually I am happy with my old SoundBlaster PCI and the only reason I want to upgrade is for the audio-in slots as I want to transfer some audio cassetes to CDs. But the X-FI seems pointless for me and why I use an audio card. I really don't care about the sound it produces -- just so long as it produces sound. My SB PCI cards sounds fine to me and I am happy with it.

VISTA has too many bugs -- its a long way off for me. So I am not interested in a DX10 card at this time as the games I play don't require it. Do you have any thoughts on a none DX10 video card?

I would pay any amount of money in the world to avoid a re-install of XP and all the other products I have on the system.

Fozzik · 08-26-2007, 02:57 PM

Sadly, there's no amount of money you can pay that will straighten out a Windows registry... it's one of those things.

Hosed drivers and registry entries are pretty much like hunting for a microbe in 200 haystacks. It's just best to reinstall. Like I said, it may seem like a lot of work, but if you are going to be doing a complex process to remove drivers and hardware-specific info in order to move the current install, you're probably going to end up spending just as much time...but you'll be carrying over the bloat and issues and creating potential problems.

Buying an X-Fi really isn't something I recommend because of sound quality. Sure, they supposedly sound great... but that's really the last thing on my mind when I say you should buy an X-Fi. The complex audio in games that are out now and that are coming really need the support of the latest audio hardware. Whether we like it or not, almost all games are coded for the Creative Labs' cards. But even that isn't the most important reason.

It's all about performance. With more and more complex audio operations being calculated constantly in games, you really need some serious horsepower. Granted, modern onboard chipsets are quite good, but they utilize the CPU to do all the fancy processing...and that means less processor time for other tasks that need to be done. Typically the difference between running an X-Fi and ANYTHING else (onboard, Audigy, etc) in a game like Vanguard is something like 5-10%. In other words, the choice to get an X-Fi should be about adding (or getting back) about 10% performance to/for your gaming.

The reason why both rhagz and I mention getting an X-Fi is that getting an Audigy serves basically no purpose at all. The performance drop you see will be pretty much the same with an Audigy as it would be with onboard sound... so you're paying for the Audigy and getting nothing in the way of performance. Since you mentioned not really caring about sound quality, the only reason to get a soundcard would be the performance boost, and the only soundcard that will provide that boost in current and future games is the X-Fi. Sadly, Windows Vista doesn't directly support hardware-accelerated audio anymore...but Creative is finding ways to work around that. As long as you're on XP though, don't worry about that.

The X-Fi is literally hundreds of times more powerful in terms of processing power than any previous sound chip... its potential is only just starting to be tapped. It's probably worth it. If the budget is tight right now, definitely stick with onboard and just keep in the back of your mind that you can get a bit of additional performance from an X-Fi if you have some money down the road.

Asus is a great company, and they do often make solid products. I would definitely recommend Asus motherboards most of the time...but it depends on the particular product. As I mentioned in my above post, there are certainly other motherboards with the P35, the P965, or the Nvidia 650i chipsets that would all be in your price range and would be good boards (including several from Asus). As to their video cards... not so much. Asus video cards tend to be overpriced and really don't seem to offer the features or tweaks that other companies do (although there are exceptions to every rule, see below).

Like I mentioned, you're very best bet for solid performance in games like Vanguard or titles coming out late this year... 8800GTS 320MB. It's quite a bit more money...but very much worth it in terms of performance.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130038

If that's definitely not going to work for you, here's a couple others to look at (since you didn't want the PNY).
BFG is a good company and offers a lifetime warranty (like most manufacturers). I've got one of their cards in my machine right now -
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814143070

XFX is also fairly solid as far as I know... very good double-lifetime warranty -
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150174
Both offer mail-in rebates.

As an alternative, the X1950GT performs much better than the 7900GS cards in many cases, and is pretty easy on the wallet as well -
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102034

And a faster version of the same... the X1950 PRO -
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121031

Why do you feel the need to run multiple hard drives? Is it just a matter of enough storage space, or organization? You could always just get one or two big drives and partition them into as many smaller drives as you wanted.

2GB of RAM is just fine... I'm pretty sure your current RAM is DDR, though. You're going to need DDR2 (as you probably already saw).

evilsofa · 08-26-2007, 03:25 PM

GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L $95 (the one Fozzik linked, and Gigabyte is one of the biggest names in motherboards)
Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 $179 (gaming does indeed utitlize dual core - it's quite easy to split off tasks to another core)
G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2-800 RAM $85 (RAM is really, really cheap right now)
eVGA 8800GTS 320MB $270 (if you have any doubts about eVGA quality, consider their lifetime warranty versus ASUS's 1 year warranty. This is twice as fast as an 8600GTS, which in turn is a notch faster than the 8600GT. There's no point in getting a non-DX10 card because nVidia's product line covers the whole performance and price range.)

Total: $629

Give up on not re-installing windows - it's going to be a mess if you don't. If you need to buy Win XP, it's only $89 here and includes SP2 which takes a lot of pain out of the reinstall process. If you have a legit copy of WinXP without SP2, you can create a WinXP CD with SP2 included following the instructions here (and other descriptions of the process are here and here).

evilsofa · 08-26-2007, 03:45 PM

Just found this in the On Sale sticky link:

https://shop4.outpost.com/product/5020015#rebate

Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer for only $50 after the rebate which lasts until August 28, so snap it up quick. Thanks, Okiwan!

Coriolanus · 08-27-2007, 01:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fozzik

Sadly, there's no amount of money you can pay that will straighten out a Windows registry... it's one of those things.

Hosed drivers and registry entries are pretty much like hunting for a microbe in 200 haystacks. It's just best to reinstall. Like I said, it may seem like a lot of work, but if you are going to be doing a complex process to remove drivers and hardware-specific info in order to move the current install, you're probably going to end up spending just as much time...but you'll be carrying over the bloat and issues and creating potential problems.

Buying an X-Fi really isn't something I recommend because of sound quality. Sure, they supposedly sound great... but that's really the last thing on my mind when I say you should buy an X-Fi. The complex audio in games that are out now and that are coming really need the support of the latest audio hardware. Whether we like it or not, almost all games are coded for the Creative Labs' cards. But even that isn't the most important reason.

It's all about performance. With more and more complex audio operations being calculated constantly in games, you really need some serious horsepower. Granted, modern onboard chipsets are quite good, but they utilize the CPU to do all the fancy processing...and that means less processor time for other tasks that need to be done. Typically the difference between running an X-Fi and ANYTHING else (onboard, Audigy, etc) in a game like Vanguard is something like 5-10%. In other words, the choice to get an X-Fi should be about adding (or getting back) about 10% performance to/for your gaming.

The reason why both rhagz and I mention getting an X-Fi is that getting an Audigy serves basically no purpose at all. The performance drop you see will be pretty much the same with an Audigy as it would be with onboard sound... so you're paying for the Audigy and getting nothing in the way of performance. Since you mentioned not really caring about sound quality, the only reason to get a soundcard would be the performance boost, and the only soundcard that will provide that boost in current and future games is the X-Fi. Sadly, Windows Vista doesn't directly support hardware-accelerated audio anymore...but Creative is finding ways to work around that. As long as you're on XP though, don't worry about that.

The X-Fi is literally hundreds of times more powerful in terms of processing power than any previous sound chip... its potential is only just starting to be tapped. It's probably worth it. If the budget is tight right now, definitely stick with onboard and just keep in the back of your mind that you can get a bit of additional performance from an X-Fi if you have some money down the road.

Asus is a great company, and they do often make solid products. I would definitely recommend Asus motherboards most of the time...but it depends on the particular product. As I mentioned in my above post, there are certainly other motherboards with the P35, the P965, or the Nvidia 650i chipsets that would all be in your price range and would be good boards (including several from Asus). As to their video cards... not so much. Asus video cards tend to be overpriced and really don't seem to offer the features or tweaks that other companies do (although there are exceptions to every rule, see below).

Like I mentioned, you're very best bet for solid performance in games like Vanguard or titles coming out late this year... 8800GTS 320MB. It's quite a bit more money...but very much worth it in terms of performance.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130038

If that's definitely not going to work for you, here's a couple others to look at (since you didn't want the PNY).
BFG is a good company and offers a lifetime warranty (like most manufacturers). I've got one of their cards in my machine right now -
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814143070

XFX is also fairly solid as far as I know... very good double-lifetime warranty -
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150174
Both offer mail-in rebates.

As an alternative, the X1950GT performs much better than the 7900GS cards in many cases, and is pretty easy on the wallet as well -
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102034

And a faster version of the same... the X1950 PRO -
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121031

Why do you feel the need to run multiple hard drives? Is it just a matter of enough storage space, or organization? You could always just get one or two big drives and partition them into as many smaller drives as you wanted.

2GB of RAM is just fine... I'm pretty sure your current RAM is DDR, though. You're going to need DDR2 (as you probably already saw).

OK I like the BFG board and would consider getting it, but it is currently out of stock. I won't be ordering till about the 1st week in September. If it is not in stock then -- would this board work? ASUS EN7600GS SILENT/HTD/512M GeForce 7600GS 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 SLI Supported Video Card - Retail

I like running 4 hard drives. I do not believe bigger drives are necessarily more efficient. The actual hardware has not really changed since IBM invented the disk drive. The smaller area the arm has to seek across the more efficient the seek is. Consequently, as an old IBMer, I believe that you have to consider the hardware efficiency first. Partitioning a drive does little to add efficiency to the hardware. Also from a recovery point of view, if you have a failure in a big drive it is more devastating than in a single drive. Hence 4 hard drives. I simply believe in multiple smaller sized hard drives due to the way the hardware works.

I am still looking at CPU's -- I have to remember that I am upgrading a lot of stuff all at once instead of being able to do it a little bit at a time which has always been financially easier for me. It may cost more over the long run this way, but money is tight. Would this CPU be too bad a choice for now to run the game I want to run? Intel Pentium 4 640 Prescott 3.2GHz 2MB L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor

Thanks again for all your help. I really appreciate it.

rhagz · 08-27-2007, 01:10 PM

New hard drives are much more efficient across the spectrum than they used to be. Especially those with PRT.

For video, I'd suggest an EVGA simply because you are getting a fairly low-end card. If you get it hooked up and decide it simply isn't powerful enough, you have 90 days to step it up and recover the initial cost.

Even the cheapest Core 2 Duo CPU blows away the best P4s. Don't get a P4 if you can at all help it. Get a Allendale 4300, even that is better than any P4.

evilsofa · 08-27-2007, 02:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Coriolanus

Would this CPU be too bad a choice for now to run the game I want to run? Intel Pentium 4 640 Prescott 3.2GHz 2MB L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor

Yes, it would be. For $80, you're buying the hottest running CPU Intel ever made (it runs at 165 degrees F). Even the Dual-Core E2140 for $76 would be better, in both running temperature and performance (yes, the cheaper CPU runs faster). See this review of the E2140; this quote sums up low-end CPU gaming performance quite well:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Techspot

First of all, gamers will want an Intel dual-core processor with as much L2 cache as possible. This means that the ideal budget processor for gamers would be the Core 2 Duo E6320 at around $165, regardless of whether or not you plan to overclock.

Those that cannot afford a $165 processor should look at the E4300, which costs just $114 and was faster than the E2160 in all our gaming tests. While a 10% performance margin might not seem like much with a GeForce 8800 GTX, it is far more noticeable with a less powerful card like the GeForce 8600 GTS, for example. Therefore saving $20 on a processor is not really a smart idea for gamers.

Edit: today's CPU prices on newegg are: E6550 $179, E6320 $170, E4400 $126, E4300 $122, E2140 $76. The E6550 is by far the better deal over the E6320 for only $9 more (the article predates the release of the E6550), and as the article says, the E2140 isn't really appropriate for gaming, so consider 2 CPUs: the $179 E6550 vs the $122 E4300.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Coriolanus

OK I like the BFG board and would consider getting it, but it is currently out of stock. I won't be ordering till about the 1st week in September. If it is not in stock then -- would this board work? ASUS EN7600GS SILENT/HTD/512M GeForce 7600GS 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 SLI Supported Video Card - Retail

You seem intent on picking the hottest, slowest running components that can be found on the market. You have several problems with that card: it uses silent, fanless cooling which is great if you want a silent PC but do you know it runs at over 200 degrees fahrenheit? Put that together with a P4 640 running at 165 F and you will have an OVEN, not a computer. I don't care what cooling you have in your case, your computer will fry.

Second, it has GDDR2, which is majorly nerfed in performance compared to GDDR3 cards. This is one of the slowest 7 series cards you can buy.

For the same price, $100, you can buy the eVGA 8600GT which will run several times faster, runs much cooler, and has a lifetime warranty.

For $5 more, at $105, you should also consider the MSI 8600 GT OC Edition, which not only runs almost as fast as an 8600GTS but runs even cooler than the stock 8600GT. See this review. Man, there is absolutely no need to cripple yourself with a 7600GT with GDDR2 when you can get a card like this for $5 more.

Regarding hard drives: get a pair of Seagate 7200.10 250GB drives for $70 each and dump the IDE drives entirely. They are extremely fast, with 16MB cache, and will own anything smaller, and are very reliable so two is enough. If you're interested in efficiency, PRT (perpendicular recording technology) is that. The arm gets to travel over 10 times as many bits because they are 10 times closer together.

Edit: added today's CPU prices to CPU portion

Coriolanus · 08-27-2007, 04:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by evilsofa

You have several problems with that card: it uses silent, fanless cooling which is great if you want a silent PC but do you know it runs at over 200 degrees fahrenheit? Put that together with a P4 640 running at 165 F and you will have an OVEN, not a computer. I don't care what cooling you have in your case, your computer will fry.

Second, it has GDDR2, which is majorly nerfed in performance compared to GDDR3 cards. This is one of the slowest 7 series cards you can buy.

For the same price, $100, you can buy the eVGA 8600GT which will run several times faster, runs much cooler, and has a lifetime warranty.

For $5 more, at $105, you should also consider the MSI 8600 GT OC Edition, which not only runs almost as fast as an 8600GTS but runs even cooler than the stock 8600GT. See this review. Man, there is absolutely no need to cripple yourself with a 7600GT with GDDR2 when you can get a card like this for $5 more.

Regarding hard drives: get a pair of Seagate 7200.10 250GB drives for $70 each and dump the IDE drives entirely. They are extremely fast, with 16MB cache, and will own anything smaller, and are very reliable so two is enough. If you're interested in efficiency, PRT (perpendicular recording technology) is that. The arm gets to travel over 10 times as many bits because they are 10 times closer together.

Edit: added today's CPU prices to CPU portion

The EVGA seems like a nice card and I will add it to my wish list and maybe get it if the BFG does not come in stock. Thansk for that tip.

As for hard drives! There is no way in HELL I would consider a Seagate drive. I hate their drive and I think they have poor control in the manufacturing process. I will ONLY by Western Digital. To add to that it was reported in the New York Times that a Chinese Company would like to buy Seagate ( the US Senate may block that) and that gives me an additional reason NOT to buy Seagate. I still think there are reliability problems with PMR and would not invest in such a technology at this time. I am very conservative about buying bleeding-edge technology -- I think it can cause unwarranted problems. I prefer to be safe with something slightly older but will tested than something new that fails.

As for CPU's still thinking about it. I have no desire to Overclock and don't believe in Overclocking -- so Overclocking is not a big deal for me.

I simply want speed and I am not sure there is enough non-business applications that take advantage of dual-core to make it worth the extra money.

Fozzik · 08-27-2007, 05:10 PM

The dual-core CPUs (Core 2's ) are better in every possible respect. I'm a pretty conservative person myself (just ask around

), and I would definitely recommend a Core 2 Duo for ALL situations that you might run into. There literally isn't a single scenario where I would see a single-core being better...and I'm talking performance, price, temps, etc, etc. The E6550 is the way to go. I don't overclock either.

As far as hard drives... many people use Seagate drives (they wouldn't be one of the largest manufacturers if that weren't the case) and have good success with them. There really is no company that is always good (with any hardware) and no company that is always bad. Everyone has runs of bad products once in a while...and most of the time the successful companies make reasonably good products (that's what makes them successful

). There are exceptions to every rule, but in all honesty if you like Western Digital... get Western Digital. The differences in actually performance are relatively small between any two modern SATA drives with large cache.

However, the differences between an up-to-date SATA drive with 16MB of cache and some older IDE drives is fairly noticeable. Greater platter density leads to shorter seek times and faster drives (the exact opposite of what you were thinking), and the newer caching hardware and much larger caches coupled with the higher available bandwidth using the latest SATA bus makes for substantially better performance with newer drives. If you want to stick with your old ones, that's ok... but newer and larger does indeed equal faster in this case.

evilsofa · 08-27-2007, 07:31 PM

I have no problem with brand name loyalty for hard drives, because they're all putting them out at about the same price anyway. Here's WD's lineup for 16MB cache drives:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...7760&name=16MB

The 160GB drive is $60 while the 250GB drive is $68, which is a lot better deal.

If you want speed then you do not want a P4. One thing you might not realize, and which is a very big deal performance-wise, is that Core 2 Duo chips get to do 4 instructions per clock cycle, while the Pentium 4 can only do 3. There are many other improvements, all of which means even a $75 1.6Ghz Core 2 Duo will outperform the $80 3.2Ghz P4. Neither are quite fast enough for gaming now, so you should look at the E4300 as a minimum CPU for gaming.

GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L $95
Intel E4300 $122
G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2-800 RAM $85
eVGA 8600GT $100

Subtotal: $402
Shaving any more dollars here is not smart and will seriously nerf your speed.

Western Digital 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA $68 x 2 = $136

Subtotal: $538

X-Fi XtremeGamer $50 at Fry's after rebate - you really should grab this before the rebate expires tomorrow on the 28th. At this price ($40 less than newegg, and Fry's is a good vendor) it's a steal and much better than the Audigy cards which are, what, $12 less?

Total: $588
Well under the $700 you mentioned, much faster, much cooler, and includes two 250GB hard drives.

Coriolanus · 08-27-2007, 08:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by evilsofa

I have no problem with brand name loyalty for hard drives, because they're all putting them out at about the same price anyway. Here's WD's lineup for 16MB cache drives:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...7760&name=16MB

The 160GB drive is $60 while the 250GB drive is $68, which is a lot better deal.

If you want speed then you do not want a P4. One thing you might not realize, and which is a very big deal performance-wise, is that Core 2 Duo chips get to do 4 instructions per clock cycle, while the Pentium 4 can only do 3. There are many other improvements, all of which means even a $75 1.6Ghz Core 2 Duo will outperform the $80 3.2Ghz P4. Neither are quite fast enough for gaming now, so you should look at the E4300 as a minimum CPU for gaming.

GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L $95
Intel E4300 $122
G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2-800 RAM $85
eVGA 8600GT $100

Subtotal: $402
Shaving any more dollars here is not smart and will seriously nerf your speed.

Western Digital 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA $68 x 2 = $136

Subtotal: $538

X-Fi XtremeGamer $50 at Fry's after rebate - you really should grab this before the rebate expires tomorrow on the 28th. At this price ($40 less than newegg, and Fry's is a good vendor) it's a steal and much better than the Audigy cards which are, what, $12 less?

Total: $588
Well under the $700 you mentioned, much faster, much cooler, and includes two 250GB hard drives.

How is this video card vs. the BFG you mentioned in your first post.

EVGA 512-P2-N773-AR GeForce 8600GTS 512MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card

I am going to bite the bullet on the CPU and get the E6550 Conroe Dual core.

I am just now trying to pick a video card. The BFG card is scheduled back in stock around 9/3 which is in when I will be ordering.

I know you will disagree violently with me on this buty I am still going to get the AUdigy sound card -- sorry the X-FI does simply not interest me at all.

Thanks again for all your help and your kindness in replying. I really appreciate it.

rhagz · 08-27-2007, 08:25 PM

If you are getting the Audigy then don't. Heh. But no really, sound quality and performance wise.. onboard sound on a modern board is going to be indistinguishable. Some of the new Realteks, like the ALC888, are actually superior. It even supports 7.1 right off of the board. The only card that is worth buying is the X-fi. It's kind of an all or nothing thing, anything else is just wasting money.

That 8600GTS will be the best you can get without getting an 8800. The 8600GTS is the fastest of the midrange cards. It won't compare to an 8800 but it will outperform the regular GT.

evilsofa · 08-27-2007, 09:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Coriolanus

How is this video card vs. the BFG you mentioned in your first post.

EVGA 512-P2-N773-AR GeForce 8600GTS 512MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card

I'm a bit unclear about what you mean by the BFG because Fozzik linked a BFG 7900GS, and in my first post I linked an 8800GTS 320MB. So I'll answer a bit generally. All prices include mail-in rebates if they have them.

The eVGA 8600GTS 512MB you are talking about is not going to be any faster than the 256MB version unless you are playing with very large textures. Not a very good deal for a $55 premium in my opinion.

The "vanilla" (unoverclocked) eVGA 8600GTS 256MB for $145 is twice as fast as the BFG 7900GS for $120, so you know which one is the better deal here.

The MSI 8600 GT OC Edition for $100 (yup, price just dropped $5) is nearly as fast as the vanilla eVGA 8600GTS 256MB, which makes it a very interesting card even though it has only a 1 year warranty versus eVGA's lifetime warranty.

I cannot possibly recommend getting the BFG for $120 when you can get the much faster MSI for $100; it just doesn't make sense. But I can understand paying more for eVGA's lifetime warranty - that is a very legit reason to pay a bit more.

The XFX 8800GTS 320MB for $250 is twice as fast as the vanilla eVGA 8600GTS for $145. XFX has a lifetime warranty like eVGA so they are just as good and $20 cheaper. That may be more than you want to spend. This $250 price makes it difficult to justify spending $200 on an 8600GTS 512MB that will be only half as fast.

There is nothing but overclocked 8600GTS cards in the $105 gap between the vanilla 8600GTS and the 8800GTS 320MB.

Quick summary: the $250 8800GTS 320MB is twice as fast as either the $200 8600GTS 512MB or the $145 8600GTS 256MB; the $145 8600GTS 256MB is just a little bit faster than the $100 MSI 8600GT OC Edition and twice as fast as the $120 BFG 7900GS.

evilsofa · 08-27-2007, 10:04 PM

By the way, the one thing you haven't mentioned which matters is what monitor you have. The resolution at which you intend to play makes a big difference for choosing your video card.

If it's an LCD monitor, what is the native resolution? If it's a CRT, you will be able to choose a much larger resolution than you used to, but what is the diagonal viewable size?

Coriolanus · 08-27-2007, 10:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by evilsofa

By the way, the one thing you haven't mentioned which matters is what monitor you have. The resolution at which you intend to play makes a big difference for choosing your video card.

If it's an LCD monitor, what is the native resolution? If it's a CRT, you will be able to choose a much larger resolution than you used to, but what is the diagonal viewable size?

I only play at 1024 x 768 -- the higher resolutions bother my eyes and I just prefer that resolution - have no desire to move to a bigger resoultion

My monitor is a CRT - Hitachi 2111M ( says Superscan Elite 21) -- have had it for a long time. I think it is a 21 inch. I don't like LCD monitors so if I ever have to replace this one I would get another CRT I just prefer them.

Coriolanus · 08-27-2007, 10:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rhagz

If you are getting the Audigy then don't. Heh. But no really, sound quality and performance wise.. onboard sound on a modern board is going to be indistinguishable. Some of the new Realteks, like the ALC888, are actually superior. It even supports 7.1 right off of the board. The only card that is worth buying is the X-fi. It's kind of an all or nothing thing, anything else is just wasting money.

That 8600GTS will be the best you can get without getting an 8800. The 8600GTS is the fastest of the midrange cards. It won't compare to an 8800 but it will outperform the regular GT.

Sorry but I am getting the Audigy -- it has some things packaged with it that I can use to do other things I want. So I am getting the Audigy. I don't care about sound quality - Game sounds suck anyway and I very often use MUTE on my audio as I find the sound annoying.