05-02-2005 02:46									#1
	Building a new computer system, comments wanted Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

I'm building a new computer system (to replace my 4.5 year old system), and would appretiate any comments:

Motherboard:
ASUS P5AD2-E PREMIUM

I did consider the P5GD2 Premium, but it has a much smaller list of qualifed vendors for memory - how seriously should I take that list?

CPU:
INTEL PENTIUM 4 550 3.4GHZ, though I might consider the 540 3.2GHZ version.

Memory:
2 x Kingston 1024MB 533MHZ CL4 DDR2 DIMM

Video Card:
ATI ALL-IN-WONDER X600 PRO 256MB PCI EXPRESS

For graphics capability and video capture.

(I'm used to ATI's AIW capture cards. Are there any better quality capture boards?)

Hard Drive:
MAXTOR 250GB MXDX6B250S0 SERIAL ATA 16MB 7200RPM

For the main drive (It has 16mb Cache hoping that it's quiet and fast ). For a secondary drive (video capture), I already have a 120GB Maxtor 8mb IDE drive. At some point, I might build a RAID 5 our of sata drives, but not in the near future.

Power Supply:
I was thinking ANTEC NEO POWER480 480W UL & FCC POWER SUPPLY

I'm not yet sure about the case. I was thinking of maybe the ANTEC P160 ALUMINUM MID TOWER, though the ideal case would be screwless, have 5 5.25 bays and 5+ 3.5 bays, be light and have 120mm fans.

I already have a monitor, DVD, etc.

Advice? Critiques?

	05-02-2005 02:55									#2
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are you particularly attached to intel ? amd's amd64 line offers better performance for comparable price, particularly for gaming...

	05-02-2005 02:56									#3
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CL4 RAM? GAH! GAH! GAH!

I can't even stomach buying CL3.

I'm a CL2 man, myself...

	05-02-2005 03:06									#4
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I just got a new mobo and processor... Athlon 64 3500+ on an Asus A8V Pro.

I agree with QCubed... go with the Athlon 64... be sure to get socket 939, that way you can upgrade to Athlon FX in the future.

	05-02-2005 03:10									#5
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quote: Originally posted by Q Cubed are you particularly attached to intel ? amd's amd64 line offers better performance for comparable price, particularly for gaming...

Not completely attached to intel, but for high end stuff I'm more interested in video capture/editing than gaming (I'll do some gaming, but a majority of the games I play are adventure or strategy, and when it comes to FPS, I'm not a 53 thousand frames per second kind of person - as long as I can play it, I'm happy.)

	05-02-2005 03:11									#6
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quote: Originally posted by Asher CL4 RAM? GAH! GAH! GAH! I can't even stomach buying CL3. I'm a CL2 man, myself...

How does it affect performance?

	05-02-2005 03:13									#7
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quote: Originally posted by Edan How does it affect performance?

CL4 = 4 cycles latency
CL2 = 2 cycles latency

Takes 4 cycles to access instead of 2.

	05-02-2005 03:14									#8
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quote: Not completely attached to intel, but for high end stuff I'm more interested in video capture/editing than gaming (I'll do some gaming, but a majority of the games I play are adventure or strategy, and when it comes to FPS, I'm not a 53 thousand frames for second kind of person - as long as I can play it, I'm happy.)

Ah, that's trickier. Intel traditionally performs better when it comes to multimedia applications.

I don't know what the benchmarks are these days, but it's my understanding that Intel still edges out AMD.

Since Intel's coming out with Pentium 4's with x86-64 instructions later this year (as in, 64-bit intel processors), maybe you should stick with them then.

Incidentally, though, no video editing program currently is optimized to use 64-bit processing, so... right now, Athlon 64's advantage is kinda useless.

	05-02-2005 03:20									#9
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One day somebody's going to have to explain to me what 8 megabytes or more of cache on HD is needed for...

	05-02-2005 03:39									#10
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quote: Originally posted by Ari Rahikkala One day somebody's going to have to explain to me what 8 megabytes or more of cache on HD is needed for...

Caching data fragments.

	05-02-2005 03:45									#11
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quote: Originally posted by Asher CL4 = 4 cycles latency CL2 = 2 cycles latency Takes 4 cycles to access instead of 2.

I couldn't even find CL2 DDR2 memory. I did find CL3 DDR2 memory, but mostly they were smaller sized modules, and the 1GB CL2 module I did find cost about 75%(!) more (although it was ECC and registered) I'm pretty sure I'd rather have more memory than faster memory.

I also looked at Kingston's Memory Search Engine, and it didn't list any CL2 or CL3 modules as compatable with the motherboard.

	05-02-2005 05:04									#12
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quote: Originally posted by Ari Rahikkala One day somebody's going to have to explain to me what 8 megabytes or more of cache on HD is needed for...

It's much faster than the 8MB versions, I'm waiting for the price to drop myself to buy one.

	05-02-2005 05:07									#13
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quote: Originally posted by Asher CL4 RAM? GAH! GAH! GAH! I can't even stomach buying CL3. I'm a CL2 man, myself...

Eugh Asher, he's talking about DDR2, I'm not even sure you can get CL2's for DDR2.

Go for the AMD64 and get DDR1 memory ( well, with AMD you're going to have to as they will not use DDR2 until 2006 and might even skip it)

	05-02-2005 05:10									#14
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quote: Originally posted by Sava I just got a new mobo and processor... Athlon 64 3500+ on an Asus A8V Pro. I agree with QCubed... go with the Athlon 64... be sure to get socket 939, that way you can upgrade to Athlon FX in the future.

Unfortunately, it's not going to matter all that much. AMD is not going to push their proc's alot until the new ones come out... for which, yep, you need a new socket and thus new MB).

	05-02-2005 05:12									#15
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Upgradring from CL3 to CL2 is like, what, 5% performance boost at best, probably less. This is with DDR1. I couldn't comment on CL4/DDR2.

	05-02-2005 05:24									#16
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Thanks for the comments, everyone!

Some more questions:

If my system only needs a 350W Power supply, and I get a 400W (or 500W, etc) PS, does it use/waste significantly more energy then if I went with a 350W PS, or does it use more energy as the system needs it?

High cache on a hard drive won't help for capturing video, but might if I'm editing video, right?

Are the screwless systems (eg, this) for drives and/or pci cards) worth getting?

I'm not planning on overclocking - will the heatsink/thermal paste that comes with the CPU be sufficent?

	05-02-2005 05:25									#17
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It's in dutch but I'll give you the short version:

AMD stil kicks Intel's butt.
http://www.tweakers.net/nieuws/36056

quote: Athlon 64 3800+ 7716 Pentium 4 EE 720 6667 Athlon 64 3200+ 6402 Pentium 4 630 5333 Pentium 4 530 (32-bits) 4413

	05-02-2005 07:48									#18
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quote: Originally posted by Q Cubed quote: Not completely attached to intel, but for high end stuff I'm more interested in video capture/editing than gaming (I'll do some gaming, but a majority of the games I play are adventure or strategy, and when it comes to FPS, I'm not a 53 thousand frames for second kind of person - as long as I can play it, I'm happy.) Ah, that's trickier. Intel traditionally performs better when it comes to multimedia applications. I don't know what the benchmarks are these days, but it's my understanding that Intel still edges out AMD.

It depends on the multimedia application nowadays. For video encoding, Intel seems to have an edge, but since Edan does video capture (not really a CPU issue) and video editing, I'd still say go for AMD 64.

	05-02-2005 08:06									#19
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I can imagine that the video folks will quickly take advantage of both multi-core and 64-bit processing once Intel releases it into the wild.

Video decoding and deinterlacing in HD is one of my main applications, and a single P4 core can just handle the decoding all in software. In order for it to be able to handle the deinterlacing as well, I'm going to wait for the multi-cores.

	05-02-2005 08:09									#20
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quote: Originally posted by DanS Video decoding and deinterlacing in HD is one of my main applications, so I'm going to wait for the multi-cores.

Decoding is much easier than encoding. You don't need to wait.

	05-02-2005 08:10									#21
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I edited you. You can't decode and deinterlace at the same time very well on 1080i material, such as sports.

	05-02-2005 09:08									#22
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quote: video capture (not really a CPU issue)

Depends on how it's being captured - with hardware-only capture methods, yeah. But the ATI AIW utilizes the CPU to improve the quality of the mpeg2 captures..

	05-02-2005 09:13									#23
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quote: Originally posted by Edan Depends on how it's being captured - with hardware-only capture methods, yeah. But the ATI AIW utilizes the CPU to improve the quality of the mpeg2 captures..

Still it probably won't eat up too much CPU time no? It's not like the task is offloaded to the CPU.

	05-02-2005 09:21									#24
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quote: Originally posted by Urban Ranger Still it probably won't eat up too much CPU time no? It's not like the task is offloaded to the CPU.

You'd be suprised. I currently have an Athelon 900, and can generally capture between 2-4mbps with none to minimal frames dropped. But if I go higher than that mbps, increase the number of P or B frames, or raise the motion estimatation quality, the frames start dropping significantly.

	05-02-2005 09:29									#25
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Looking around Anandtech a bit yields this comparison graph:

	05-02-2005 09:58									#26
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quote: Originally posted by Urban Ranger Looking around Anandtech a bit yields this comparison graph:

Thanks. It looks like Intel still holds the edge, at least at the budget I'm looking at (The FX53, the Pentium 4 EE and the 3800+ are fairly expensive),

	05-02-2005 10:33									#27
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quote: Originally posted by Urban Ranger It depends on the multimedia application nowadays. For video encoding, Intel seems to have an edge, but since Edan does video capture (not really a CPU issue) and video editing, I'd still say go for AMD 64.

You almost never keep the video capture in MPEG2 format, you will encode it.

If he's doing multimedia stuff like that, Pentium 4 makes more sense. The Netburst architecture was designed for that kind of stuff, there's no disadvantage to the long pipeline of the Pentium 4, meaning it's clock-for-clock similar to the K8 with a higher clock rate.

The K8 does way better in floating-point intensive apps with any kind of branching in it.

	05-02-2005 15:21									#28
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What's so special about the AIW cards?
The X600 isn't really a good card anymore. I think it's just the PCI-X version of the 9600, which is becoming outdated rather quickly.

The rest is okay, though I prefer AMD over Intel, but in your case Intel is probably better.
Though I'd still buy AMD, because it sucks less power.

	05-02-2005 21:51									#29
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quote: Originally posted by Atahualpa What's so special about the AIW cards?

Well, the quality of the software in terms of the TV/capture is pretty good (it used to be mediocre but ATI has improved it alot in the last 6-7 years.). In terms of capture quality it tends to be good (the only comparable capture card being the Hauppauge PVRs, which have hardware encoding, but from what I understand, it doesn't allow much in the way of options when capturing video except a few preset sizes, compared with the AIW. Also, the software on the Hauppauge is supposed to be poor (although there are third party software available).

quote: The X600 isn't really a good card anymore. I think it's just the PCI-X version of the 9600, which is becoming outdated rather quickly.

Do you mean it's not a good card in terms of game playing or in terms of capture? For gameplay, while better grphics is certainly better, I'm more concerned with the ability to play games for a long period of time - although maybe it is worth looking at better cards. I suppose I should consider upgrading the card when the X800 drops in price (how long will that likely be?).

I suppose I should consider a seperate TV card (either an ATI capture card or possibly the hauppauge - I've heard good things from reviewers about the TV Wonder Elite, but that isn't out yet, AFAIK), to make an upgrade easier. So m,aybe I should consider getting a cheap PCI-16 card for the moment, like an OEM/barebone version of the plain x300 or x600 (do they come with any cables or anything other than the card and cd?)

Or should I concider nVidea? (I've never had one).

	05-02-2005 22:18									#30
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Not good in terms of playing games. Don't know about capturing, I never had one.

Here is a bench with an older game:
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/gr..._charts-05.html
Here a newer:
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/gr..._charts-06.html

Okay they are all shooters, but you should get the point.

I mean, I shouldn't really be talking here, because I played through Doom3 and Half-Life 2 on a GF4TI4200 and that card sucks big time compared to a X600.