System specs, please critique

R

rayman2k2

Supreme [H]ardness
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Aug 6, 2002
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ANTEC Life Style Series Black Case With 380W Power Supply, Model "SONATA" - $99.99
Sony Internal 16X DVD+/-RW / Double Layer Drive Black, Model DW-D22A-B2, OEM - $65.99
Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000RPM SATA Hard Drive - $177.00
CORSAIR XMS, Xtra-Low Latency 2-2-2-5, 184-Pin 1GB(512MBx2) DDR PC-3200 - $274.00
ABIT "IC7-G MAXII ADVANCE" i875P - $135.00
Intel Pentium 4 3.0C OEM - $198.00

Total (Before tax): $949.98


As for video card, I have a 9600XT that I can use, its performed great so far, and I dont really care if I dont get 10 more fps in a certain game.

I mainly game, 3d work with Maya, vid-edit, word processing, and stuff like that. I'm a heavy multitasker so HT should help great.

I plan on upgrading to dual-cores when they come out, however in the mean time, is this system okay? Is it worth it to go to an LGA775 setup on the DFI Lanparty 875 board? I do plan on overclocking.

And, I've built three AMD systems that were completely unstable on me, and gave me horrible problems, one was a T-bird, and two were XP's, is it worth it to go back to AMD at this point, especially for what I do?
 
Everything looks good for DCC except the case/PSU. You'll probably be making heavy use of the CPU and ram and that means a lot of power consumption. I'd get a case with a little bit sturdier build and a bigger PSU. Antec makes a nice "SOHO File Server" full tower case that comes with a TruePower PSU which will probably be better than a Smartpower, which I belive that case comes with. If its got a Truepower that should be fine however. I'd go for 2GB of less exotic(less expensive too) RAM since you'll have the space for 4x512MB. I can easily use 1GB up in photoshop working with large files and it would sure help for smoothing out multitasking as well.

One other thing that's more a matter of preference is the HDD. I've seen some research on 10K vs 7200rpm HDD's that shows the 7200rpm IDE's as being almost as good. If you're not running a game server or a high demand and availability server you should be fine with some IDE's on there. You could easily get 3 120GB HDD's for the price of that 74GB SATA one.
 
I failed to mention that I have a 160GB HDD that I would use too...


I mainly want the Raptor for load times, at the moment my load times are slooooow for games, such as Star Wars Galaxies, and programs, such as Maya.


I havent really seen any evidence saying Raptors are good for loading proggies fast, nor have I seen evidence saying that they are not...


As for the RAM, I'd upgrade later, right now my budget is ~1000.


And as for the Sonata, I like the case itself, and it fits exactly where I need it to, however, I might upgrade the power supply.
 
Do you let Windows manage your page file or do you have it at one size? I once saw a friend's computer with over 600 page file fragments. It ran less than half as fast as my slower clocked computer just because of that fact. Go to www.executive.com to download the Diskeeper Trial version. Best program I've ever used for anything ever. Do boot time defrags and standard and make sure the page file is set to be a constant size rather than Windows managed.

From what I've read the differences between SATA 10K's and 7200IDE's is minimal. If you went 15K SCSI's then you'd see a huge speed boost in load times.
 
anymore input?

should I stick w/ Northwood, or go to Presscott?


I will be watercooling...
 
Better PSU, definitly. The Smartpower 380 or even the Truepower 380 is weak on the all important +12v rail, esp. for that system
 
also is Corsair XMS what it used to be? I see that Crucial Ballistix is a bit cheaper, but is it still good?
 
ugh, now i really cant decide...

-stay with s478 until dual-cores come out
--go northwood
--go prescott
-go lga775 so that i can keep the same wb
-go A64 on s939


bigeek.gif
 
Remeber, keep it simple. The best computers are the ones that run when you need them to and that's only going to happen if you build it and turn it on. Don't frett too much. A 3.4GHz Northwood is going to be plenty fast compared to even an A-64 FX-55. You may see some improvements in FPS one over the other but not night and day difference.
 
Honestly, IMO A64's are alot better for gaming. Since you're going corsair XMS I'd definately go A64 solely because the onboard memory controller increases performance so much. I dont see much of a difference between my computer(listed below) and my friends in gaming and he has a 3.2Ghz prescott, and 1Gb Ram....Also, In the case of Raptors, I'd go for it, I mean I use one and love it, its definately alot faster then my dads computer and he has 7200rpm IDE drives. Remember guys, these are my opinions and im basing them off of what i experience in CS:S so dont flame me. :)
 
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