Intel P4 vs AMD

Thanks for all the info. No one person is telling me this and that, it's a figure of speech. I've talked to several people on the subject of RAM, mobos, etc of late. A lot of this stuff is still Greek to me for now. I'm learning, slowly, but I suppose there's no other way to go. I am tired of being handicapped in the area of PC hardware, so I want to expand my knowledge base. I'm somewhat familiar with optical drives and RAM, that's about it. I'm filling in the blanks, so I can build my own rig from scratch when the time comes.

 

Sure, this thread's actually one of the best places to be for that, we talk about everything.

 

Sammorriss

LOL Someone's always making me qualify my statements. LOL To be exact, if one buys budget RAM, they get budget RAM. If one buys performance RAM, they get performance RAM. On the last part of that, I should have said if the customer shops wisely and does his research. There's always a ripoff out there.

I'm often accused of being overly verbose. Seems when I'm not, I get to explain what I meant. The better timing of the performance RAM allows better system performance than can be attained with the slower budget RAM. That's all I was saying there. As for shopping, I purchased the XMS Corsiar 2x1GB set for about $150 US, I got a rebate on it. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145574 So good shopping is part of the equation when doing a build if one is interested in saving a few bucks. Any time I can upgrade to a better product, I'll do so as long as the price isn't too high. That "too high" has to be figured out by the individual. I'll just let it be known I'm not buying any $1000 processors till I win the lottery.

LOL, there I have to agree. Luckily we seem to get back on track and even our wanderings are on the subject of PCs. So we're usually not too far off course.

 

Lol better. I hate to do things like that to people, especially you, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity!

I agree about the topicism, the only debate I can remember off topic was a three page discussion about Car ECUs, remember that? Seems ages ago.
That's fantastic RAM for the price, the US really do have it off what with their no VAT and generally lower costs (plus you get newegg, basically the god of computer hardware shops). I'd love for XMS to be that cheap. I can't get two gigs of Value Select CAS3 for that!

 

So $188 is a good deal on 2GB's of Corsair DDR3200 RAM? It seems like it, if you divide by two, then $94 is a great price for 1GB of PC3200. I've heard Mushkin is good RAM (from DocTY and others) what do you guys think?

 

@Kivory666
I think the overall point that most of us try to make on this thread is that components in a system should work together to the best degree possible. It might be nice to toy with a radical build, but most of us are discussing sane methods of building stable systems, yet enjoy the best performance possible. Your work with Sophocles should have given you a better insight into what's possible.

Granted we have members who prefer one brand over another. Sometimes that is merely due to more experience with the one brand and comes as a personal preference. When it comes to good products that are sold competitively, many of us will switch camps. One thing most of us will do though is point out a "stinker" product when/if we see one.

In today's market different companies jockey back and forth as leader. On graphics cards, both ATI and nVidia make good cards. Though I have a preference for ATI, I have nothing against someone else building with nVidia. These 2 companies often move back and forth as to who has the current best. As for me, I usually play on the frugal side and buy the older tech. I'm not into super gaming and don't need those last few FPS. Same goes for processors, there's Intel users that switched to AMD. The earlier Intels had the AMDs of the time beat. Your Gallatin/Northwood core for instance was "the choice" for custom builds a few years back. Now for the custom enthusiast, the AMD is tops. If Intel comes up with something better, then the custom build customers will flock back. So, most of us on this thread will try to suggest what's best and often if it's just a personal preference we'll say so. I realize a thread sometimes has their political zealots, this one is no different. The main focus is helping as we can without putting "too much" favoritism into the mix. (But sometimes it's just fun to mess around for comparison's sake, as we did with theonejrs' mobo selection.)

 

Tokijin
Mushkin, Corsair, OCZ... The market isn't controlled by any one company. Also, some companies make RAM in varied performance levels. Just do your homework if something catches your eye. I like the Corsiar, but that's just a personal favorite. If someone handed me a couple of sticks of comparable OCZ, I'd definitely use it.

 

OCZ, Corsair, Mushkin they're all safe bets but none are leaps and bounds over the other, if you don't have a personal allegiance, then bargain hunt, we're here to advise not necessarily to choose for you.

 

Tokijin

If you want to know which RAM is currently on top just go to any tech test site where they are doing CPU tests (not RAM) and review their setup. You'll find that most if not all are currently using Corsair or OCZ. Gskill has proved to be quite good for over clocking but it's not consistent with different boards. It works well with DFI boards but has a problem with some of the Asus A8N boards. If you're going to be building with the A8N32-SLI the I would recommend the Corsair 3500LLPro, hell I'd recommend it with any board.

M

 

hehe, point taken~ i know this feeling ALL TOO WELL LOL

i'm trying my best to "keep up with advancing technology" as well, hence my own jumping ship to AMD; i personally have used many diff. kinds of chips (intel or amd), many diff. mobos (mainly ASUS and Gigabyte..even had what I consider a really crappy mobo, an "ECS" board back in the day) but you nailed my perspective on things right on the dot~ i am neither FOR or AGAINST any company in particular ;P differing from you, i CURRENTLY use Nvidia graphics cards, as it's MY personal preference at this time...ATI makes some great cards too, i have at least 1/2 dozen older RADEONS in all diff. flavors/speeds, they worked well for me on my older builds~

i've learned a lot from this thread, i wasn't trying to get anyone riled up, just stating my OWN opinions much like everyone else has stated theirs~ have a good one all~

docTY~

 

vspede,

I missed your post a couple of pages back. I was looking for something and just saw it.

Yes, I can afford it. I could just go to the bank and take out the money. It's just more fun to plan everything with some sort of a schedule to keep. It also keeps me away from impulse buying. what I would have bought 6 months ago compared to what I will actually be getting is very different. Had I just spent the money back then, I would have wound up with a system not as good as the one I'll build this June.

At this point the only thing I'm not sure of yet is the video card. I was leaning towards an ATi X850 based card but nVidia has come out with the 7900GT which according to everything I've read has the potential to be faster than the 7800GT as it was expressly designed with overclocking in mind. Stock, the core clock is 450 and the memory clock is 1320. Use the nVidia overclocking tool and it will detect 570/1560 as the optimal speed. This is considerably faster than a 7800GT which supposedly can't be overclocked (stability issues) to these speeds. It's a little more expensive than the curent X-850 prices but it has some serious potential. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814150149
Since it has 8 more pixel/pipelines (24) than the X-850 (16) and even though I would have to give up the "free" TV tuner, I think I've sold myself and found my PCI-e video card for the new build.

Happy computering,
theonejrs

 

To All,

Newegg has a pretty good deal on 8xDVD+R media. 100 for $23.99 with free shipping. They are DVD+R RITEK-RO3-002.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817132367

I've used them before and never had a coaster with them.

Happy Computering,
theonejrs

 

theonejrs
Prices and the state of technology are what it's all about. The X850 is good, but not the cutting edge ATI card. Better can be had with ATI if one is willing to pay the price, just as the new nVidia offers more. Nothing wrong with your choice as long as you've done the homework and it's what you need, both aesthetically and functionally. Part of what we end up with is closely related to what we're willing to invest. Sometimes the "I want" outweighs the "I need". Nothing wrong with that, we've all got to have our quota of toys.

 

Brobear,

Amen to that! I also get this nagging feeling that if I don't build my one and only front line computer now, I won't ever get the chance again. I laid down some basic rules when I started giving serious consideration to this project.
#1 was I didn't have to have the latest, greatest or baddest as I've seen some times where the sum of the parts is not always equal to what you put in. That's also true in terms of spending too much money for things I don't really need.
#2 was to research potential choices for all of the componants. Ask questions in this and other forums. Check out owner reviews and places like Tom's Hardware or cnet.

I thought that I had made a good choice in a motherboard and was gratified to see so many members agreed. They were also quick to point out the shortcomings of a good but inferior Asus non SLI MB that I was looking at as well. It's very rewarding to ask questions and not get smoke blown up your butt with the answers. You guys are definately not the "Me Too" type.

I did my first PC build in Feb. of 89. I'de been fooling around with computers since the Z80 was king and my latest (and still fairly modern by todays standards) was an Atari ST. I bought my first CD-Rom drive for it around 85 or 86. It came with a Crowell & Collier Encyclopedia as the only software. That year I built 27 computers (can't remember whether they were 386-40 or 486 x4/100) between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Fortunatly 17 of these were for one customer and were all identical. Jumper settings in those days put a lot of jumpers in a very small space. You had to set everything. Nothing was detected except the hard drive. There, the BIOS had a detect hard drive setting. You had to write and rewrite config.sys and autoexec.bat to make all the hardware work. Sound card, video card, modem and an Ethernet card. Until Windows 95, there was no plug and play! Even then the plug and play support in Win 95 was minimal. UGH!!! God, I don't miss those days.

According to my calculations as best as I can figure from going back through all my old invoices, this will be my 600th or so build. Along the way I learned a few new curse words, my favorite being a "take off", Mother-Frogger! I still to this day use that one in place of the obvious! Back in the day when you could sell an AMD "586" 100 25x4 on a double speed board and run the CPU at 100 but at 50x2 with 16Mb 70ns Ram. Made for a much faster computer with the same chip, what with doubling the FSB. You could sell this with Keyboard, Mouse and 14" .28 monitor. A Trident 4 meg vga card, Sound Blaster and a 340Mb IDE hard drive w/High speed controller, and make about $1500 appiece.

I was quite lucky as I had a partner, a Chinese Gentleman who kept me supplied with the very latest in computer technology. Most of the stuff I had already and was selling weeks before the computer fairs and shows had them. If we had had an Internet in those days I would have become rich beyond words! One of the things he discovered in his travels was that a great many large corporations changed their existing memory for new every 6 months, most of which was locked away in a safe for fear someone could steal their company secrets from the memory. That's how little people knew about computers in those days. Anyway he signed contracts with a fair number of those corporations guaranting that all memory would be erased and would certify it! He would then send all these chips to to Tiwan where they would remove the chips and test them under load and build new simms with them. He also landed a lot of new memory customers when the price of memory jumped sky high! He made a fortune and retired back in 98, a multi-millionaire.

Anyway, excuse the nostalgia!

Happy Computering,
theonejrs

 

No, by all means, its fascinating, learning about a past I wasn't part of. You built your first PC when I was but 9 months old and had just moved to my present house. If you're willing to pay the lots extra for a 7900GT go for it, it's a very fast and efficient GPU, and doesn't suffer the heat stability problems of the 7800 version when overclocking, as you rightly said. Then again, this ain't a bad GPU either, more RAM at least. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102629

 

LOL There's a 512 version of the 7900 as well, just ups the ante a bit. Also, ATI has the X1900. http://www.ati.com/products/RadeonX1900/specs.html (A lot of hyperbole was used in that ad and comparisons are to the nVidia 7800, old page.) A person can just keep stuffing bucks in the box. At some point the budget has to kick in, unless a person is wealthy (in which case there's an old bear that's looking to be adopted, LOL).

I think if I was getting into the high end boards, I might consider an Asus A8R board for the X1900. Haven't done much homework on that one yet, but it's supposed to be more performance oriented toward the ATI cards and Crossfire setup. We know both the ATI and nVidia cards work with the A8N(s), but has anyone used one of the A8R boards?

 

Wow that's hardcore. Here's a concern: most of us in this thread are fairly PC knowledgeable. What're your thoughts on VISTA, DRM, and the Fritz chip? Do you think it'll be hard to find mobos that're free of the Fritz chip? Will you be able to order them from China, Japan, or somewhere else? Would it be worth waiting for a hacked VISTA free of DRM crap, or to with Linux? My thoughts are no way, Linux all the way, but I wanted to see what the peeps in this thread thought. Thanks for your input.

 

3rd party developers aren't very interested in the NGSCB, so Vista isn't slated to be as bad as it could have been. I've got a wait and see attitude. Vista is going to have BitLocker Drive Encryption and Microsoft Cryptography API which can utilize the TPM (Fritz) Chip. So, the protection at that point is based on the presence of the chip. I'm not in a rush to leave the XP OS for it.

As for Linux, most of the good software has been written for Windows. I've seen a lot of people say in frustration that they're going to Linux, but not as many have implemented the threat. I'll wait and see if I need to go that route.

Just remember that AMD and Intel are members of the TCG along with Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Infineon, Lenovo, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems. So when you have the main processor manufacturers on board, how much good is it going to do to try and find bootleg mobos?

With hardware meant to subvert DRM, I doubt Japan being involved, even China would be in a questionable spot due to it being a major trade partner and not wanting to jeopardize the standing in major market countries. A "bootleg" market might crop up. China being more the "wild west" of the computer world might be a source of illicit hardware. That's just speculation as well. The market is often full of rumors when people don't have a good handle on what's to come next. I'll just wait and see. When the problems are with us is the time to solve them. Without the actual problems, it's hard to find solutions.

 

Belive it or not, I am now the owner of a amd based computer.
k-6-2/400 chip.
and it is a dell (huge sigh).
But i slapped a ethernet card in it ( had to dig back in my memory to make things work in windows 98) works great.
has 32mb memory.
question, without knowing what motherboard it is on, is there any sugestions on the type of memory that the k-6uses??

 

How hard is it to take a look inside to see what you have? A lot of old stuff was PC100 and 133. I'm not familiar with that PC. Where did you get it?