Intel P4 vs AMD

To All,

You guys are determined to make me spend money. Here I was nice and semi-retired. Now I'll have to get a full time job just to pay for everything I want! Thanks a lot! (heh, heh, heh)
Lets see, AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ w/Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe MB. Nvidia GeForce 7800 PCI Express 16x which I saw at Fry's today for $349 ($50 mail in rebate) Might as well get a Sata 10,000 RPM drive while I'm at it! What memory would you recomend and how much??? You realize of course that if this was Intel, I'de need a bank loan. Yep, I've definately got the bug! He, He!

Russ

 

Any memory with 2-2-2-5 timeings or 2-3-2-5 are good for overclocking if you have to overclock the mem to OC the CPU for some strange reason. my plan is 3500 or X2 3800 and another 6800 Gt about this time next year and in spring a samsung 19" LCD 4 ms and gigaworks 7.1 700 watts. because my cpu is limiting my computer wat too much and by your posts i think im going to be leaning towards a X2 3800 but by next year that will most likly be something more along the lines of a X2 4400. i was mislead to believe that the A64 3000+ could be overclocked to 2.5+ with stock cooling 100% stability but for somestrange reason whenever i set the FSB higher than 225( im not overclocking the mem by going into the advanced overclocking settings) it will complete bios but wont get to the OS selection screen it just sits there with nothing excpet for a blinking underscore at the top right. my bios revision is R7 if that helps im going to try updating the bios to the latest revision and post my results.

 

theonejrs
To do it up right, you need 2 GPUs and some additional components for cooling, depending on how far you want to go in OCing. I don't trust stock cooling for anything other than a stock PC. Then of course, you want to get all out of those GPUs that is possible, so you may want to upgrade your choice of boards. LOL Sell the farm, mortgage the grandkids and go for it. LOL

 

Brobear,
It's not that I am interested so much in over-clocking. I've always wanted to build a state of the art computer system. Back in the day it was prohibitably expensive to do. Today you get so much more bang for the buck. I'm happy with what I have as far as how it works. I only OC 5% which runs the memory at 420MHz and the FSB at 840. It seems to run best at these settings. Like Sophocles said, I want to build a new state of the art computer because I can. I'm going back to work full time on the 21st so I might as well spoil myself. I don't know that much about modern motherboards so I chose Asus because of my good past experience with them. Are there better boards out there? If so could you recomend something? I chose Nvidia for the graphics card, again because of past experience with them. I've never had any luck with ATi! I want a 20 inch wide-screen LCD monitor to go with it. I really prefer a flat-screen CRT for picture quality and far less eyestrain but I don't know of any 20 inch wide screen CRTs being made. I prefer Maxtor drives but whether they will make a 10,000 rpm sata drive by the time I'm ready will determine if I go with them or WD. Everyone keeps telling me that I should scrap my Optorite DVD Burner for a Plextor but I keep remembering that I had so much trouble in the past with Plextor drives and the Optorite performs flawlessly. Don't even get me started on Sony. I wouldn't have a Sony if they were giving them away for free, with a rebate! I don't care how good their products are supposed to be, I don't like the company! I don't like the way they do business and I don't like the way they treat end users. I especially don't like the way they dictate how you use their drives by dictating what media they will "allow" you to use without the penalty of slowing your 8Xs to 4X because Sony doesn't approve of the media and Doesn't like the competition. Not only that, Sony refuses to replace my DVD burner because it's a refurbished drive. They sent it to me as a replacement for a brand new drive that failed and even though the original is still within the warranty period they insist that a refurb only has a 90 day warranty! The only reason I have a Sony Digital Audio Control Center for my surround sound is because my Landlady's nephew borrowed money from me and never paid it back. He snuck back to Canada and told me to go pound salt so I went through the stuff he left here, and took it! If he ever pays me the $150 he owes me, he can have it back!

Another word about DVDs. I have read in other forum about poor quality media. I have to disagree with most of what I've read. I use Sony because they burn at 12X automaticly on my drive even though they are marked 8X. It wouldn't even do that with the Sony drive! I also use Memorex, Maxell, TDK, GQ and just about every other off-name brand. The only brands I do stay away from are house brands and that's only because of the way they package it, shrink wrapped and no cake box. I haven't had one coaster in over 6 months. Truthfully, the only coasters I ever had were when I was learning to burn video and made mistakes that caused the failures. I get the distinct impression that a lot of the whining I hear about poor quality media comes from people that made the same mistakes I did but blame the media instead of themselves for their failures. When you first start playing with this stuff, most people know little or nothing about it. They tend to play with the settings of burning programs until it's Damn the Torpedos, full speed ahead. I should know, I did it too!
My next door neighbor keeps making coasters no matter what media he uses. He also doesn't take very good care of his media. He leaves the cake boxes open and gets a lot of dust on them. He gets fingerprints all over them and scratches. I know it's not the computer or his drives. I sold him my old (???) Dell 3000 so I know that there isn't any problem with it! Of course, he's the same idiot that insists on using Internet Explorer and then runs screaming to me that I sold him a piece of crap everytime he gets a virus!

Anyway, I guess I'll get off my soap box!
Everyone have a good evening!!

Russ

 

Sounds like the neighbor has a user interface problem and he's the user. I use different browsers. Firefox and IE are the 2 I currently have loaded. IE is wrapped up like Fort Knox, so I rarely even see a virus. (Firefox enjoys the same protection.) The AV ware goes off like gangbusters at the scent of a virus. So IE is usable. I'm more partial to IE because of long experience with it. Firefox I've found to be less prone to attack, seems the hackers and attackers prefer getting more bang for their time by attacking the most common browser app, IE. I know what you mean about user problems though, some people could mess up an anvil with a sponge.

As for media, you may find out down the road that compatibility doesn't always equate with quality. You can track down some of my posts. I've already posted enough for a textbook. Some of the brands you mentioned at one time or another have sold some of the best manufactured media available. I'm not familiar with GQ. Unfortunately, some haven't been consistent with using good manufacturers. Sony, one of the brands you mentioned, has some good media. You have the Sony from Taiwan and the Japanese Mitsubishi. I've found both to be good. Brands like Memorex have used a variety of manufacturers. The association with manufacturers like CMC Magnetics has left them with a bad rep. In the past Memorex has used manufacturers such as Ricoh and Ritek, both respected names in media manufacturing (though Ritek has come under question the past year when some of the dyes were changed). Nuff said, there's just too much info and things to know to go there, that's for the media section, not hardware.

I was looking at an especially interesting MoBo just the other day. It had some interesting options and didn't require OCing for some excellent processing features. I'll have to look up the link and I'll post it. If I forget, just remind me. Too many fires and the memory starts to fade.

 

BroBear,
What's memory! One of the side effects from my heart attack was that some of my memory areas have been affected by it. Mostly connected short term memory. I was down for 22 mins with nothing but CPR and an Ambu bag. The way the Dr. explained it to me is to picture myself in a library and you are going through the sections. One of the sections has had a fire so some of it is damaged and some doesn't exist anymore. When my brain sends my memory request to that section I may get all the info, some info or no info. When its no info it's a dead end with no refrence to continue on. It doesn't exist! You have no idea how frustrating it is to be holding a conversation with someone and go down that section and bang!!! You have no recollection of what you just said. Not a word! I have to ask the other person what it was that I just said in order to take a different route to get to the same end. It's like taking a computer and trying to program it with mittens on!

Russ

 

Glad the wife didn't have that problem when she had a heart attack. I need her to remind me of things. I'm just plain forgetful though. Guess it's genetic. The wife says it's just because I don't pay attention in the first place. She's smarter than I am, so I know better than to argue. I've forgotten how to win an argument with her. LOL

 

Hmmm, sounds a little like me, except the wife part. That's not really relevant. Substitute mum instead.
As for media, I generally only stick to TDK, Imation and Verbatim, but i was sold a wrapped spindle cake of Bulkpaq 8x DVD-Rs, and so far the half a dozen discs ive written haven't caused any coasters.
I'm using the LG GSA-4163B Drive, which in my opinion is excellent, if a little noisy.

 

sammorris


Never buy your media by brand, always get the manufacturers ID first and then buy it based on that. My favorite manufacturers are RICOHJPN and Mitsubishi.

 

Manufacturer ID?
I consider myself a bit of a layman when it comes to the in depth data involving recordable media.

 

Here's an application (DVD Identifier) that can read DVD media manufacturers ID.


http://home.scarlet.be/~ping3828/downloads/dvd_identifier_420.zip

If the link fails go here to download it.

http://dvd.identifier.cdfreaks.com/

 

Sophocles,
I never benchmarked my computer stock. I was pretty surprised with the results. http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/4229/30arithmatic2rl.jpg
http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/6951/30memorybw3qe.jpg
http://img185.imageshack.us/img185/6139/30turboauto2yq.jpg
These numbers are way better than the Dell 3000 with the same memory and CPU

Russ

 

Another good app, free or donor, is DVDInfoPro. At least it was free when I got mine, way back when. It's got utility functions as well as the media manufacturer ID software. I've found it handy for checking suspect disks and the like as well as the ID of the media. http://www.dvdinfopro.com

 

theonejrs


Decent results, your machine should be able to do just about anything with reasonable that you ask it to do.

 

My DVD-Rs appear as:
Fuji-Film
[FUJIFILM03]

But if you say don't buy the discs on the basis of their manufacturer ID, how can i tell what that is when i'm buying them?
http://img487.imageshack.us/img487/9319/arithmetic2gk.jpg

 

It's the other way around, you should buy based on who made the disc and not buy based on whose name is stamped on them.

 

Like Sophocles said, you don't go by the brand name, like Memorex, Fuji or whatever, you go by manufacturers, such as Ricoh, Mitsubishi, and Taiyo Yuden. I've purchased Fuji DVDs made by Ricoh and by Taiyo Yuden, both are excellent media by top manufacturers.

Sometimes you have brands that manufacture their own media, in those cases you get a code similar to the brand name. An example would be the Ricoh brand with a RICOHJPN manufacturer code. Sony manufactures some of its own media as well as selling media made by other manufacturing companies. Don't mistake the brand name as being the manufacturer, sometimes they are and sometimes not. You'll find several manufacturers with their own generic brand, or brands with their own manufacturing facilities. You'll also find brands that sell media made by a number of different manufacturing companies.

However, you will find a lot of media with a potpourri of brand names from various manufacturers. To give you an idea, Ricoh alone has made DVDs for most of the popular brand names. Ritek has also been a broad supplier, others doing business in a similar manner are Taiyo Yuden and Mitsubishi. Tao Yuden is another manufacturer that sells under its own name as well as producing for others. Mitsubishi sells to a number of brands, 2 of the better known being Verbatim and Sony. And lets not leave out CMC Magnetics. That's the one that is associated with Memorex getting a bad name. CMC makes media for a number of brands though, including name companies like Verbatim. However, CMC is usually the low end product for the better brands. Memorex just chose to use CMC for most of its offerings.

 

To sophocles: Oops, that's what i meant.
To all: So how can I tell who has actually made the discs when I go to buy some?

 

I'm not Sophocles, but I may be able to shed some light on the situation. Guess I'm one of the "all". You have a difficult task when trying to figure out a manufacturer before the purchase. You can't really tell what you have until you check the codes in some cases. Some brands you can be sure of, at least their better products. Verbatim for instance has the DataLife Plus. When you see Verbatim and AZO dye together, you have a good DVD by a reputable manufacturer. Without looking that up, I think that is MCC (Mitsubishi). Generics like Taiyo Yuden, Ricoh, and Ritek are easy ones. If you see a Sony pack with a made in Japan label, it's more than likely Mitsubishi. The Taiwanese Sony with the Sony code is good as well, so that one doesn't really matter. You can search databases like MediaMatch to see who is sellilng what by cross referencing brands and manufacturers, http://www.mediamatch.de/medien.php . This site is German, so you need to know Anbieter is brand, Hersteller is manufacturer and Anzeigen is the enter command. The media names and info are in English. The search function is in the box on the lower right quadrant of the page. There's probably more of these databases around. I haven't searched any down lately. Anyone with good links should add them.

Some of the info can be dated, there it is a good idea to browse around the forums. There you have to be careful to. Some sites appear to be knowledgable, but end up being misleading. I've seen them do comparisons using names and not differentiating between brands and manufacturers. I've actually seen Ricoh and Taiyo Yuden compared to brands they supply media for. And sometimes they compare brands that use the same manufacturers. Without using ID codes, who knows what they're comparing. So again, it's consumer beware.

 

To All,
I just checked my sonys and they are made by Taiyo Yuden. I am curious however, because I can only do the test with my burner (drive F). It doesn't seem to see or list my DVD-Rom drive (drive E) on the drop down list. It only shows the burner.

By the way, BroBear. What AV do you use. I have the CA Anti-Virus that M$ sent me. Just curious.

theonejrs