I am looking to build a new PC. Any suggestions? Right now I am looking at AMD Athlon 64 4000 San Diego. 2 7200 Maxtor 200GB HD 1 7200 WD 80 HD 1 GIG Kingston DDR PC3200 Memory ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard I'm still deciding on a video card. What is the difference between the Clawhammer, San Diego, Venice etc AMD Chips? Any suggestions?
Your shopping list looks allright to me. The diff. between clawhammer, venice and san diego is that they are all versions of a certain processor, in this case the AMD Athlon 64. The Clawhammer is the oldest, and probably hard to get nowadays (but you don't want that one anyway now, since there are newer and improved versions now). The Venice and San Diego are the latest and current versions of the ATHLON 64 processor. There is no difference between them CPU-wise, the only difference between them is the so called Level-2 cache; all Venice CPUs have 512 kB of level-2 cache memory and all San Diego CPUs have 1MB of level-2 cache memory. For example AMD sell two versions of their Athlon 64 processor that runs at 2.4 GHz, one that has 512 kB of L-2 cache, they call it "Athlon 64 3800+" (this is a "Venice"-series CPU ). AMD also sell that same CPU with 1MB of L-2 cache, they call that one "Athlon 64 4000+" (this is then a'"San Diego" cpu). The one you have in mind. While that double amount of level-2 cache does boost performance somewhat do not expect HUGE performance improvements from that extra level-2 cache though.
Any suggestions for a faster system? Should I use a different MB that utilizes faster memory? I want the capability to support 4 HD on my PC.
i have 3 harddrives in my machine, all serial ata. thats really the way to go these days, rather than deal with jumper settings and all that. just plug them in and go. make sure you get 4 sata connections on your motherboard. and i've never liked maxtor drives, i always seem to be around when they fail my friends and fam, but maybe thats just bad luck, i know some people love them. i always go western digital. just a preference.
I only ever used WD drives. However I got 1 200 gig drive for $70 and the other for $39. So I couldn't pass that up. Both drive are ATA though. Are there motherboards that will support ATA and SATA? I guess I dont fully understand the difference between ATA and SATA.
there are absolutely motherboards that support both. all motherboards will support regular ata (PATA), and most newer ones will support sata, but you need to check how many connectors are on the motherboard (2 or 4) also, you can use any combination of the drives, so you won't have to waste the ones you already have. i used to have 1 pata drive and 2 sata drives. i've found the sata drives are much easier to deal with. faster too!
the difference between the different types of processor is the core. some have a higher cache than others and also the FSB some have only 800MHz while others have 2000MHz make sure that your mobo supports 2000fsb if your getting a 2000fsb CPU
The diff between ATA and SATA is the connection and the data transfer speeds ATA uses an IDE ribbon cable but SATA uses a SATA cable also SATA has access speeds of 1.5Gts which is conciderably faster than ATA. there is now SATA 2 (or SATA II as it may appear) which has transfer speeds of 3.0Gts id suggest you get a SATA 2 Motherboard or better still wait until next year when AMD release there new 64s which support DDR2 which be beneficial espescially if you are wanting to be gaming (which i guess you do buying an SLi board)
A lot of tech talk. I hope we have not been confusing things more for you. Bottomline is you have gotten hold of a couple of ATA (IDE) drives and you just want to use these in your system. You've probably connected these drives to your primary ide connector on your motherboard as master and slave. And your cd or dvd drive(s) in the same fashion on your secondary ide motherboard connector. If not, make sure your drives are connected this way and all should be fine.
