Hey guys.. I am going to be building a new computer soon, and thought I'd get some feedback from you guys.
I am an Engineering student, so will be running a lot of processor intensive math/engineering simulations with a lot of floating point operations. There might also be a lot of disk accesses, but not all the time. While it's doing that, I also need the ability to write reports, compile stuff, surf the net etc. So I was thinking Intel with hyper-threading.
1) Intel "seems" to be better at multitasking during heavy work loads than AMDs. Is this right?
2) I also want to play games like Half Life 2, etc. Sometimes even DURING a simulation .. But not always.
My budget is not unlimitted, so I would really like to get a bang for the buck. My proposed system:
CPU - Intel 3.2 GHZ, socket 775
MB - Abit AG8
Vid card - 6600 GT
Memory - OCZ 1 GB - 2x512M PC3200, 2.5-3-3-7
HDD - Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 SATA150 160G w/NCQ
PSU - Enermax NoiseTaker 420W
Case – Enermax CS-800TA
With keyboard, mouse, CDRW, DVD Rom, floppy, 56K modem, the price comes to $1150 (US) before taxes = $1400 (Cdn) before taxes.
What do you guys think?. Please suggest replacement parts if you think some areas could be improved for a similar price.
How is this setup for overclocking?. I won't even try to do that until later on since there is no point at this stage. I will only try to overclock when my system performance degrades with respect to the apps I am running. I guess the memory is questionable. Hopefully it still supports decent overclocking. And I am thinking of using the stock fan shipped with the intel box. The case will have 2 case fans.
Thanks guys.
I am an Engineering student, so will be running a lot of processor intensive math/engineering simulations with a lot of floating point operations. There might also be a lot of disk accesses, but not all the time. While it's doing that, I also need the ability to write reports, compile stuff, surf the net etc. So I was thinking Intel with hyper-threading.
1) Intel "seems" to be better at multitasking during heavy work loads than AMDs. Is this right?
2) I also want to play games like Half Life 2, etc. Sometimes even DURING a simulation .. But not always.
My budget is not unlimitted, so I would really like to get a bang for the buck. My proposed system:
CPU - Intel 3.2 GHZ, socket 775
MB - Abit AG8
Vid card - 6600 GT
Memory - OCZ 1 GB - 2x512M PC3200, 2.5-3-3-7
HDD - Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 SATA150 160G w/NCQ
PSU - Enermax NoiseTaker 420W
Case – Enermax CS-800TA
With keyboard, mouse, CDRW, DVD Rom, floppy, 56K modem, the price comes to $1150 (US) before taxes = $1400 (Cdn) before taxes.
What do you guys think?. Please suggest replacement parts if you think some areas could be improved for a similar price.
How is this setup for overclocking?. I won't even try to do that until later on since there is no point at this stage. I will only try to overclock when my system performance degrades with respect to the apps I am running. I guess the memory is questionable. Hopefully it still supports decent overclocking. And I am thinking of using the stock fan shipped with the intel box. The case will have 2 case fans.
Thanks guys.