A few questions about building a new pc...

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MvD

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My present system:

Intel P4 2.4Ghz
768mb Pc2700 Ram
GeForce Fx 5700
Asus P4PE mobo
Creative Audigy platinum
Maxtor 60gb
Segate 80gb
Nec CDROM
Samsung CDRW/DVD

My planned system:
AMD Athlon 64 3500+
MSI Neo2 platinum
Antec Sonata + additional fan

+old components

I am planning to build a new PC. I planning a spending not more than $600, but thats just for the Case+Mobo+CPU. As such I need it to be quiet since I am planning on trying to get a mail server running on this machine. I mostly listen to music and browse the net on my PC, but I am also into audio/video editing/encoding and bit a of gaming (HL2). I've got several questions:

1)Considering my present system, is there any point in upgrading? This is especially relevant considering that I am getting a state of the art laptop in june 2006.

2)Is it viable to upgrade my present system? As I see it the biggest bottle neck is that my mobo only supports AGPx4.

3)I know that GHz and cache sizes aren't everything in CPUs, but I still feel weird that the new AMD that I am planning to buy will have less GHz than my present CPU.

4) The Antec case that I am planning to buy is black, my CDROM covers are all grey is there anything I can do about that?

5)I've got my present system WinXP optimized for my needs. It will be a pain to get everything set up just as I want it (especially considering the lack of 64 bit applications). Would it be possible to simply put my present HD into the new system and let windows simply update the hardware settings?
 
1)Considering my present system, is there any point in upgrading? This is especially relevant considering that I am getting a state of the art laptop in june 2006.
Yeah, that intel isn't that powerful man. I can guarantee you my processor at 2.2GHz would beat it and mines not even a 64bit CPU like the one you're planning on getting.

One of the other moderators jaksback OC'd his intel up to 2.8GHz and I left mine at 2.5GHz and it completely wiped the floor with his in the benches ( Sorry jak! Dont beat me up! :p :D) Beyond that you're using PC2700 RAM which is giving you quite the bottleneck, so if you haven't considered getting some PC3200 for that AMD64 you really should as you'd seriously be bottlenecking the CPU's performance.

2)Is it viable to upgrade my present system? As I see it the biggest bottle neck is that my mobo only supports AGPx4.
Well, AGP4x and 8x really isn't as big as difference as you'd think, but like I said above your RAM is what's killing you and a 2.4GHz intel really isn't that powerful anymore. A 2.4GHz AMD would easily beat it in a benchmark.

3)I know that GHz and cache sizes aren't everything in CPUs, but I still feel weird that the new AMD that I am planning to buy will have less GHz than my present CPU.
AMDs can get more done per clock cycle than Intels can, which means it can get the same amount done with less GHz being used as they have shorter fatter pipelines whereas Intel has longer fatter pipelines for those nice big clock speed numbers. Trust me, that 3500+ will destroy the 2.4GHz Intel, and especially when a 64bit OS comes out, it'll really shine.

4) The Antec case that I am planning to buy is black, my CDROM covers are all grey is there anything I can do about that?
You could try some drive stealthing as seen here: http://www.casemodgod.com/drive_stealthing.htm

or you could simply pop the front face plate off and spray paint it black, just did that tonight myself actually and it looks pretty slick and it's incredibly easy.

5)I've got my present system WinXP optimized for my needs. It will be a pain to get everything set up just as I want it (especially considering the lack of 64 bit applications). Would it be possible to simply put my present HD into the new system and let windows simply update the hardware settings?
Nope, with any major hardware change you MUST format your hard drive. Especially crossing differen't CPU's and their respective motherboards you'd be looking for loads of driver troubles and a hard drive that'll sputter along and not work like it should.

I'm sure a lot of people are getting tired of me posting this but I'm gonna anyway :p

It's a bench using SiSoftware Sandra when my CPU was at 2.7GHz

Just observe some of the CPU's it goes against including a 3.4 and 3.8GHz Intel.

I will say however, that mine will beat that 3.8GHz in the Integer part, but not the floating point, but the fact is is that it's still quite a competitor to the much higher clocked Intel.

Also mine is an Athlon XP whereas yours is an AMD64 so yours at 2.2GHz would beat mine at 2.2GHz

OCSS3.jpg


hope that answers some of your questions
 
Thanks for the answers! I'll probably go ahead and buy the AMD64 system (with PC3200 RAM).
 
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