Apokalipse
Golden Master
- Messages
- 14,559
- Location
- Melbourne, Australia
am I seeing things? mac_mogul is getting a PC?
lol
okay, here is what I recommend
I would try and get an Athlon 64 3000+ or 3200+ in socket 939 - not socket 754 because it doesn't support dual channel RAM and has a 1.6GHZ FSB rather than a 2GHZ FSB
the Abit AV8 3rd eye, the Asus A8V Deluxe or the Gigabyte K8NS are good motherboards in that socket
the 9600 pro or XT is a good card, it is not very expensive now, and gives you descent performance in games. the 9800 pro is another step up, but is not really necessary
at the very max I would say go Nvidia 6600 because it stomps all over most cards today, and is medicore in price
for an optical drive, DVD burners have goten pretty cheap now
I recommend a 16x dual layer burner from Pioneer or LG
for monitors, personally I would get a second hand 21" CRT; you can get them for $150 US. I would suggest trying to get a Sony Trinitron
Kingmax, Kingston, Corsair, Geil, Transcend and OCZ are prolly the better brands of RAM out, some more expensive than others, and a lot of them promise extreme performance, but they all should be good quality modules
for mid range gaming, 512MB should be okay, but for heavy gaming 1GB would be advisable
I would recommend getting 2x256MB or 2x512MB modules to run in dual channel
PC3200 value RAM should give you descent performance; lower timings make very little difference to higher timings, so you shouldn't spend money you don't need to on RAM
higher frequency RAM makes a lot more difference than lower latencies. at the max go PC4000 for price
Kingmax PC4000 is really good RAM, which is relatively lower priced than other PC4000 modules but can be overclocked really well. people have got it to 550MHZ at CL2.5 stable
for hard drives I recommend Seagate or Western Digital, they are really good quality
personally I like Seagate, they are very quiet and have a 5 year warranty
-----------
some info on AMD processors:
they don't run at as high frequencies as Intel processors, but have similar performance, often better.
AMD has done more with their CPU's than just making higher clock speeds, they have made their CPU's with shorter 'pipelines' so it takes less time for them to complete an instruction than an Intel CPU, so they do more per clock cycle
with shorter pipelines, a 2GHZ Athlon processor will give about the same performance as a 3GHZ Intel processor
that's why AMD use figures like 2800+ or 3400+ or whatever rather than the frequency to show its performance
also something I have learned is that Intel's processors cannot process all 32-bit instructions; this is something else AMD has better than Intel, their budget CPU's the Semprons can process all 32-bit instructions
the Athlon 64's can process all 32-bit instructions, and can also process 64-bit instructions (although they came after the G5's 64-bit processors) and when they do, their performance should theoretically double
Macintosh processors do sort of the same thing, their processors do more per clock than X86 processors, so they get better performance than higher frequency CPU's
lol
okay, here is what I recommend
I would try and get an Athlon 64 3000+ or 3200+ in socket 939 - not socket 754 because it doesn't support dual channel RAM and has a 1.6GHZ FSB rather than a 2GHZ FSB
the Abit AV8 3rd eye, the Asus A8V Deluxe or the Gigabyte K8NS are good motherboards in that socket
the 9600 pro or XT is a good card, it is not very expensive now, and gives you descent performance in games. the 9800 pro is another step up, but is not really necessary
at the very max I would say go Nvidia 6600 because it stomps all over most cards today, and is medicore in price
for an optical drive, DVD burners have goten pretty cheap now
I recommend a 16x dual layer burner from Pioneer or LG
for monitors, personally I would get a second hand 21" CRT; you can get them for $150 US. I would suggest trying to get a Sony Trinitron
Kingmax, Kingston, Corsair, Geil, Transcend and OCZ are prolly the better brands of RAM out, some more expensive than others, and a lot of them promise extreme performance, but they all should be good quality modules
for mid range gaming, 512MB should be okay, but for heavy gaming 1GB would be advisable
I would recommend getting 2x256MB or 2x512MB modules to run in dual channel
PC3200 value RAM should give you descent performance; lower timings make very little difference to higher timings, so you shouldn't spend money you don't need to on RAM
higher frequency RAM makes a lot more difference than lower latencies. at the max go PC4000 for price
Kingmax PC4000 is really good RAM, which is relatively lower priced than other PC4000 modules but can be overclocked really well. people have got it to 550MHZ at CL2.5 stable
for hard drives I recommend Seagate or Western Digital, they are really good quality
personally I like Seagate, they are very quiet and have a 5 year warranty
-----------
some info on AMD processors:
they don't run at as high frequencies as Intel processors, but have similar performance, often better.
AMD has done more with their CPU's than just making higher clock speeds, they have made their CPU's with shorter 'pipelines' so it takes less time for them to complete an instruction than an Intel CPU, so they do more per clock cycle
with shorter pipelines, a 2GHZ Athlon processor will give about the same performance as a 3GHZ Intel processor
that's why AMD use figures like 2800+ or 3400+ or whatever rather than the frequency to show its performance
also something I have learned is that Intel's processors cannot process all 32-bit instructions; this is something else AMD has better than Intel, their budget CPU's the Semprons can process all 32-bit instructions
the Athlon 64's can process all 32-bit instructions, and can also process 64-bit instructions (although they came after the G5's 64-bit processors) and when they do, their performance should theoretically double
Macintosh processors do sort of the same thing, their processors do more per clock than X86 processors, so they get better performance than higher frequency CPU's