Need advice on pc cofiguration

[AryaputrA]

Would like to invest on a new pc for both surfing and programming and also gaming. I'm planning on INtell Pentium 4, but need advice on the motherboard, ram, hd and graphic card to go with it. Advice much appreciated.

Thankx

[Jason]

Would like to invest on a new pc for both surfing and programming and also gaming. I'm planning on INtell Pentium 4, but need advice on the motherboard, ram, hd and graphic card to go with it. Advice much appreciated.

Ok, well, it all depends on your price range. Depending on your OS too I guess. EG: Win XP has a minimum requirement of 128mb ram so you have to have more than that. I would suggest you go with ddr ram and at least 256, for heavier gamming and or heavy programing with lots of compiling, I would say up to 512mb. As far as hd, you should be fine with a 40gig 7200 RPM hd. Western Digital has some good ones, you might even want to have an 80 gig, depending on the amount of games and the type of programing your doing. Graphics card, Nvidia and ATI are the better ones. I would suggeset those with 64-128mb ddr ram on them.

hope that helps...


Jason

[AryaputrA]

Thankx a lot Jason, i'm still planning to use win2000 and which motherboard would you recommend? i hv a budget around 700 and between Creative and Radeon cards which would you choose ? :)

[Jason]

Well, Asus makes good mother boards and Creative is sound as far as I know. I perticularly have a Radeon card. I think its great. As long as you get the good ones. I hear the 9000 are pretty good as well as the All in wonder cards. And I was shopping at NewEgg.com a few weeks back and I was doing a similar deal as you I guess you could say, I was looking at the P4 2.4ghz 800mhz fsb chip as my CPU and then they had a nice Intel MB that I liked. here is the model number BOXD865PERLL and here is a link to it on the Intel site http://www.intel.com/design/motherbd/rl/index.htm . Hope that all helps...


Jason

[mouse]

M-Audio Revolution 7.1 is a nice, good value, high quality, sound card ;)

Look for a motherboard with i865 or i870 chipset and get at least two sticks of PC3200 ram, this will enable dual channel memory access and using PC3200 will enable sync with the processor's fsb (assuming you're using an 800MHz bus P4).

gfx card's are bugging me at the moment, the 9800 is a good card, but very expensive considering its age. I believe new models from both nVidia and Ati are soon to appear so buying the right card for the right price is quite tricky at the mo.

[Jason]

mouse: pc 3200 sync's with the 800mhz fsb...but does it have to be dual channel?


Jason

[oracleguy]

Originally posted by mouse
Look for a motherboard with i865 or i870 chipset

You mean i875. :) The 875 based boards are going to cost more because the chipset is more expensive. An 865 will be fine, but if you can afford it, go with the 875.

If you are going to be doing programming and gaming and stuff, I'd recommend at least an 80Gig. They aren't very much more, so it is worth it. Considering the average install for a game is 750MB to 1.5Gigs, 40 would be probably be too small. Also, the Western Digital ones that have the 8MB transfer cache and run at 7200 RPMs are really nice. I believe the 80gig costs less than $100 USD.

If you want to get a P4 with HyperThreading and the 800MHz FSB mouse spoke of, the slowest you can go is 2.4GHz. And that chip costs around 200 dollars.

[Jason]

If you want to get a P4 with HyperThreading and the 800MHz FSB mouse spoke of, the slowest you can go is 2.4GHz. And that chip costs around 200 dollars.

Newegg.com has them for >$175USD


Jason

[sage45]

But well worth the 200 if you are using a multi-processor os... :D

-sage-

[mouse]

Originally posted by oracleguy
You mean i875. :) The 875 based boards are going to cost more because the chipset is more expensive. An 865 will be fine, but if you can afford it, go with the 875. Indeed I do. And bear in mind that some Springdale (i865) boards, such as the Asus one, were beating the Asus i875's on performance... not sure if Asus have addressed this mind.

PC3200 runs at 200MHz, or DDR400, this would sync with a 400MHz fsb P4, but you need dual channel PC3200 to sync a 800mhz fsb P4.

[AryaputrA]

Thankx a lot guys, but what's a dual channel memory ( using 2 sticks or RAM ? )

[Jason]

basically its how efficient the memory is for the computer and on the memory, you will need two sticks and a bored that allows dual channel memory on it. The two sticks would then work together to speed up and pass inofmation from disk to CPU...stuff like that. But the two sticks must be the same size and speed, otherwise you get a stick running slower then its supposed (if not the same speed) and I don't remember what happens if their not the same size.


Jason

[AryaputrA]

Thankx for the explanation, Jason :thumbsup: