Buying Advice for Upgrade

Question0Authority · n00b Joined: 27 Dec 2005 Posts: 3

Hi, I"m new to the forums and relativly new to Gentoo and Linux. I recently switched over with some Gentoo Veterns help. I am loving it for the most part. Now that I have an OS that can really take advantage of 64-bit, I am thinking of upgrading my existing setup. However, I wanted to get some advice on what to buy. My main uses include gaming, video editing, some photo editing, audio recording/editing and basic home use. I want to do the updgrade right and not have to buy a new processor too soon from now, possibly not for a long time. I have an ATX case and 500W power supply so I think i'm good otherwise with my computing needs. Any advice/recomendations/foresable problems would be greatly appreciated. Thanks a ton!

edit: Sorry for the edit but after all the bad things I heard about ECS, their boards aren't really worth it. So, I've changed this post to kind of be an advice on what processor/mobo to get. Anyone have any suggestions or know any good deals out there? i'm going from an Athlon XP 2400+ (2 ghz) so I'm sure even somewhat of an upgrade will be noticable. Thanks again for advice.

sirdilznik · l33t Joined: 28 Apr 2005 Posts: 731

Wow, what a crappy descriptions on that site. That's it? That's all the info the "Detailed Description" gives? Anyway it doesn't mention in the description whether either of those motherboards id AGP or PCI-e and I'm too lazy/tired to go to the manufacturer's site and find out. Also your existing ram needs to be DDR400 in order to work with either of these. Either one of these is going to cruise along. The 3700 will probably actually be slightly faster for a lot of things right now as it probably has a higher clock speed per core than the 3800 (not sure and again too tired to research right now). Very few programs actually support SMP right now so if you're going to be doing mostly one or two tasks at a time the second core won't help you out that much right now. (maybe the audio/video editing that might benefit from the second core). In the future I'm sure a lot more programs will support SMP and it will really pay off.
In short the 3700 is a better bargain NOW. The 3800 X2 will be much better a couple years from now.

whig · l33t Joined: 27 Nov 2004 Posts: 973 Location: New Zealand

The A-3700 would be better for playing games no doubt. For compiling software (and since we are using gentoo) the A-X2 would breeze through it. Tough choice. Ditto whether you keep your video card or go PCI-e. Keep in mind yet another amd socket is in the works making use of ddr2 ram.

electrofreak · l33t Joined: 30 Jun 2004 Posts: 713 Location: Ohio, USA

Personally, I hate ECS. I would recommend something from ABit, ASUS, or Gigabyte.

I've had a lot of trouble with ECS and would never buy anything from them again.
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wantilles · Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2005 12:56 pm Post subject:

Avoid MSI (for their bundled Creative audio solutions) and Gigabyte (for their bundled ITE IDE disk controllers).

From the rest, choose at will.

I would recommend DFI LANParty nF4-Ultra-D.

get sirius · Guru Joined: 27 Apr 2002 Posts: 316 Location: Madison, WI

Having built the following: A64 3400+ on Epox, A64 3700+ on Asus (both S754), dual Opteron 248s on Tyan K8W, dual Opteron 252s on Tyan K8WE (both S940), and most recently an Opteron 180 (aka A64 X2 4800+) on Asus (S939), I have to recommend going straight for the dual-core. The 3700+ is a really fine processor and at 2.4GHz and w/ 1MB cache, its performance is terrific. The DP Opteron systems are beyond terrific, but the cost to build one places them out of the plain ol' desktop category (I understand that they're not even being considered here, but wanted to mention them anyway, since others may read this post with a DP system in mind

). The performance of the dual-core cpus is so fantastic that the scarcity of multi-threaded apps at the moment really doesn't matter that much. Just multi-task the hell out of them and try to bog one down. The AMD dual-cores are like a dual processor system in that regard, only for a lot less money :!:

.

electrofreak · l33t Joined: 30 Jun 2004 Posts: 713 Location: Ohio, USA

ShadowHawkBV · Guru Joined: 27 Mar 2004 Posts: 352

Mobo: Asusu A8V-deluxe (AGP or PCI-X depending on what video card you have/want) All supported well in the kernel.

Chip: AMD-3500+ dual core socket 939 (Or better if you can manage it)

Memory: 2 X 2 Gig Dual-Channel 400MHz PC3200 DDRAM

Video Card: NVIDIA. Better support then ATI cards at the moment.

Storage: 2 X 150 Gig SATA drives (Maxtor seems to be improving/Seagate is still a reliable choice)

Enjoy.
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hvengel · Guru Joined: 19 Sep 2004 Posts: 515

I also played with some ECS motherboards and they are a horrible mess. Stay away from these at all costs.

I can also highly recommend the amd X2 processors. Working on an X2 machine is a real eye opener. Even if none of your current applications do not support multi-threading you will not beleive how responsive a X2 machine can be until you have had one.

At this point the number of apps that can directly make use of more than one processor is limited. But most of the media stuff can (video and audio). Others have talked about most of those but you need to add GIMP as well (with smp use flag set).

There is other stuff in the works as well. For example on the Hugin email list (ptx) they are now talking about making nona (the hugin stitching engine) multi-threaded. It is now a fact that multi-core and multi-processor machines are becomming fairly common and that more cores/processors is the way forward to more processing power. So I expect that most applications that have high CPU needs will start working on being multi-threaded in the near future. For the other stuff (apps that do not really need much CPU) it is really not an issue.

By the way running emerges on a X2 machine is really something. These X2 machines rock.

Question0Authority · n00b Joined: 27 Dec 2005 Posts: 3

Thanks guys. I didn't take advantage of eitehr of those deals. I decided instead to try to go for a dual core i think. I might as well bite teh bullet and go for processor that will last me awhile. From everything i've heard it's an amazing little processor that is super-overclockable if i feel like it. Thanks for everyone's advice. I"m going to try to find deals on all my other components at this time.

My proposed rig is going to be:

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3800+ X2
Mobo: DFI NF4 Ultra Infinity
RAM: Not sure, 1 gig of some PC3200
HD: WD 250GB SATA
GPU: eVGA 6600GT PCI-E or 6600GS?
Optical: NEC 3550A DVD-RW
Audio: Audigy zs2 gamer (from old system)
Will a 400 Watt power supply be enough or should i go for a 500W?

Thanks

incabolocabus · Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 5:38 pm Post subject:

arnaudsj · n00b Joined: 13 Aug 2004 Posts: 34

I would suggest you look at the Opteron 170 or 175. They are reported to work on the DFI nF4 MB serie and will give you a much better performance than the AMD64 X2 entry level proc. I just got the a system shipped to me this week from Monarch Computer System, the 170 cost me just $365 when bought on a barebone/MB combos. I recall that a AMD64 X2 3800+ is ~$325, so not much difference in price but BIG difference in performances. Not to mention that the Opteron a much better overclockers than the AMD64 apparently (I haven't tried yet).

That's my 2 cents.

Sébastien