What's the computer system to replace my old Pentium 4?
I've got an ancient 915 chipset Gigabyte motherboard. 1 Gig DDR Ram (ValueRam), a Radeon 800GTO GPU, 2x - 1 Terabyte hard drives (Seagate and Western Digital), Rosewell 630 Watt Supply. It must 6 years old. Dual boot XP and Ubuntu.
The motherboard stops recognising the hard drives at random times. Sometimes during booting it just waits to find the bootable drive and says boot from a CD. Sometimes after everything is up and working it will just crash - no mouse, no keyboard, only the reset button will work. If I wiggle the serial cable from one of the drives to the motherboard, it wakes up and runs. It seems like it's a cable or a connector on the motherboard that's bad.
Since this system is quite old, I'm trying to figure out what current motherboard, memory, CPU and GPU to get. I don't think I really need the 6 CPUs in a chip from AMD? I think a 955 quad would be enough for the moment($140). I've seen some motherboards that seem OK. Gigabyte GA-890FXA-UD5($167) or ASRock 890FX Deluxe3($149)? Maybe a Radeon 5830($210) and Kingston KVR1333D3K2/4GR DDR3 Ram($71). That totals about $600 - which is about my limit. There's still tax and shipping. Newegg gives breaks in the shipping.
Should I wait for the next development? Is there some big new Intel chip coming down the pike? I don't care about RAID or gaming. I do want to get a decent GPU because my gaming son would like to use this computer at times.
I've tried to read Anandtech and Tom's Hardware. But, I never get to the bottom line. They end up comparing GPUs for playing Crisis - how many frame rates is enough? I know what Cas latency is - how much time is spent writing and reading into a memory location. But, I don't know if spending more on lower Cas numbers is better than getting a higher number in the (PC3 12800) number. Should I get 6 Gb of slower memory or 4 Gb of faster memory. I need a tutorial.
This is CPU forums. Come on guys tell me this info so I can buy a good computer to replace my wreck. I don't have the time to really sit and research every component.
The motherboard stops recognising the hard drives at random times. Sometimes during booting it just waits to find the bootable drive and says boot from a CD. Sometimes after everything is up and working it will just crash - no mouse, no keyboard, only the reset button will work. If I wiggle the serial cable from one of the drives to the motherboard, it wakes up and runs. It seems like it's a cable or a connector on the motherboard that's bad.
Since this system is quite old, I'm trying to figure out what current motherboard, memory, CPU and GPU to get. I don't think I really need the 6 CPUs in a chip from AMD? I think a 955 quad would be enough for the moment($140). I've seen some motherboards that seem OK. Gigabyte GA-890FXA-UD5($167) or ASRock 890FX Deluxe3($149)? Maybe a Radeon 5830($210) and Kingston KVR1333D3K2/4GR DDR3 Ram($71). That totals about $600 - which is about my limit. There's still tax and shipping. Newegg gives breaks in the shipping.
Should I wait for the next development? Is there some big new Intel chip coming down the pike? I don't care about RAID or gaming. I do want to get a decent GPU because my gaming son would like to use this computer at times.
I've tried to read Anandtech and Tom's Hardware. But, I never get to the bottom line. They end up comparing GPUs for playing Crisis - how many frame rates is enough? I know what Cas latency is - how much time is spent writing and reading into a memory location. But, I don't know if spending more on lower Cas numbers is better than getting a higher number in the (PC3 12800) number. Should I get 6 Gb of slower memory or 4 Gb of faster memory. I need a tutorial.
This is CPU forums. Come on guys tell me this info so I can buy a good computer to replace my wreck. I don't have the time to really sit and research every component.
Comments
This system should be good enough for another 5 years assuming you don't do any video editing or play 3D games. Get 4 GB of the cheapest Kingston, Gskill or Crucial DDR 1333 RAM... I don't think latency is a factor in most real world apps.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131631 – Asus Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231190 – Memory, GSkill 2x 2GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102878 – Sapphire 5830
http://www.newegg.com/Shopping/ShoppingItem.aspx?ItemList=N82E16832116754 – Win7 64 Bit
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182039 – Rosewill 600 Watt PS
Total before shipping: $665.94
I would also check amazon.com for the prices on the above products.
I'm an Intel fan, but have no reservations recommending AMD. I just built my new system right before Patrick did his and I used the i7 860, but that's a little too pricey for your budget.
Tom's hardware compared CPUs in the $150-$200 range and gave the AMD 955 black an honorable mention and gave the i5-750 the best-for-this-price award. I guess the awards aren't the only thing happening.
I'm going back to AMD. Thanks for the advice.
One last thing - I'm having trouble deciding on a motherboard. What's the difference between 890FXA and 890GX (a bit cheaper)? I'm not going to any hairsplitting or SLIcing with two video cards. I do like the multiple 3.0 SATA slots along with many 3.0 USB ports. Don't these things interfere with each other. If I only use one PCIe card, can I use the 890GX mobo? All these numbers are not self-explanitory. MSI, Gigabyte, and ASUS have mobos with the 890FXA then there are other numbers that don't tell me much. They are about $40 dollars more than the ASRock 890-GX. I'm getting a bit overwhelmed and could use someone who's read about all of this to kind of bottom-line it for me.
Thanks in advance,
iggy8n
I myself built an i7 860 based system last December. Motherboard is Gigabyte... I am extremely pleased with this setup which I use for running virtual machines, playing some games, and video editing. You really need to use 64 bit apps to appreciate the power of both the 64 bit capable hardware and 64 bit OS. The difference in performance between the 32 bit video editor I was using before switching over to a 64 bit video editor on the i7 platform is night and day.
The advantage of getting a PC like those based on i3s, i5s, i7s is that the chipset and motherboards built around them (as well as the BIOSes and drivers) have matured and are fairly stable. I probably will wait a few months after the Sandy Bridge gets released before building a system based on it. If you don't need the PC anytime soon then it's alright to wait.
Existing Computer: Asus M3N motherboard, AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ with 2gb of Crucial DDR2 memory in maching 1gb sticks. My video card - nVidia GTs250 with 1gb GDDr5 memory, and two SATA hard disk drives will complete the machine.
I would either reccomend an i5 or an AMD Phenom quad or sexta core.
So, Sandy Bridge has finally appeared. It presents some questions that I haven't figured out yet.
The mobo chip sets seem to be: P67 - gamer, over-clocker, oriented, and H67 - 3D video, big screen stuff.
Since they provide a choice here, I've got to see what I lose by selecting one over the other mobo.
They play up the video experience for gamers that is on the i5-2500. Wouldn't it be better to add a
fermi 460 instead of using the generic on-chip video that is always just barely enough to play games?
The above link is the first of many combos using these new chips. Now, the question is whether to wait and find out
if there are any gotchas. My P4 and the dying mouse have been behaving. So, I still have time before I change the box.
It would be nice to hear about the Bulldozer to see how it compares.
That's pretty bogus. Oh well no biggie I guess.