Hardware Recommendations?

[Bondiablo]

I'm about to build a new system from scratch and would like to hear some hardware recommendations since I'm planning on doing a fairly significant amount of VHS to VCD conversions. I already have the Canopus ADVC-100 and an NEC Firewire card and both Windows 98SE and Windows 2000, haven't decided which I'm going to use yet or if I'm going to try a dual boot. Also I'm trying to stay around $1000 for a case w/ power supply, mother board, intel pentium 4 processor, a single stick of 256MB RAM, 120GB hard drive, video, sound & modem cards, CD-RW, floppy drive and an optical mouse.

I guess the thing I'm least certain about is the mother board. I'm pretty sure I'm going with a turtle beach santa cruz sound card and some kind of nvidia geforce video card.

[Sefy]

Well, i'm not gonna recommand you a Pentium 4, but here is a good AthlonXP setup you might like to consider:

Mainboard: MSI K7N415 PRO nForce (includes: GeForce2MX/Ethernet100/AC3 Audio Decoder/Encoder onboard, 3 x DDR memory sockets) = 100$
DDR RAM: 512mb PC2100 = 102$
CPU: Athlon XP 2000 = 164$
HDD: Western Digital 120gb with 8mb Cache = 192$
Floppy: 1.44mb = 3$
DVD: Pioneer 500M = 45$
CDRW: Lite-On 40x12x48 = 81$
Monitor: Philips 109 19" .23 1920x1440 = 199$

Total of: 883$
I don't think i forgot anything, but if I did, i think this covers just about all, and still under your 1000$ limit with much higher system setup.

[d4n13l]

Most importantly, dont forget a nice optical Intellimouse Explorer.
You may also consider a nice little IDE RAID setup. Get something like two 60Gb drives and a PCI IDE RAID controller card and run them as a stripped array. It wont add that much to the overall cost.
If you want an Intel P4 mobo, try the Abit TH711-Raid (RDRAM).
For a graphics card, try a MSI G4MX440-T, it's based on Nvidia's Geforce4 MX440 chipset and it has 64Mb of DDR @ 550Mhz on board. It also has a S-Video TV-out. Comes in at around £90, dont know about dollars. It may a "budget" G4 but it canes the competition, and unless you are seriously, seriously, into hi-res gaming, you wont need anything more.

[Bondiablo]

The pentium 4 is one thing that I don't intend to change. My main concern is compatibility, i mean i want it to be as fast as possible too but, I don't want to run into the problems others have experienced with certian chipsets so maybe a better question is which boards should I avoid? Also, I absolutely will not use any intergrated sound, video or modems.

Here is what I have from my old system that I'm keeping:

Hitachi SuperScan Elite 802 21" monitor
Altec Lansing ADA890 THX speakers
MS Elite Natural keyboard

And here is what I'm leaning toward for the new system:

Intel Pentium 4 2Ghz processor
256MB PC2100 ECC RAM (leaving at least 2 sockets for furture upgrade)
Western Digital 120GB 7200rpm w/ 8MB cache hard drive
nvidia 2, 3 or 4 geforce video card
turtle beach santa cruz sound card
3com/USRobotics 56K v.90 internal voice modem
(yes im still stuck with dial up )
Plextor 24/10/40 CD-RW or Lite On (if the price tag is getting too high)

I'm going to go without a DVD drive for a while but will eventually get a DVD+RW or DVD-RW.

[Bondiablo]

2 boards I was looking at so far were the ASUS P4B266 and the Abit BD7. Anything good or bad to say about those?

[Sefy]

I won't recommand a Pentium 4, in the last year, they already changed 3 types of boards, so it's a complete waste of money, and not as future ready as you think, especialy if you keep having to change your board so it will accept new CPU's.

Regarding compatibility, i've not heard of a single person yet complaining about it with Athlon XP which also has SSE like P4.

But I do know programmers complained about P4's compatibility problems, and for example Oracle doesn't work on it and requires a patch for P4, not for AMD, interesting no ?

If you don't want integrated, then what you can do is change teh board, i'd recommand the EPoX 8K3A2 that will come out soon, around 100$, and the GeForce4 MX440 with 64mb will cost you around 75$, and you can take off the things you don't want from what I suggested, and you will be with a super strong system, with MUCH under 1000$

[Bondiablo]

It was the VIA and AMD chipsets on the mother boards that I meant I've heard people complaining about not the processor.

[Sefy]

Same stuff is reported with Intel Chipsets, but their P4 also has compatibility issues with some programs.

Between Asus and Abit, I recommand Abit, or try looking for EPoX and MSI as well, EPoX delivers a very loaded and stable boards with less cost then most of the other boards.

I still strongly recommand you to consider AMD, heck, if you have patience, you can even go for the next Athlon Pro 64 which will come out next year

[zzyzzx]

Just avoid the VIA MB chipsets and you will be O-tay!

[Bondiablo]

That seems pretty much impossible if you use the Athlon XP and PC2100 DDR RAM.

[Sefy]

zzyzzx, I have a VIA KT133A chipset and don't know how to disappoint you, but it works fabulously great to me!

[zzyzzx]

It is possbile to build a nice AMD system and not use VIA chips. And finding complaints about VIA chipsets on the internet is not difficult. Sefy, Id' say that you are very lucky that you cna get yours to work right or maybe your VIA chipset is less crappy than my VIA chipset.

[guyincognitoo]

Dont know if you still want to go with the P4 or not, but if you do decide to change your mind and go with AMD, i would recomend the Shuttle AK31A. Its not a loaded board by anymeans, but you said youre going to use all external cards. It has the VIA chipset, but its the KT266A which fixed previous problems. Big thing that this board has it thats cheap. You can get it, Retail Box, from PriceWatch for ~65. I'm looking into getting it myself (college student, no money). I've read lots of reviews about it, has really good reviews, say its a really stable board.

Here are some the reviews if you want to look them over:

http://www.amdmb.com/article-display.php?ArticleID=128&PageID=1
http://www.motherboards.org/articlesd/motherboard-reviews/978_1.html

[Bondiablo]

I'm still leaning towards the 2Ghz P4 but I'd consider the Athlon XP if I could find a good board that doesnt use the VIA chipset. What Athlon would be comparable to the 2Ghz P4? The 2000+, 2100+...?

[Sefy]

I don't know what you have against VIA, sure they had some buggy chipset, but compared to the rest, like ALi magic for example, there isn't much competition.

I'd go for the EPoX 8K3A (or wait for the 8K3A2) and of course if you want raid, go for the + version of each board.

That is THE most stable board, and will give you the BEST price/performance out of all boards out there, and it already won over dozens of awards, and its amongst the best in overclocking.

As for Comparable AthlonXP to P4, i'd say even the 1800+ beats the P4 2ghz in some tests, but according to AMD, the comparable one is the 2000+

[Spicuzza]

Bondiablo, regarding your P4 vs Athlon CPU.

It was explained to me that when the P4 reaches a certain temperature Intel has built into the BIOS to cut the processor speed in half to reduce heat. i.e. 1.4 gig cpu now operates at 700 mhz. Thus, slower machine.

The Athlon does not do that and is one reason that AMD stresses proper cooling for the CPU and the box.

Now, I DO NOT claim this to be absolute fact! This is simply what a computer shop tech told me. And, as I'm sure we have all experienced, sometimes those guys can't find their ass with both hands.

Anecdotally, anytime I'm at someone's house that has a Pentium CPU comparable to my Athlon 1.33, the machine is always sluggish opening programs and doing general computing tasks.

You simply get used to the speed of the machine that you use most often and can immediately tell the difference in overall performance. I've yet to sit in front of a P4 machine that even equals the Athlon, anecdotally.

Gary Spicuzza
Holiday, FL

[Sefy]

I know this isn't relevent, but my english vocabulary isn't all that big, can someone explain what the word "anecdotally" means ? sorry if I sound dumb.

[Spicuzza]

Sefy, anecdotally, (anecdote), basically means your telling a short story of an amusing or interesting nature.

In my post I'm trying to convey to anyone who may read it that I am not trying to represent what I'm saying as fact, but, rather as an interesting story based on my experience with the subject matter and what was verbally expressed to me.

By the way, I enjoy reading your posts and understand where you live.

Stay safe!

Gary Spicuzza
Holiday, FL USA

[Sefy]

Thanks Spicuzza! I appriciate you taking the time to explain that word, I sorta reliase I may sound like an idiot for not knowing it, but english is just my second language, and i've not seen that word yet.

By the way, I rather agree with your story there, especialy with the"get used to the speed of the machine that you use most often" part!

[hash420]

Hmm.. I was wondering what the word "raid" means. I've seen it a few times in other posts as well. What exactly is it?

Also, sence this post is open i'll just post here. I too am going to build a PC soon. After I buy a car that is.. so it'll be bout a month till I actualy start saving money for parts. So i've been doing research on Motherboards (not too familuar with them and don't know alot about em), pretty much im leaning towards the AMD CPU's. But last time I read the AMD Anthlon Tbird was best for encoding, is the Anthlon XP series best now?

Also, :P I was wondering some good sites that explain how to build your PC from scratch and what I need and all that. Never actualy done it before. But im not an idiot and can figure it out with good directions.

And what exactly is this DDR Ram, last I heard the SDR Ram was the best.. jeez im just not up to date anymore am I?

[Sefy]

Wel, there are many types of Raid, so i'll give you the "basic" two that are known and used in the IDE version of Raid. Raid can take 2 identical HDD, lets say 40gb and make them look like a single 80gb drive, which increases the speed considerably, however, if you lose one drive, the data is lost on both drives, also, your OS must support it.
The other supported Raid is that one drive is essentialy a backup of the second drive, so if your first HDD dies, you don't lose anything cause it's all backed up exactly the same on the second HDD, so if you have 2 drives of 40gb, you basicly only have 40gb, since the other drive is constant backup.

As for webpages that teach i'm not familiar with, but for good information pages try: www.aceshardware.com and www.tomshardware.com

[Spicuzza]

hash420,

RAID:
Redundant Array of Independent Disks

The link below does a great job of explaining RAID.
http://raid.com/04_00.html

[Greg12]

have you considered DVD-RW?

[hash420]

Ah, I see that's pretty cool. So could you have it setup so say two 40 GB hard drives acted as one, and you had an additional hard drive backing those two (as one) up?

Hmm, might consider that now.

http://www4.tomshardware.com/video/01q4/011207/index.html

Take a look at this, Faster then Real-Time Encoding, Pentiums.
I was leaning toward Anthlon CPU's but should I be concerned with this? I mean that's pretty good. Anthlon can encode in real-time I thought I heard somebody say. But I read somewhere they weren't supposed to support SSE until 2003. So should I just get a Anthlon MB or Intel? The best for converting wise that is. Cause this beats the Anthlon now if its true. :P

[Sefy]

Athlon XP and Duron with the Morgan Core (the new 950mhz+) have the SSE instruction as well as 3DNow and MMX and FPU, and I don't trust Tom's Hardware when it comes to Benchmarking.

I don't think anyone should take too much of the benchmarks done online, in most cases you'll never reach that speed, because those are carefully optimized systems.