Yes buying a pentium d would be suicide.
Core duo's at lower clock speeds were faster than the dual core pentium d's at higher clock speeds. Pentium d's are old pentium 4 legacy technology.
Core 2 Duo's (conroe) are that much faster than Core Duo's.
So yes, that's about the size of it. I'm willing to wait for the Conroe, but only for so long, and then I may pull the trigger on something else. I'd like to get the best I can get in the framework I have to deal with.
You wont see Conroes start hitting online etailers until Mid Aug. at the earliest.. and even then expect to be price gouged.
More annoying is the lack of motherboard options.. No Nvidia based mobo's that I can see are readily available.. and the Intel based ones will not support SLI.. just Crossfire.
Pred - You'll need to pick a different video card. The X800 (while an excellent card) is AGP, and your shuttle is PCI-Express. This is good news as far as your budget goes because you can get a more powerful PCI-E card for less than you're listing on the X800.
If you'd prefer to stick with ATi (and AIW) -- take a look at the X1900 AIW (currently on sale for $235 :shock:). I've been using nVidia for quite some time and can't say enough good things about eVGA -- excellent customer service and solid cards. They have a 7900GT for $269.99 at the 'egg.
Hope that helps and good luck with the build.
Would the 7900GT be a significant improvement?
Oh god yes. I'm pretty sure it even outperforms that X1900 he listed by a reasonable amount.
Prederick wrote:Would the 7900GT be a significant improvement?
Oh god yes. I'm pretty sure it even outperforms that X1900 he listed by a reasonable amount.
I think most folks would agree that the 7900GT outperforms the X1900 by a comfortable margin and, given the choice between the two, I'd go with the former. Would you be able tell a real-life difference in framerates? Maybe, maybe not.
Of course, the 7900GT does not have the cable input so it's something to consider if that's important to you.
I would cut down on the storage and see if you can get a faster drive for performance. Check out the Western Digital Raptor thread. The one you have listed is a ATA100 that is kind of slow. Perfect for storage, not exactly ideal for gaming.
The other thread is here in the tech forum.
Do you really need a floppy drive? Why not just make a bootable USB thumb drive?
Check you local university for prices on XP SP2 with sutdent discount. You can probably get a break in the price. Your comp science department is probably a member of the MSDN and students get it for free if they are.
The whole point of the raptor is to keep spin times on the disc to a minimum, so you would only use the raptor for windows and games. A second drive of whatever stats you want would be used for storage.
So a smaller SATA Raptor for a lower price would be ideal, while any drive with enough storage for holding your porn collection.
This for windows and games. For storage I would change the IDE drive you picked for a SATA drive of equal specs. Keeping them seperate also negates the hassle of doing backups of alot of stuff. No need to deal with jumpers and the cables are smaller for better airflow. Does it have to be 500 GB? You could save some cash for smaller sizes on these drives. My windows partition is only 30 GB right now, but my storage is near a TB.
One thing I noticed with that barebones, it has a external SATA connector. This means you can just have a drive hanging outside the case plugged in so as to improve airflow inside the case. Less heat = better.
If you do get a IDE drive, get rounded IDE cables.
Check you local university for prices on XP SP2 with sutdent discount. You can probably get a break in the price. Your comp science department is probably a member of the MSDN and students get it for free if they are.
Also if you have more than one PC in the house you should just become a registered partner at MS (it's free) and get the action pack. For 300$ a year you get 10 licenses of pretty much everything client side and some server junk you may never use. The page is currently wrong, it says Windows XP Upgrade Edition, it's 10 licenses for XP Pro FULL installs (which can also be used as upgrades). If you don't renew a year later it's not like the stuff expires though I've never stopped subcribing to see if my keys wouldn't activate afterward but you'll get Vista and Office2K7 when they ship.
A bunch of stuff about SATA/IDE
Are games really suffering yet from a bottleneck of the drive bus? Granted, I would got for EIDE (133 instead of 100) but is SATA getting you all that much more?
Every little bit helps. But remember that it isn't just the bus issue only. Like I said in the previous post, smaller cables to manage so better airflow, no issues with jumpers, and you can have on external of the case. The price difference is also worth it.
I would get an SATA hd for this build simply because this shuttle only has one IDE channel, and that's for your DVD drive.
It's not going to be a noticeable difference between 133 and 150, but to use 2 IDE items on a single channel in a box with 4 sata connections seems strange to me.
I just built an SN25P, which is the same chassis but with socket 939 (I know I know, but my 939 proc is only 6 months old).
It would be a shame, I think, to buy a tip top chassis, great video card, great ram and then allow even the slightest chance of slowing down the I/O.
I own a setup similar to what Edwin suggests (74GB Raptor + 250GB Seagate) and while it does offer slightly faster load times in high-disk tasks (loading BF2 maps for example), I have a hard time fully justifying the money. That in addition to the fact that some of the higher-capacity drives offer performance that is close to that of a Raptor and it seems like the best decision for you (and your budget) is to stick with the one large drive setup.
Is gaming performance a big deal? I figured it was since you are going with a pretty nice system here.
Options
a) Use the raptor for performance and keep your existing drive for storage until you can get more disposable income for a bigger drive. This saves money.
b) Get raptor and a medium sized hard drive for storage while also using your current 100 GB for storage as well. This option costs more but you will have more storage.
c) Go with what Chum says.
a. Raptor for windows
b. Current 100 GB for storage
c. Another HDD that you buy. Say 200-400 GB to save money.
The setup you have now looks pretty damn good to me man.
It even kinda spanks my rig I just built in November and then upgraded in January.
So sad
Switch to Media Center. It has all of the features of XP Home plus media added goodness.
NewEgg.com has the Seagate Barracuda ST3320620AS 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive for $95 - $5 coupon code buybarracuda [Exp ?] = $90 with free shipping. This be a drive that uses Perpendicular Recording Technology, also covered by Seagate's signature 5-yr warranty.
NewEgg.com has the XFX PV-T71G-UCF7 GeForce 7900GT 256MB GDDR3 VIVO PCI Express x16 Video Card for $269 - $40 rebate [Exp 8/31] + $6 shipping = $235 shipped.
NewEgg.com has the Seagate Barracuda ST3320620AS 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive for $95 - $5 coupon code buybarracuda [Exp ?] = $90 with free shipping. This be a drive that uses Perpendicular Recording Technology, also covered by Seagate's signature 5-yr warranty.
*sound of Soda being spit out at high velocity*
SOLD GOOD SIR.
I just ordered and installed this HD Pred, loving it so far.
Are you going to get a new monitor too?
How cheap do you want them?
http://bensbargains.net/deal/1643/
http://bensbargains.net/deal/1614/
http://bensbargains.net/deal/1574/
Check the reviews first, I'm just linking to deals.
I'm pretty sure you can use this in your PC.
http://bensbargains.net/deal/1713/
Outpost.com has this 2GB PC2-6400 800MHz DDR2 Dual Channel Kit OCZ OCZ2P8002GK Memory for $185 - $50 rebate [Exp 8/1] = $135 with free shipping. NewEgg reports that this memory has a timing of 4-5-4-15, with included heat spreaders (to spread the heat).
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