Posted: 2/20/2004 10:22:04 PM EDT
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I'm ordering the parts this weekend Going from 400mhz Celeron 192MB RAM 4 gig HD 20 gig HD Win 98 to 2.8mhz P4 ASUS P4P MotherBoard 512MB DDR3200 RAM 80gig HD (Keeping the 4 & the 20gig too) Bigger Midtower case, 420w power supply Win XP The video and sound cards will have to stay the same for now. These will carry over 48xtrue speed CDRom DVD+- writer/CDR/W To be added later Vantec HD swap bay ATI 9800 AIW video Card (will require exra cooling fans) Sound Blaster Platinum It was August of 1999 when I put this thing together, only the DVD burnder has been added since roughly that time and it's still running on it's initial install of Win98. It's time for a new one!!!! I need to order a good FPS game for it too. |
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Phil, get the FPS after you get the vid card. go with a MUCH bigger harddrive, at least 120 megs, I just got a 200 gig seagate and i love it. You might also want to consider an even gig of ram, XP is a memory hog. My current system is a hotrodded dell 400SC. 2.4 ghz, 512 megs ram and a 200 gig harddrive, with a 9600XT coming for it, and that's just my garage server:) |
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... It's always fun moving up, but ole' [b]sixgunsblazing[/b] knows what he speaketh. You should always double the size of the HD you "think" you'll need. Same with RAM. ... On a convoluted but related tangent, I've been finding all kinds of cool uses for older ultra-cheap used CPU lately. ... My most recent project: A dedicated CPU with 80 gig HD for driving my own version of a touch-screen jukebox for my new recreation room, w00t! |
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Quoted: Phil, get the FPS after you get the vid card. go with a MUCH bigger harddrive, at least 120 megs, I just got a 200 gig seagate and i love it. You might also want to consider an even gig of ram, XP is a memory hog. My current system is a hotrodded dell 400SC. 2.4 ghz, 512 megs ram and a 200 gig harddrive, with a 9600XT coming for it, and that's just my garage server:) I'm on a tight tight budget, that's why the 512 is all on one chip. Another chip in a few months and boom it's a gig of RAM. For Harddrives the case I picked has 5 interior drive bays. The 4 and 20gig drives will be driven from an add on PCI based controller card. Plus the MB has a Serial ATA controller so I will probably add a whopping drive later. I'm thinking twin 160s. I can run Serial and IDE at the same time right? I will probably have to pony up for a video card quickly the RAge Fury I have now is a 32M card and it'll most likely choke pretty badly. HalfLife worked well on this system though. |
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Phil, with that motherboard you need to move right up to one gig of dual channel memory. Frys in Renton had a deal on Corsair a while back, DDR TWINX1024-3200C2PT for under $200 a gig. And since you are geting a SATA capable mobo you might was well buy a SATA hard drive too. |
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Joe you can't be trying to tell me that XP needs a gig of RAM ro run smoothly. I can add the other 512 later. 512 is $84 the 2 pack would be $167 so it's not a big price difference. I'm sticking with a medium sized IDE HD for now because I'll most likely end up moving it elsewhere eventually and there's no guarantee that where it goes will have a SATA controller. I usually stay a couple of steps away from the cutting edge, it keeps the prices down and it lets me get well reviewed equipment. |
| just below cutting edge is where I live. Phil, before you place that order, check out slickdeals.net. I cherry picked various sales and was ruthless with pricematching and rebates. I saved at least 100 bucks on my last build 512 megs kingston 333 ddr was only 49.99, 200 gig seagate was only 99, dvd-rw was only 69.99, ect.. now just waiting for the right sale on a new vid card.. |
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Naw dude, but you have a dual channel memory motherboard, you might was well buy dual channel memory. The memory I am talking about comes as a kit, it's two sticks of 512 DDR400 dual channel memory. You could get a 512 kit of two sticks of 256 DDR memory. If you buy a SATA hard drive now they come with both the SATA and IDE cable connects. At some point in time they are going to make all SATA connect hard drives. Your motherboard "should" come with SATA cables and adapters for both the power and drive connect. My Abit did. Quoted: Joe you can't be trying to tell me that XP needs a gig of RAM ro run smoothly. I can add the other 512 later. 512 is $84 the 2 pack would be $167 so it's not a big price difference. I'm sticking with a medium sized IDE HD for now because I'll most likely end up moving it elsewhere eventually and there's no guarantee that where it goes will have a SATA controller. I usually stay a couple of steps away from the cutting edge, it keeps the prices down and it lets me get well reviewed equipment. |
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Quoted: Plus the MB has a Serial ATA controller so I will probably add a whopping drive later. I'm thinking twin 160s. I can run Serial and IDE at the same time right? I will probably have to pony up for a video card quickly the RAge Fury I have now is a 32M card and it'll most likely choke pretty badly. HalfLife worked well on this system though. You will probably find that the video card will not work in the new system. They have changed the AGP spec, and the newer spec is not backwards compatible. I tried this last year and had to splurge for the new card right away. I would not even bother with your existing 4 gig drive. It will be old, slow, and likely be the bottleneck on the controller. IDE drives are best left at one per controller, to minimize the access contention. You will find the difference in speed between even an 80 gig drive and the 20 gig drive to be amazing. The 4 gig drive will seem like a CD. The ASUS P4P board is a damn good board though. You might be happy with the built in sound card. Mine sounds great. Good luck, Geoff |
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I used to think 30 gigs was enough...then 80...then 120... I have 240 now and HOPE I have enough. I mean damn..I got games that install at 3 gigs! And video is HUGE! And I agree about ram..XP loves at least 1 gigs minimum. Trust us, these new software games/etc require it! Sgtar15 |
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Any of you west coast guys got a computer ya wanna sell?? I need one for internet, and stuff. Currently; Compaq MFG 1999 20gig, 384mb ram. CD/cdr, and cd burner. Win 98 SE. IE 5.5. I am NOT a gamer. I still have 16 gig empty on my HD. This one is old, and I fear she'll crash. |
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Quoted: Mostly pirates and pronodicts need 80, 120, and 200G drives. [b]Most cannot afford purchasing that much software to fill triple-digit gig drives[/b] So, how many of you are blind? Damn Stator! Every hear of Video?? Mpegs? DVD? I can [i]legally[/i] record any TV program from my tuner card onto my HDD. 5 minutes of video can take up several gigs of HDD space depending on the quality of recording. MOHAA= 1.2 gigs Call of Duty= 1.2 gigs Raven Shiled 1.9 gigs and I know I have one game that is 3 gigs, may be Splinter Cell I got many more...and would say the average is 1.6 gigs install per game. So 1.6 x 25games(guesstimate)=40 gigs HDD space used. Plus OS, plus video, plus pics. plus etc. So I can easily fill up 120gigs...then I need back up.... See...it ain't that hard really SGtar15 |
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My idea of a $4-500 upgrade has gotten close to $1000 Good call on the video card problem Gander, my current Rage 128 will NOT work with the P4P800 Motherboard so it's $175 9600 AIW card for me now. Intel Pentium 4/ 2.8C GHz 800MHz FSB, 512K Cache ASUS P4P800 Motherboard Kingston 184 Pin 1G(512MBx2) DDR PC-3200 Maxtor 80GB 7200RPM IDE Hard Drive (8MB Buffer) ATI AIW RADEON 9600 Video Card, 128MB DDR XP Home edition Case PCI Modem (stil in a dial up) Floppy Call of Duty Damnit, I don't know if I can spend this much $ now. |
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Quoted: Mostly pirates and pronodicts need 80, 120, and 200G drives. [b]Most cannot afford purchasing that much software to fill triple-digit gig drives[/b] So, how many of you are blind? Very amusing - I'm currently at 600g and change. The above does not apply to me in any way shape or form. |
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Sgtar, are you saying that you don't have any pirated software or porno on your computer? Yes I know there are amateur and professional video editors which is why I said "most". You need to fire up your braile reader and go back and read what I stated when you get a chance inbetween spanking the monkey. |
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I'm going to be a dissenter. Overall system you have chosen is just fine. Since you are basically going from a Yugo to a v8 Mustang, it's gonna seem plenty fast enough. As you stuck with the lower end system for so long, you probably aren't doing anything that's super taxing to the new system anyway and efficicient work habits are dumb to break. Memory is fine at 512. A gig a RAM even running in dual channel mode "might" give you 9% performance if your "lucky" but only applies really to CPU/memory interface which does not really get "felt" anymore now that the higher end provessors are all plenty fast enough for 99.9% of normal software available. The bottlenecks in a system are not the RAM CPU anymore in determining "perceived" overall system speed. A fast mirrored or other RAIDed hard drive setup with 512meg RAM will perform and "feel" overall much faster than a slower hard drive setup with a full gig of RAM. As everything is read from the hard drives, they are the biggest bottleneck in "felt" performance. WinXP will swap to the hard drive REGARDLESS of how much memory you have, so the faster it can read/write the HD's, the faster it will "feel" especially at bootup. For games, which are the only program the normal user has that actually stresses the system, a better video card will give you more performance increase than increasing your CPU "or" your memory as long as you have the minimum requirements needed for the game. OK, you might not have the system that can perform the "benchmarks" some of the system junkies do, but it's like the shooters with a $5000 bolt gun who brag about 25yd 1 hole groups. It's irrelevant in the real world! They're also the same people who brag that they have a 32x cdrom writers and snub 16x writers because it's got a bigger number. Who actually watches there CD's burn? Most people are smart enough to do something else while it is burning and surprise surprise, it's done when you look back at it again. Only system junkies time there CDROM burning time, and it's only so they can brag about how "fast" it is. As for having huge hard drives, it is nice but not a big deal. The only people I know who "need" them are video burners, but even they only need so big because they tend to archive onto DVD anyway. Games might be getting bigger, but only lazy people keep a bunch of games they dont play anymore on the PC. Ever heard of "add and remove programs" in the control panel?? Even if you want to play games again at a later date, CDROMS are fast enough to install the bigger games still in maybe 10 minutes max, and just because you remove the game, you dont have to delete the save files for later usage. The hardest part about efficient PC usage is determining what you actually "need" on the hard drives versus what you need to have offline or nearline, or backed up. Everything else on that hard drive is a distraction from what you want to accomplish. Unfortuanately, with the superhuge and cheap hard drives, data clutter becomes a fact of life. Yes I suffer from this data/program packrat mentality at times too. Just wait until that 250 gig hard drive crashes with all your shit like 5 years of tax forms and of family photos you made with that cool digtal camera or laboriously scanned from old photos. Huge hard drives unfotunately encourage lumping of all of your data eggs in one basket that "will" sooner or later break. I have been in doing the computer/programming/network thing professionally since the early 90's and unprofessionally for much longer. I admit that I AM a system junkie. I overclock, I tweak, and I play with my systems constantly but I realize that much of the wants and needs in this fantasy world dont matter to real life people or situations. These aren't the days anymore where you can outtype the computer. How fast a machine do you need to open Internet Explorer quickly? Spend your bucks wisely unless you have it to burn. Guess what, it is your bandwidth that slows IE down, not the computer hardware. That 56k modem will make your system "feel" doggish doing anything on the Internet regardless of what supercomputer is hooked up to it. So from your "base" computer specs Here are the upgrades in the order that I recommend that provide for a "faster" experience. 1. For any Internet usage, BROADBAND!!!! I'd rather have good broadband and a 486 than a 56k and a Super Pentium Ultra Plus. 2. If you are a gamer who plays the "latest" games, get a good mid to top of the line video card. 3. For general usage and everything else to feel overall faster, get a RAID hard drive setup. 4. Aditional RAM 5. For bragging and benchmarks, Overclock. |
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I been building "task specific" computers since the late 70's. Even before DOS had a release number and dinosaurs ruled the earth. Anybody remember the 8088 chip? I don't think you can run a toaster or the door locks on your car with a 8088. Only you can determine how much space and speed you need. It won't make much difference since when you close up the box, you're "bleeding edge" for only a few months. What do you want to do with it? Play games? High end gaming and the professional end of video and graphic design are the two areas that tax a system. We have a unwritten formula here at work that Speed+Storage=Cost&Risk. Risk is new hardware that doesn't perform as it should or fails due to something unforeseen such as bad drivers or hardware. Cost is paying for leading edge hardware and downtime when an AGP video card won't play right with the motherboard. Heaven forbid that you need tech support and end up with Kasmi in India who can't speak a lick of English (get the hint LinkSys?) or you're cut off the internet when you need critical driver updates. As far as your hard drive, take this into account; the bigger the drive, the more to lose. Simple as that. XerO offers some sound advice. In my company, we're so anal about backing up we have tower units that do nothing but back-up the back-ups. Then it's all burned to CD's because I simply can't afford to lose my clients work. Microsoft alone owes me hundreds of lost man hours in software and hardware bugs they released starting with Windows(or maybe it was DOS 3.0). I'm a bitter guy when it comes to computers...lol. Phil, I forgot to add this link. Check it out if you want the real skinny on hardware. [url]http://www.tomshardware.com/[/url] |