namelesstavern.net

Well, after heckling from the other nerds here, I broke down and actually built myself a new rig, instead of paying the evil Dell empire.

This is what I now am running

AMD Athlon 3500+ 939 Processor
(939-pin Socket) ABIT AV8 VIA K8T800 Motherboard
2 Gig 400 Mhz Dual Channel RAM
EVGA 6800 GT 256 MB Video Card
2 Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000RPM Serial ATA 150 8MB
Audigy 2
XP Pro
Plain 16x DVD/52x CDR drive

This is upgraded from:
2.4 P4 533 FSB
1 Gig 2700 RAM
ATI Radeon 9700
80 Gig WD HDD

I almost bought the FX-53 but the price/performance ratio didnt seem to justify it, and I read the FX-55 was coming out soon.

How does this compare to the rest of the Jones'?

I still have my x1045us from Compaq, don't mind me. I left it on accidentally today on my way to work, came back to my truck around 7 hours later and it was still going.

-Adam

Lyion, your epenis is very large but you are still a nerd.

Lyion wrote:AMD Athlon 3500+ 939 Processor
(939-pin Socket) ABIT AV8 VIA K8T800 Motherboard
2 Gig 400 Mhz Dual Channel RAM
EVGA 6800 GT 256 MB Video Card
2 Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000RPM Serial ATA 150 8MB
Audigy 2
XP Pro
Plain 16x DVD/52x CDR drive

Overclocking the CPU? That has great potential... you could squeeze another couple hundred MHz with a $50 heatsink.

Running the HDDs in RAID-0?

Nice Lyion.

Total $?

Very nice, if I had the money that's how I would do it.

Tossica wrote:Lyion, your epenis is very large but you are still a nerd.

I spent about 1500 total for everything, but that included XP pro and a wicked overpriced case and cooling setup.

Nope, not overclocked yet, but I'm checking into it.

Just one WD 10k drive so far, my second I was gonna use as a straight up drive Do you notice much of a difference with it Vonk? I'm curious if I should Raid 0 these two and get another bigger, non 10k drive.

All of the top-end systems you see on futuremark have RAID 0. The idea is to do everything you can to make your CPU your bottleneck... everything else is bleeding edge.

If you aren't techie enough to build your own system, how much would something like that cost?

Menlaan

New graphics card standard coming out in the near future btw....PCI2.

Menlaan wrote:If you aren't techie enough to build your own system, how much would something like that cost?

Menlaan

http://www.cyberpowersystem.com

Or find a local merchant like this. That one is Taxx's recommendation

Is that where you got your system Lyion? Honestly I don't see how anyone can beat their price vs. quality.

I got a barebones from them and the rest from newegg, Taxx. Their case prices were better than Egg.

Cool site. It's hard to tell what matters and what doesn't though.

Just playing around, I configured this:

X-BLADE Medium Tower Case 450 W (SILVER)
AMD™ Athlon™ XP-3200+ CPU(512K L2 CACHE - REQUIRE NF2 400FSB Motherboard) ~ CBE901
ABit NF7-S2 NFORCE2 Ultra DDR400 SATA MB w/ LAN, USB2.0, & Audio
2GB (1GBx2) PC3200 DDR400 Memory (Kingston)
Hitachi 160GB 7200RPM SATA150 8MB Cache
Hitachi 160GB 7200RPM SATA150 8MB Cache
nVidia GF 6800 GT 256MB 8XAGP w/ Free Doom 3
NONE - CD/DVD
LG DVDRW/CDRW DRIVE (SILVER)
(SILVER/BLACK)NU 17 INCH LCD 2 TONE TFT LCD MONITOR
NEW!!! Creative Labs SB LIVE 24.bit 7.1

Price: $2723.00

Are there things there that are unnecessary or that could be better? Also, do you need power protectors and cooling monitors / fans?
Menlaan

Drop from 2 Gig to 1 Gig. You dont need it.

Go with a 939 Motherboard and an 3500 939 Chip.

Drop the Hitachi's and go with the WD 10k 72 Gig drives.

I'd also drop the 17" LCD Monitor. The Dell 20" LCD destroys it.

Martrae wrote:New graphics card standard coming out in the near future btw....PCI2.

You mean PCI-Express(PCI-X)? It's been out for several months...

I've seen it referred to as PCI-E

vonkaar wrote:All of the top-end systems you see on futuremark have RAID 0. The idea is to do everything you can to make your CPU your bottleneck... everything else is bleeding edge.

Vonk, Anandtech thinks Raid 0 on desktop gaming machines is pretty much worthless.

Twice the failure probability for a less than 3% gain. Interesting benchmarks there

Not true. Raid 0 is a huge improvement for load times, most benchmarks don't test that.

-Adam

Yeah when I had 2 40 gigs on raid 0 they were only 7200's but it still made a noticeable difference for me.

10sun wrote:Not true. Raid 0 is a huge improvement for load times, most benchmarks don't test that.


-Adam

Actually, they thoroughly test that, and its debunked.

Bottom line: RAID-0 arrays will win you just about any benchmark, but they'll deliver virtually nothing more than that for real world desktop performance. That's just the cold hard truth.

Another pretty hard look at Raid 0

http://www.storagereview.com/articles/2 ... TCQ_5.html

and a good thread with load times

http://boards.ign.com/PC_Games_Lobby/b7203/69502418/?5

Drive Type__________________RAID | Single Drive
Doom 3 (seconds)______________38 | 35
Far Cry (seconds)______________21 | 21
Battlefield 1942 (seconds)_______22 | 22

good to know im not the only one that realizes that RAID is basically something geeks spend money on to sound cool (kind of like alienware boxes)