System upgrade suggestions

[mario]

Hi everybody,

I am planning for a major system upgrade and this is the plan:

MSI 865PE NEO2-LS Mainboard
P4/2.6CGHz,800M 478P/512K HT CPU
DDRAM TRANSCEND|PC3200 512MB Memory
ATI AIW 9600 Pro

Any suggestion?

I also see that the MSI MOBO is never mentioned in this forum, I am wondering why.

One of the functions is to do some videoediting. Is the ATI AIW OK?

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[ChipDeath]

Good parts... The main reason you don't see the MSI board mentioned is that it's simply not as popular as others, mainly because it's not as good at overclocking. I've not heard any horror stories about that mobo, but I'd be tempted to go with an Abit IS7 instead as it's around the same price, and is a very well proven board.

Speaking of overclocking, are you planning to? That P4 is pretty much the <i>best</i> 'bang for buck' if you overclock it, so I'd have to suggest that you do - in which case some faster RAM - PC4000 or above - would be advisable.

Are you getting 2 sticks of RAM? the 865 chipset supports Dual channel, which gives a decent performance boost to P4 systems but requires 2 sticks to function.

As for Video editing... That card will probably be ok, but more RAM might be advisable - 512Mb is really the minimum people recommend for XP, and for memory-hogging stuff like Video editing 1Gb would probably be nice.

Do you have a budget?

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<font color=red>Those of you who think you know everything are annoying to those of us who do.</font color=red>

 

[addiarmadar]

MSI mobos are pretty good and used alot by Dell. Great for the average user that does not plan on abusing the crap out of it. And yes the ATI AIW are that good...

Barton 2500+ @ 2200mhz (10x220 vcore @ 1.8)
Asus A7N8X Dlx 440 FSB
1gb Geil GD pc3500 Dual Channel (2-3-3-6)
Segata 80gb SATA 8.5ms seek
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro(420/720)

 

[mario]

Thank you very much for answering.
I am not very interesting in overclocking, mainly because I do not have a clue how to do it and it sound kind of intimidating. How much does it improve the system?
Basically the indicative prices I have seen are for the components I mentioned are:

mobo: 80 $
memory 70 $
cpu 170 $
video 214 $

for a total of: 534 $

I might consider the additional memory later, will it bring a big benefit?

I already both a 160 GB Westwrn Digital HD, unfortunately it is not a SATA, since I was not cosidering upgrading at the time.

Thanks again

 

[TheRod]

There is a lot of articles and forums (here at THG) to help you to overclock, it's pretty easy and safe. Most of the overclocking involve only changing a couple of settings in the BIOS.

Today I never NOT overclock a system I build and/or support. Overclocking is the way to get the most out of your system. I usually overclock safely (no extreme overclocking) to ensure stability. I don't want to have call every day from people that get unexpected system crash because I push too hard on their rig.

So don't be afraid to do it. It's easy and fairly secure if you are not too crazy! And what I like to do when the overclock is done on a system, is to check money saved by overclocking. For example, if you can run your P4C 2.6HZ to 3.2GHz you will "save" about 200$US. It's not an actual "saving" it's more like you should have paid 200$US more for the same performance.

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