New MOBO Recomendation

[art3112]

I would like to upgrade my current MOBO and would like some recommedations. I currently have a Abit KT7A raid with 396 ram of crucial and mushkin mixed in with an athlon 1.4 ghz chip, video card is a Asus V7100 geforce 32mb w/ video out. I plan on doing alot of video editing and this system is just not hacking it. I also have three hard drive all 7200 rpm, 120gig maxtor, 110gig IBM, and 80gig fireball and a dvd burner. The case is a huge tower from Antec which is a couple of years old and I beleive has a 300w power supply.

Here's how I see it, I would need to upgrade the Mobo, ram and probably the video card although if you all think it's ok would it be wise to upgrade the video card a bit down the road so that I can stay within my budget. The rest I believe I can still use from my current PC althought I think I might need to upgrade the power supply but I'm not sure. I think I should stick to ASUS Mobo because I've heard about their great quality. I'm happy with my Abit but I initially had many problems with it an vowed never to by Abit again because of there nonexistent customer service. I'm looking at a budget of no more than $300 for all new components. Can you recommend some components and models for me. I'd really appreciate it!!

Thanks!

 

[TheRod]

My recommendation for Video Editing... Is to get MORE ram and a faster CPU. The mobo alone will not do anything to help you!

Video Editing is VERY memory and CPU intensive, the Video card don't have much to do with the video editing performance.

I think you maxed out the CPU capacity of your Abit KT7A... So I'm sorry to tell you that your best buy would be something like that...

CPU : Mobile Athlon XP 2500+ (89$US - which is easily overclockable to 2.4GHz)
MOBO : Asus A7N8X (65$US) or MSI NF7 (59$US)
RAM : Kingston 2x512 Megs of DDR400 (135$US)
COST : ~300$US

Or a P4 based setup (Intel P4 are faster in video editing than AMD), you might be able to still get a P4C 2.4GHz that can be overclocked to more than 3.0GHz for around the same price... This P4C overclocked would probably beat the overclocked Mobile Athlon XP, but I'm not 100% sure. It would depend on how much you overclock and which video apps you use.

Hope this helped!

-
A7N8X / <font color=green><b>Athlon XP 1800+</font color=green> o/c to <font color=green>Sempron 2800+</b></font color=green>
Kingston DDR333 2x256Megs
<font color=red>Radeon 8500 128Megs</font color=red> @ C:275/M:290 <- <i>It's enough for WoW!</i><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by TheRod on 02/01/05 12:09 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Rugger]

Please provide the specifics on your ram - model numbers and specs. I assume that's a thunderbird core? Mfr/model for the PSU? You didn't state that you wanted to upgrade the CPU - can I safely assume that you want to upgrade it, too?

The best price/perf ratio right now are from ADMs s754s. That being said, you're budget makes it a hard order to fill. I'll throw something out there for you to think about. All prices are from Newegg. This is my not busting the budget recommendation:
1. AMD A64 2800+. $109
2. Abit NF8. $88.
3. Kingston value select 512MB. $69
4. Thermaltake Silent Purepower 420W. $36
For a grand total of $302.

The above items are based primarily on <b>price</b>, but also take into account that I recommend going with a mobo with the nforce 250GB chipset, larger capacity/good PSU. The Asus K8N-E Deluxe board costs $129. I recommended the Abit, because I know they are high quality boards and was avoiding busting your budget by too much. You can always get help with your system on these boards - some of the best tech support around in my opinion! For video encoding I highly recommend having at least 1GB of memory. You can put in a second 512MB stick when you get the extra money.

Here is my budget busting "For a few dollars more" recommendation:
1. DFI Lanparty UT NF3 250GB. $106. Right between the Asus and Abit in price and is a great board.
2. Kingston Value Select 2X512MB PC3200 (1GB). $140
3. AMD A64 2800+ (Newcastle). $109.
4. Fortron Source 400W, FSP400-60PNU-R1. $62.49
For a grand total of $416.99



"He who will not risk, cannot win"
- John Paul Jones<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Rugger on 02/04/05 08:51 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Rugger]

SWEET - 30GHZ

"He who will not risk, cannot win"
- John Paul Jones

 

[TheRod]

SWEET - 30GHZ

Duh!

-
A7N8X / <font color=green><b>Athlon XP 1800+</font color=green> o/c to <font color=green>Sempron 2800+</b></font color=green>
Kingston DDR333 2x256Megs
<font color=red>Radeon 8500 128Megs</font color=red> @ C:275/M:290 <- <i>It's enough for WoW!</i>

 

[art3112]

Yes it does help me. Thanks.

Your right about me maxing out on processor with my current MB which is why I'm looking into upgrading.

I have one more memory slot open do you think it would help to add more memory for now? I think the max for my board is 512. Also what would I gain if anything by upgrading my current power supply to say 500w. Although that's 500w is probably over kill.

Thanks

 

[pat]

Oups.. My post come in late.. Rugger system might be better in performance, but you may have to change your drive with SATA ones depending of how many connector there is and if you want to use RAID.

A good CPU and more RAM might help, but what will you need if you have a 4 gigs video file to edit? HDD! Having a killer CPU or a killer video card wont help if your current HDD cannot keep up with transfer when editing big files from the HDD.

Therod has a good start for your budget. Try to get a mobo that has RAID support. Then put your 120 gigs and the 110gigs together. You may loose 10 gigs in the process, but the raid will give you a more fluid file editing. The 80 gigs could be used to hold Windows and programs. The 220gigs RAIDed HDD could be split in 2 partition. half andhalf each should be good. The first one used for capturing and editing, the other one to store some movie, partially edited files or edited files that can be reused in other projects. I recommend that you'll capture in DVD quality, because, mpeg is a loosy compression method. The more compression you apply to get smaller file, the more information you loose that cannot be brought back in case you want a better quality output. Capturing in high quality mean that you have more information to play with, so you can best choose the quality/size ratio when rendering. I try not to go below 75% compression..I rather use 2 DVDs with high quality edited movies than just one with plenty of artifacts and chunky images. That you'll learn in trying.

You see, once you start to play with video files, and start capturing old VHS tape to put them back on DVD to preserve them, you'll always be looking for more HDD space.

As for the P4 being better than the AMD in video editing is not tru.. P4 is faster in ENCODING... editing with a P4 and an AMD will mainly be held back by the HDD and rendering (not encoding) the final movie depends of the apps used, the codec used, the HDD speed... So it wont really matter here. See, if an editing is optimised for an AMD, it will run slower on a P4. The reverse is true too.

You did not say what kind of editing you plan to do. I mean, directly from a DV camera with firewire, or with a capture card and analog tape camera or VCR. What kind of software you plan to use?

-Always put the blame on you first, then on the hardware !!!
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Pat on 02/01/05 12:43 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[art3112]

I use Ulead video studio 8 and capture video directly from my sony DV camera. I also have pinnacle studio 8 which I've had all sorts of problems with and have given up on Ilead works much better on my pc.
I currently have an ABIT KT7A raid board. I tried to setup the Raid once and didn't really know what I was doing so I gave up. I'm sure it's simple but I recall the PC becoming very unstable, so I removed it.

I currently use the IBM 110gig drive as the master and have XP and software installed on it the other two I use to store data, video pics etc.

Should I reinstall XP and use the config you mentioned?

 

[pat]

1. AMD A64 2800+. $109
2. Abit NF8. $88.
3. Corsair value select 512MB. $68
4. Thermaltake Silent Purepower 420W. $36

The Abit has 2 SATA and 2 PATA. I would get SATA to PATA converter and put you 110gigs and 120 gigs in RAID0 on these connector, plug your 80 gigs to PATA1 with Windows XP on and the burner to PATA2.

I have a nforce3 system with 2 SATA in RAID0 and it work good. I used Studio 8 with my config and I dont have any complain albeit being slow at rendering. The Studio 9 is faster and stable here. You can download a free trial of studio9 and give it a try. But it is quite possible that it might have problems with your old system, as it lack of memory and that, Studio dont like. On your new one, with at least 512 megs and XP, as it manage memory better, You shouldnt have any problem.

Going from VIA to nforce with XP will mean a complete reinstall. Setting up RAID is simple. Enable the SATA connector in BIOS, set the first connector as RAID, the second connector as RAID, get your drivers diskette, reboot the system, let windows detect the new controller, put the disk with drivers in, let it install the drivers and you're set. You may have to initialize, partition and format your new drive, but you can do that in administrative tools, disk manager.

-Always put the blame on you first, then on the hardware !!!

 

[art3112]

Sounds good. So I guess your saying don't bother waisting anymore money on my current MOBO so as to try and stretch it's life out another year. Via more RAM and setting up the raid with my current KT7a board I have or a new power supply.

Another 512 would probably run me $100 plus the power supply which I could still use when I do decide to upgrade to a new mobo. That would bring my memory up to 896. Do you think it's not worth the expense?

 

[pat]

well... your RAM is not DDR so you wont be able to reused it.I think that investing more on that system is wasted money. By going with the nforce3 system, even if it is a basic one, will give you more performance and you will be able to stretch this one to 3-4 years before the need to upgrade again.

There is nothing that prevent you to try RAID with your current motherboard, you already have the component. But I wouldt advise buying newer parts for it.

-Always put the blame on you first, then on the hardware !!!

 

[Rugger]

I couldn't agree more with Pat on the HDD issue - there just wasn't enough money in the budget to recommend that too. A lot of people underestimate the impact a fast HDD can have on overall system performance. I remember the first time I went from 5400RPM to 7200RPM drives. The difference was night and day - good vs evil.

I would recommend setting up the RAID like Pat said. Don't spend any more money on this system. Eeek out a little more life from it for a couple of months, save up some more money to get some SATA drives and setup a RAID0 with them. The Abit board can support up to 4 IDE drives on 2 ATA133 - use the older IDE drives for storage. To save some money on the SATA drives, go with something like the Seagate 80GB NCQ drives, model ST380817AS, $72/HDD at Newegg. They don't have to be huge because you have the IDEs for storage. Waiting a couple of months to save some cash might also let the prices go down some before you buy. JMHO.

"He who will not risk, cannot win"
- John Paul Jones

 

[art3112]

Thanks for your help I really appreciate all your advise. Looks like I'm good to go.

Just one thing I'm not clear on. If I understand you correctly I should setup the 3 ATA133 7200rpm drives I already have as a RAID0 and use them for storage only and then also buy a couple of SATA drives and set them up as RAID0 as well but use them to install XP and all my software. Is that correct?

If I do buy a couple of SATA drives and also used the PATA ports for my two large drives where do I put the Burner?


- I usually blame my wife before I blame anything or anyone else

 

[Rugger]

There are 2 recommendations on the table:
(1) Pat recommended not spending any more money on the HDDs. Buy 2 SATA to PATA converters, plug the 110/120GB HDDs into these and set them up in RAID0. Plug the 80GB HDD into PATA1 and the burner into PATA2. Each PATA cable can have 2 IDE devices (master and slave) - Pat's recommendation costs the least amount of money.

(2) My last recommendation to get 2 SATA HDDs was a response to Pat's statements about the positive impact that a faster SATA drive would have on system performance. I recommended saving money for a couple of months and purchasing two 80GB SATA drives to setup in a RAID0 on the SATA connectors. This would leave two PATA connectors free on the board - each PATA connector can support 2 IDE drives. Use PATA1 master for the largest HDD, PATA1 slave for the 80GB HDD, PATA2 master for the burner and PATA2 slave for the 110GB drive.

<b>Caution:</b> Purchasing 2 SATA drives is a 50% increase in your upgrade cost! Pat's recommendation fits into your current budget (only additional cost of two SATA to PATA converters) and will perform very well. I take no responsibility for any pain your wife may inflict due to budget concerns.

"He who will not risk, cannot win"
- John Paul Jones

 

[Crashman]

I've actually had my best RMA experience from Abit. As for asking them technical questions, no, I don't have any experience there.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[endyen]

If you want to save a few $ another mobo, that I think is almost as good as the abit, is <A HREF="http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-131-512&depa=0" target="_new">http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-131-512&depa=0</A>
I think Abit boards are top notch, it's thier manuals that suck. If you get the Abit board, download the manual, it's better than the printed one.

 

[art3112]

Do you think this offer is a good one? See link below

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1133509&Tab=2&NoMapp=0

I realize I'd still have to buy the RAM but do you think it would do nicely for what i want to do(video Editing)?

 

[Rugger]

I wouldn't trust the 350W PSU - probably generic. Might work, but might give you lots of trouble. This busts your budget by $100 without even buying RAM - you have to wait to get your rebate...

Do you need/want the new case, keyboard, mouse and speakers? You can get the same mobo/CPU from Newegg for around $360, so AFTER the rebate you're getting a better price on that mobo/CPU with a few extras (that may or may not be needed) thrown into the mix.

My first recommendation busts your budget by $2 and includes RAM
1. AMD A64 2800+. $109
2. Abit NF8. $88.
3. Kingston value select 512MB. $68 <---EDIT FROM CORSAIR
4. Thermaltake Silent Purepower 420W. $36
For a grand total of $302.
This system is more than capable of handling video editing. If you want a beefier CPU, you can go with the Sempron 3100+ for an extra $12, the 3000+ for an extra $37 or the 3200+ for and extra $81. Not that you hve to OC, but the Sempron overclocks very well - read about it here:
<A HREF="http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050202/index.html" target="_new">http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050202/index.html</A>
Attaining a stable overclock like this would more than likely require better RAM.

In conclusion, the recommendations from this board - not just mine - have been less expensive overall and tailored to the specific needs you stated. I think the Tiger Direct barebones deal would cost you more in the long run. JMHO.

"He who will not risk, cannot win"
- John Paul Jones

 

[pat]

The 939 3400+ doesnt officially exist. It is an OEM unit and share its specs with the 3500+. The fan might be a cheap one too, as it says that it is not included with the CPU, but part of the whole system. You might end up with a low quality fan that may start to make noise sooner and fail. I would try to get some information on that. Being an OEM cpu means 3 months (or is it one month?) warranty, instead of 3 years. That mean that your CPU will maybe warranted until your next upgrade or until this summer... The PSU could be a bit weak too, as Rugger suggest. I dont advise anything cheap under 400w for AMD64 system. Weak PSU can cause instability problems and even HDD failure. A friendof mine was burning HDD as hell until he get a better PSU. This case look like it has something that you should consider if you buy another case: front USB and firewire connector. Really usefull to be able to plug digital video camera firewire wire right in the front, instead of behind the computer.

I wouldnt buy this kit. I rather hand pick my components and built it like I want. I'm not saying that it is a bad deal, but I dont trust it ... Paying 400$ bucks on something you'll like for some years is way better than wasting 300$ on something you'll hate for some years..

-Always put the blame on you first, then on the hardware !!!

 

[Rugger]

*** Jedi mind trick - smoothly waves hand ***
I DIDN'T say Corsair VS...

"He who will not risk, cannot win"
- John Paul Jones