TIME TO FACE THE TRUTH

[SERVO]

LET'S STOP FOOLING OURSELFS
With the new KT266 chipset MB's coming out.Plus all the new
MB's being produced that only a few know about {area 51} that's a joke!
It's hard to decide what's good out there! ie: the best mb,hd,ram,cd,heatsink,dvd,cpu,case,video,sound,and where to buy it all!!!It brings me back to a article I read in 1997 about the future of computers. It stated by the year 2000 cpu speeds would reach 1000MHz AT that time the P133 was boss.I beleived it [some what] but here we are it's true and a little bit beyond.INTEL states today by the year 2005 or 2006 CPU speeds will reach 10GHz. So at this point we all have P133's .So what's next? Everyone want's the best system out there thinking this purchase will last a long time. It can't! We are all wallet machines feeding the next tech "so called advancement".The best I can hope for is a system that will play games and survive for the next few years.
DON'T KID YOURSELFS [SUPPLY AND DEMAND CONTROLS ALL]
I don't expect people to come together and decide what's the best system to buy BUT! from now on let's stop trying to out do each other, and some how form as a force to decide what's best for all now. We all lose in the end. Unless you have money to burn, I DON'T!!!!!!!!!
Not everyone can afford the top of the line!!!
Lets be real, some people can only afford $500
some $1000
some unlimited
How about pooling all the total knowlege of everyone on this forum and come up with a plan to help all!!
It's time to help all,lets solve the best we can the problems at hand with MB's and CPU's people already spent there money on, and steer all of us in the right direction.
I hope enough will follow this course to make computers FUN AGAIN!!!!

 

[Unolocogringo]

I agree totally!!!! I've seen far too many posts where people ask for advice on how to upgrade their current system,only to be told throw that crap away and buy this.The latest and greatest is a speed rush for us tweekers, but you don't need a 1 gig processor to surf the net and check your e-mail.

 

[SERVO]

Were one follows more will come!!!
It seems that this forum only cares about out doing each other. They lose the fact that not everyone is at there level. You look for advice and get dismissed {thinking they know what's going on} "BUT they don't". Most of them don't have a clue. Alot of Tech crap and double talk BUT!! they are all divided "trying to out do each other" What a real JOKE!!!
I look for real facts that's all I can do.
Some PEOPLE DO HELP THANK YOU!!! WE NEED YOU!!!!
TIME FOR A CHANGE!!!
Stick with me and NO!! I repeat!! NO BULLS%$T
I'm here THE NEW GUY IN TOWN [NO MORE CRAP only the facts!!}
SERVO!!!!!!!!

 

[SERVO]

SO FAR 41 VIEWS
NO ONE READY FOR A CHANGE GOOD LUCK!!!

 

[noko]

huh??? What truth?

 

[TheSandman]

Now it is 53 views, some of us dont need to change though and some will not change me I come here to help when I can and to learn what I can from others.

SANDMAN

 

[Booky]

Hey if you don't need the "latest and greatest" then why bother upgrading anything? People get the latest so it can handle the latest games/software, if you still use old software and games that are not so demanding then stay with what you got. The truth is that for me, a serious flight simmer, I need the latest CPU to fullfill my AI needs and a great video card and memory to fill my visual needs. You want to "Face the Facts"? Well then here they are, its all about your own needs, not anyone elses. I have to ask you soem questions. Do you work, or still under the wing of parents? I can understand being cautious with mommy and daddy's $500, but me I make my own. I support my family, and I support my hobbies. I hate to be the one to tell you but there is almost nothing for free. You have to spend money for entertainment. If you feel it is just throwing your money away, then I ask you this. Do you rent or own your home? Don't tell me ou rent because how much would you be throwing away each month. Ok OK im done now I just had to say these few things. No offense intended to any individual.

A revision to mpjesse's signature;
"My Signature Sucks"

 

[OzzieBloke]

Mate... settle with all the yelling... we aren't blind, and most of us have 17 inch monitors minimum.

I still run a cyrix 133 of 5 years, and I do music recording, editing and mixing with it. It serves the purpose. Slowly, but it does it. For writing reports, surfing the web and email, I don't need anything more. But I will need a new system soon if I want to do serious multitracking. I'll prolly get a athlon 1.2 gHz on a k7t266 pro, and that will last me another 5 years.

Gaming is fun, but gaming will make you spend until the end of time because of the demands it requires from the system. It really is an expensive waste of time, even though it is entertaining. I wonder often how I managed to spend so much time gaming when I was younger, and I think the only people who can justify doing so are game developers and people who are so damn rich they don't have to work.

Ah, well, good on them if they can


Australian PMs are like steer horns; a point here, a point there, & a heap of bull in the middle.

 

[SERVO]

To booky
I also own my own home and have a family at no time did I say you can't spend what you want it's your money. All I said is that not all people can spend on an unlimited basis.It's seems that if someone asks if this product is good or they want to upgrade they always get steered to the most expensive. Not all people play games! Alot of people just surf the web. Does everyone on this forum think that only the best is the best. I'm sure there are many students
who can't afford the best. IT's nice to have a hobbie but not everyone can afford a caddilac ether.I don't think people need a amd 1333 to e-mail.We seem forget that this is the place for help and many people out there have never cracked open a computer case so these people believe thay need a amd 1333 to e-mail.By the way I'm thinking about getting the system you got with some minor changes ddr cl=2

 

[Guest]

Open your eyes!
It's not just this "hobby" that's affected by the "BIGGER, FASTER, BETTER" syndrome. It goes on all around us everyday in all aspects of life. During the recent times of economic good fortune of most of the world, "ALL" industries have been trying to get as much of our new found disposable income as they can.

Where would you like to start?

The auto industry has been doing this for as many years as they've been around. Why else would they come out every fall and tell you that the car/truck that you bought last year is not as good as their newer, bigger, faster, stronger, models this year? (new colors available too!)

Consumer appliances? The same thing, this years "new" washing machines wash cleaner, spin faster, use less water, electricity etc...The "old" one from last year's no good anymore!

Electronics? Here we go again. I've got 45 year old ears, exactly how many speakers do I need in my 16' X 20' living room? I know that I have to raise the ceiling to get the newest, biggest most life-like big screen TV in there.

Hell, we've got a lot of money. We should have the "BEST" everything! I live in Pgh, we've just opened a new baseball park, with the new football stadium to open in the fall, total cost? One half of a BILLION dollars! ($500,000,000.00, It's going to take a lot of $25 tickets to pay that off.))

I may be a bit af a pessimist, but I don't think that most of us will be chasing the "BIGGER, FASTER, BETTER" carrot much longer, somethings got to break.

1.11G DURON air cooled!

 

[Shocwavez]

Well the truth is whatever that individual wants. Some like to upgrade every month, even if they don't need to. Some will keep their 486's till doomsday. Some need gaming systems. Some need heavy photo and video editing. It's whatever floats yer boat and thats the REAL truth.

:tongue: <font color=green> I LOVE INTEL. It tastes like chicken </font color=green>

 

[Guest]

Yo dude I too own my own home ..bla bla bla so what! One should live with in their own means and quit bitching about the cost of it all. As the good book says dont covent what ya cant have. But for your information here is my little set up, oh and read it all it may change your mind about what you said to start with: killer system for under $800 bucks read on-

AMD T-Bird @ 1440mhz (1.2 "C" chip) with golden orb
(12.5x144) New Via 4.28 drivers
EPOX 8KTA3 Mother Board
3- 128meg sticks of Tiny Bga PC 150 6ns for a total of 384 megs of ram
Western Digital 40 gig 7200 rpm ATA100 drive
Enermax power supply 370 watt, switching with dual fans. Enermax medium tower case with 2 fans up front, 2 fans rear, 1 top, 1 side. (the top and side fans I installed)

After getting it all up and running I did the burn in using SisSoftSandra 2001. I then did the performance testing, and oh my- this thing is, well, fast, very fast, fast as a speeding bullet (holy #%*% batman) -scores as listed below:

Dhrystone- ALU 3947 mips
Whetstone- FPU 1919 mflops

Interger MMX Enh 7657 it/s
Floating point 3DNow Enh 9629 it/s

Int ALU Ram Bandwidth 534 mb/s
Float FPU Ram Bandwidth 659 mb/s

Not to shabby for the second run. After a few more weeks of testing/tinkering I hope to get a bit more speed out of my new PC. It blows away any and all INTEL/AMD set ups listed in the Sandra comparison charts-WOW. Another nice little ditty was the memory performance, it was very close to that of DDR and for the money I am glad I decided to stay with SDRAM, the performance difference just isn't enough to suite my taste for the added expense of DDR. Onward- After a bit more tinkering I did try to find the max point of overclocking with this present set up. I tried 155 buss speed and it wouldn't boot windows (haha I had to try!). So I worked backwards from there, the max I could get stable was 151 but I was a bit leery of that speed (can we say nope aint gonna do it) so I decided on a happy medium. I must say its pretty tempting to see it run at near 1500 MHz+ speeds even though its not very safe or reliable and, in reality pointless, I.E. the reason I backed it down to a sane real world dependable level (144 at present). The EPOX board was a dream to work with and the Award software bios was very easy to use, tons of settings for all you overclockers. You can adjust about every setting you can think of including the AGP buss and by the way the max on the CPU multiplier is 12.5 not 12 as the adds state. A very nice feature is the little numericaly coded l.e.d.s that confirm boot sequence, and if you screw something up it tells you. Ah but only if we had a perfect world, two complaints I have are as follows; first off, Hardware monitoring can be done through the bios and this is nice if ya want to boot to the bios all the time to check on things. However, for some odd reason the included software Hardware monitoring package that the mother board came with was unsettable and wouldn't stay set as a usable program, EPOX a little help here please? secondly, the board has 4 dimm slots but there is a catch- dims 3 and 4 are joined so you must use single sided memory in the dimm 3 and 4 positions if you plan to use all 4 dimm slots together. No problem for the TinyBGA memory as it comes that way. Dimm 3 OR 4 can however be used in conjunction with dimm slots 1 and 2 using the standard memory. So no great loss if all you have is regular pc100/133 after all every other Athlon board I know of only has 3 dimm slots anyway, but if you use single sided ram-it's a nice feature.

As for 3D, well I still have my voodoo 3000 installed due to budget restrictions so I wont boar any one with the results of the MadOnion 2001 3D test, they were pretty sad compared to the newer graphics cards (3800 ugh.). Any one out there have cheap 64 meg DDR Radeon or 64 meg DDR GForce Ultra they don't need any more hint, hint ;~>

As for the Hard drive, I am really impressed how quite the Western Digital drive is, and through put is quite fast compared to my old 33.

As for cooling, with the Cooler master golden ORB cooler and all the intensive tests (over 8full hours) the temp never went beyond 98 degrees. So I must say I really think the case is a very nice case, it locks front and side, tons of room and lots of cooling fans, excellent power supply, slide out everything- including the cooling fan brackets. My advise, dont be a miser on the case you'll regret it later on.

Any way on to the totals.

The total for this new set up as follows:

Enermax Case and power supply $110.00
AMD 1.2gig Boxed Processor $220.00 (not OEM)
Epox Motherboard 119.00
3-128meg TinyBga PC 150 6ns $39.00 each
Orb cooler $20.00
Western Digital HD 40gig ATA100 7200rpm $130.00
Windows 98SE $119.00
Creative DXR3 Dvd and drive $129.00
Yamaha 16x10x40x CD burner $145.00
Panasonic Floppy drive $7.00
Internet ready soft touch keyboard $12.00
Misc..cable ties and audio cables, therm paste $8.00
Voodoo 3-3000 video card $95.00
No audio card as of yet using onboard HW soundblaster, adequate for now.

Total so far: $1153.00

However, the video card I robed from my old machine so you could subtract $100 there, as well the same follows for the CD burner and DVD drives, another $275 . So subtracting $375 from the total I come up with $778 and if you have your operating system you can save there too, another $119 in my case, for a real total of $659. Add in a decent video card and your right at $800.00. Not bad considering the same P.C. from say Dell or IBM would run you well over $2000 and it wouldn't be near as fast nor would it be exactly what you wanted. A word of advise though, for the average builder (like me) if you plan to build a similar system make sure you plan it all out in advance and shop around. Don't be afraid to ask questions, make a list of things you'll need, AMD has a very good check list at their website for just this reason.

To summarize, I am very happy with the results thus far and in time I am sure I will be able to achieve even better results, give it try it's quite easy to build and pretty fun too.

If anyone has any questions feel free to email me- Dragonz1r@qwest.net

Thanks all, Alpha_00

addendum- I just sold my old system for $500.00 and I just added a DD 5.1 ECS 24 bit sound card for another $40.00
total cost-still way under $800 bucks

 

[Guest]

now this is my dream machine that I believe will genuinely last you 5 years

A mobo with
SOCKETed CPU, 1000 pins
SOCKETed chipset,
SOCKETed Southbridge
SOCKETed BIOS,
(4 most important components mentioned)

A graphics card with
SOCKETed GPU
Socketed RAM (or sloted) whatever.

All have or are running on a MINIMUM of 500Mhz BUS

with at least 256bit wide interface, 512 or 1024 whatever!

I know its going to be a big MOBO with too many pins etc, but thats a dream !

I'm sure all you see the point, give it a lot of head room and you only need to change a small part of the system to be UP-TO-DATE,

ie when IDE controllers goes ATA200 then all you need is to change southbridge and HDD, although you can get by with a PCI adapter!

bla bla bla!!!!!




Y bother to help he who never read MANUALS? <font color=blue> COMPASSION! <font color=red> Read it 10 times KIDDO!

 

[Booky]

I agree with you about not everyone is a gamer. I also agree that you don't need 1333MHz to surf the WEB. What I want to know is that if all you do is surf the web and run standard word documents why do you want to upgrade? I mean the only aplications that need upraded machines are games and Cad/Photo type programs. If you don't use these then you don't need to upgrade at all. That goes back to my first point if your going to upgrade then you should be looking at the best, who wants second best anyway? I mean when you looking for your wife/husband or "main squeeze" do you settle for second best. No way you go and find the best one out there that is for you, and you take it. Once you got your wife/husband you can stop looking, no need for a "upgrade". Sorry if thats a bad comparison, but it was only way I could think of it.

A revision to mpjesse's signature;
"My Signature Sucks"

 

[peteb]

Hi - do you mean 10x144? 12.5*144 = 1800, which is a little out of spec for a 1.2Athlon, unless you're heavy with the liquid nirogen. ;o)

-* This Space For Rent *-
email for application details

 

[jerry557]

Depends on what you use your computer for, some like to just surf the web, chat and read e-mail. Others are hard-core gamers that sit up all night playing high graphics games. Some people are just performance freaks who just like to have the "bestest and greatest." Others use theirs for family use, some for business use. Some like video editing; some like composing music. There is just so many different ways to use computers today.

You don't need a 1.2 T-Bird to surf the internet or download your checking account information. But if you are someone who likes to play games with high graphics...you may want to get a high end system because the better the system, the better the game.

One thing I can not stress enough though. Whatever you do; get a big hard drive! You can never have too much memory. My friend, who is a hardcore gamer, maxed out his 70Gig hard drive in a month!!!

 

[SERVO]

What if your a first time buyer. A while back my sister called me up to say she's buying a computer for only $1799 the system wasn't bad but all she wanted to do was go online and could careless about the games. What she read and all the hype to buy the best she believed it.I told her all she needed was a e machine $600.She's very happy.Maybe the answer could be found in spliting the sub forums one more time. motherboards& chipsets then something like {high end gamers} {all the rest}.The correct information going to the right place would solve the buy only the best frenzy on this forum.