HELP! Wich one is faster?

[Aerobernardo]

Hello guys

I got an old athlon xp2000 palomino core and i think its time to change. Its been 5 years since i bought it and when i got the cash for a new PC i had to buy a Laptop. Well since im in college I CANNOT SPEND TOO MUCH CASH so no Athlons FX ok?
Heres what i have in mind:

CPU Athlon X2 4200 (does it have 1MB cache? i just found it with 512kb)
Video: A 7900GT or a 7800GTX? Maybe an ATI X1900XT (wich one should I pick?)
HD: This one is hard: should i get me a Raid0 7200RPM HDs or a single Cheetaah 10k RPM? The RAID0 should go with SATA2 (burn baby!). Space aint the problem since my laptop has an aditional 100GB.
No worries about memory cause ima get 1giga and later on another 1gigabyte

I need this system to run some engineering programs and of course max out some of my games like NFS Most Wanted. Is this good stuff to put together or should i change anything?
Regards

 

[luminaris]

Well, if it were me, I would get that processor you mentioned. I like nVidia so, I would get the 7900GT (currently out of stock at most places) and then, for HDD, I would get a Western Digital Raptor. They run at 10k and are very fast performers. I don't run RAID so, I have one Raptor to run all of my programs and then a large Seagate drive for storage.

I use DFI motherboards as they are awesome overclockers and are extremely stable. I use crucial RAM but just installed OCZ and they are both good RAM.

 

[shadowduck]

Hello guys

I got an old athlon xp2000 palomino core and i think its time to change. Its been 5 years since i bought it and when i got the cash for a new PC i had to buy a Laptop. Well since im in college I CANNOT SPEND TOO MUCH CASH so no Athlons FX ok?
Heres what i have in mind:

CPU Athlon X2 4200 (does it have 1MB cache? i just found it with 512kb)
Video: A 7900GT or a 7800GTX? Maybe an ATI X1900XT (wich one should I pick?)
HD: This one is hard: should i get me a Raid0 7200RPM HDs or a single Cheetaah 10k RPM? The RAID0 should go with SATA2 (burn baby!). Space aint the problem since my laptop has an aditional 100GB.
No worries about memory cause ima get 1giga and later on another 1gigabyte

I need this system to run some engineering programs and of course max out some of my games like NFS Most Wanted. Is this good stuff to put together or should i change anything?
Regards

1) X2 4200 has 512KB of cache per core for a toal of 1MB. However, I would save $30 get an Opteron 165 which has the full 1MB cache per core (2MB total) and overclock it to 4200+ levels or beyond.

2) 7900GT will outperform or come close to overtaking at 7800GTX for less money. 7900 all the way. 1900XT is also not a bad option, but I lean towards nVidia cards.

3) If you are doing intensive writes for long periods (like video) RAID will speed up your opertation. Otherwise there is no real reason to go RAID. Also, 10,000RPM hard drives won't reallyhelp you either (at least to justify the price IMHO). I would get a 250MB SATA II drive with 16MB cache, and you will do just fine.

4) Go ahead and get 2GB (2x 1GB) now. With AM2 going and AMD going DDR2 chip makers are looking to clear out inventories and are offering huge rebates and price cuts. Go ahead and take full advantage.

You didnt mention a motherboard, I would go with the A8N-E from Asus (to get the Opteron to X2 levels) for a DFI Lanparty Ultra board (to get it to FX-60 levels).

 

[Aerobernardo]

Ty All

About the opteron idea its a very nice solution, but it`s hard to get one where i live (BRAZIL) and i dont wanna mess with overclocking. Last time i overclocked my Geforce ti4200 i burned my power supply lol. Thats was a nica AGP back in 2001... Anyway im considering two 7200RPM HDs in RAID0, since its silent and also it might be faster at gaming right?

 

[shadowduck]

No, it won't make it faster at gaming.

 

[Hale73]

Go for the opty 165 and save urself
avoid getting the 10K raptors if u don't need for high end scalling and get urself a corsair XMS series with the lowest latency as possible or any may do. damn those LEDs cool to look at.

 

[mdd1963]

"2) 7900GT will outperform or come close to overtaking at 7800GTX for less money. "

Indeed, with the same 24 pipelines and higher core/mem speeds, it absolutely always will outperform the 7800GTX (256), being essentially a higher clocked/die-shrink 7800GTX...