Help on building a new system

[Guest]

Hello,

Long time lurker, first time poster

First off I would like to say this is a fantastic site. I have learned a lot from Tom's site and am appreciateive that he keeps it running!

My question to those in the community is this: I am getting a new system at the end of this month and would like anyone who has some time to kill to reply with a system they would themselves buy within a $1200 dollar price range.

I have decided to go with a athlon processor, but other then that, I am wide open on suggestions. This is to be a gaming machine, connecting with ADSL, so I want to take advantage of the best components i can, around that $1200 dollar range.

Specifically I am looking to find opinions on:

Motherboards
chipsets
RAM
Video Cards
CDRWs
A good gaming operating system
Harddrives
(i have a monitor/printer)

I have read most of Tom's Guides, but am unsure of what components will work best together. I am not going to be doing much if any tinkering with the componenets, no over clocking or anything like that, so the componenets will be basically as is.

I really appreciate any help given on this, and I realize this question has probably come up before, if there is a thread running, please leave me the link.

 

[Guest]

Abit KR7-Raid (Or KG7-Raid if you are buying right NOW!!)
Athlon MP 1.2GHz (This is a gaming system right?)
Alpha 8045 Heat Sink w/ Delta 7k
OCZ Titan 3 (Geforce 3- http://www.overclockerz.com/products/titan3.html)
2x60gb Western Digital 7200rpm ATA100 (144$ea)
Corsair PC2400 Cas2 DDRSDRAM 2x256MB (70$ea)
The rest you won't care about.
For prices go to www.pricewatch.com



By the way this is no where NEAR 1200. If you have that much money to blow i suggest you up the RAM and get yourself a nice CTX monitor with .24 dot pitch. Like the PR705f, after all what's the point of extreme graphics if your monitor can't display them?

Oh and if you are looking for a good CD drive get a Kenwood 72xtruex CD Drive.<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by AlphaSan on 09/12/01 02:03 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[FUGGER]

Buy AMD if you want problems, lots of problems. take a minute and read a few pages on this forum and you will see high majority of AMD based problems.

Well with $1200 you can get a very nice machine loaded with all the goodies.

Intel P4 1.7Ghz socket 478
Abit BL7-RAID
1.5gb RAM
Geforce 3
2x IBM 60GXP Hard drives

Or

Asus P4T
P4 @ 1.8Ghz
512 RDRAM
Geforce 3
80GXP

 

[FatBurger]

Mmm...yes, the 80GXP is a very nice type of hard drive.

<font color=green>In memory of those who died, simply because they lived in America.
Rest in peace.</font color=green>

 

[Yahiko81]

What goodies, boy you are a moron aren't you. Hmmm... this is a hardware site designed to help people with their problems. If you would take a minute to read a few pages you would see that the majority of problems come from people not knowing what they are doing, not any specific cpu. I have built over 9 personal systems for myself and all of them have had AMD Processors. The problems I have encountered have come from motherboard (fixed w/ bios updates) and memory problems. So get lost you troll before I sick my troll eating <b><font color=green>Lizard</b></font color=green> on you.

<b><font color=green>Lizards</b></font color=green> eat Trolls as a delicacy.

 

[Kelledin]

For CPU's, the Athlon "C" (the one with 133/266 FSB) is a good choice. Unless you're into heavy number crunching (i.e. compile jobs, SETI, 3D raytracing), you should be fine with 1GHz.

Motherboards--I've had excellent results with EPoX and ASUS motherboards.

ALi MAGiK 1 chipset is pretty good for Athlons, as is the SiS735 chipset. VIA chipsets are liable to give a few headaches. AMD761 chipsets are good, except that most AMD761 motherboards carry a VIA southbridge.

I tend to favor Corsair for my memory. It's stable and compatible with just about everything in existence, and it overclocks nicely if you're into that sort of thing.

GainWard makes good nVidia-based cards. A GF2/GF2Pro should do fine for you unless you're hardcore for the latest and greatest. GF3 is more-or-less as fast as a GF2Ultra but offers very nice visual quality enhancements (like excellent FSAA with almost no performance hit). Also, a GF3 is much faster in DirectX 8 games.

As far as CDRW's go, I favor Plextor. I've heard of a combined Ricoh DVD/CDRW that you might be interested in, but I personally get two separate parts for the purpose. For DVD, I tend to favor Pioneer slot-loaded drives.

Win2K is a nice O/S, rock-solid as MS operating systems go. DOS games that access hardware directly will have trouble with it (but who plays those anymore?) I had a little problem running Soul Reaver under Win2K that didn't happen under Win98; the problem may have been patched since, maybe not. Another thing about Win2K is that with Service Pack 2, you get full support for most VIA chipsets without having to use VIA's crummy 4in1.

I tend to favor IBM 60GXP's for IDE and Quantum for SCSI. Stay away from IBM 75GXP's, they're widely regarded as a flawed product line.

Kelledin

"/join #hackerz. See the Web. DoS interesting people."

 

[FUGGER]

9 machines, wow!! =P that make your like experianced or something. oops I just stepped on your lizard.

Back to the topic.

Before you buy online check the vendor out at: www.resellerratings.com

AMD are superior in MS office productivity, meaning that you can hit 220FPS in MS word. can you say OMG?

If you want video and gaming performance then get an Intel based machine.

You have decent budget, go with a Intel based system and save yourself the aggravation of dicking with AMD. Everything is built to Intel spec, not AMD. so you can expect highest level of compatability and stability buying Intel.

 

[Yahiko81]

If you just stepped on my lizard then more than likely you are missing a leg. I said I've built 9 "personal" AMD systems, meaning I have had no problems with AMD whatsoever. I work as a systems technician for a computer company based in Lenexa, KS. I have built many systems. So I have quite an extensive knowledge on how to build systems. Have you tryed to help anybody, I mean without Trolling your Intel crap all over the place.

<b><font color=green>Lizards</b></font color=green> eat Trolls as a delicacy.

 

[Kelledin]

AMD is also superior in 3D raytracing and compile jobs, where the performance really counts for something. Also rips up P4 in SSE2-optimized Photoshop (whoops!) and many database apps. Intel is superior in DivX ripping <i>if</i> you use their SSE2 Flask plugin and don't use MMX on the T-bird.

With a P4, you can maybe hit 91FPS in Q3A instead of 90. Wow!

You know what's a shame though--I can't make my Athlon system crash! I can't even get a toasted wafer or a chipped core! *sniff*

Shovel that horsesh|t boy, you're not shoveling hard enough! :lol:

Kelledin

"/join #hackerz. See the Web. DoS interesting people."

 

[rcf84]

Okay, its my turn:

AMD Athlon 1.2ghz (266fsb)
I Highly recommend Dragon Orb 3 to go with it.

ECS K7S5A (SiS 735 :*)

256mb PC2400 DDR-SDRAM "Corsair has some CAS2 Ram"

40gb 7200 rpm ata100 harddisk "IBM 60gxp i would choose"

Radeon 8500 64mb DDR "Gamers card" well this is a must have.

Sound Blaster Live! X-Gamer "seems SiS chipset dont have that via problem we all know"

Nice Nvidia and ATi users get a Cookie.... Yummy

 

[khha4113]

Buy AMD if you want problems, lots of problems. take a minute and read a few pages on this forum and you will see high majority of AMD based problems.

Like this one?
<A HREF="http://forumz.tomshardware.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=faq&notfound=1&code=1" target="_new"><font color=red><b>http://forumz.tomshardware.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=faq&notfound=1&code=1</A></b></font color=red>

Good or Bad have no meaning at all, depends on what your point of view is.

 

[FatBurger]

Radeon 8500 64mb DDR "Gamers card" well this is a must have.

By the way, Telandriel, that card isn't out yet. October 17th, $299 at Best Buy.

<font color=green>In memory of those who died, simply because they lived in America.
Rest in peace.</font color=green>

 

[Matisaro]

I probably will get one when some FINISHED benchmarks are released, as for FUGGER, he is a moron troll, ignore EVERYTHING he says.

~Matisaro~
"The Cash Left In My Pocket,The BEST Benchmark"
~Tbird1.3@1.5~

 

[Stick_e_Mouse]

RCF84 has the best suggestions of the rest. If your not buying/building your computer right NOW, and can wait for a month or so--you can buy a top-tier SiS735 motherboard like Asus' A7S266, otherwise, just go for the ECS with SiS 735 (especially since you won't be overclocking).

See a real naked pic of Britney Spears <A HREF="http://www.geocities.com/stick_e_mouse" target="_new">here</A>!!!

 

[Stick_e_Mouse]

Forgot to mention 2 ibm 60gb 60gxp harddrives on a promise fasttrak 100 tx2. Leadtek geforce 3 TD as your graphics card, Hercules Game Theater XP (only because it has a little more feature than the Philips Acoustics Edge) paired up with Klipsch 5.1 speakers.

See a real naked pic of Britney Spears <A HREF="http://www.geocities.com/stick_e_mouse" target="_new">here</A>!!!

 

[rcf84]

i would have the Radeon 8500 over the Leadtek geforce 3 TD. Remember TruForm and Faster FSAA (beta card kill the GF3 look at Anand review.) make games look N-I-C-E. Well dual head that the Radeon 8500 features is good for watching dvd (10% cpu usuage on a p3 733) on 1 monitor and Typing a Report on the other.

Nice Nvidia and ATi users get a Cookie.... Yummy

 

[FatBurger]

Mmmm...the 8500 just keeps looking better and better. Of course, they don't even have the A13 revision around for benchmarks (not that I've seen, anyway), so we'll have to wait and see in regards to the speed.

<font color=green>In memory of those who died, simply because they lived in America.
Rest in peace.</font color=green>

 

[rcf84]

I want it now. As i remember the *Beta* Radeon 8500 beat the GF3 in 3d mark.

Nice Nvidia and ATi users get a Cookie.... Yummy

 

[Stick_e_Mouse]

Indeed, the Radeon 8500 is a killer card, I would suggest it if it were out now. If the guy is going to wait a while for the Asus A7S or other sis735 mobo, then he might as well wait for the 8500 too!

See a real naked pic of Britney Spears <A HREF="http://www.geocities.com/stick_e_mouse" target="_new">here</A>!!!

 

[FatBurger]

Exactly why I'm waiting for the final revision. I don't want the beta version to be faster than the final product, which is definitely possible.

<font color=green>In memory of those who died, simply because they lived in America.
Rest in peace.</font color=green>

 

[Matisaro]

Remember rcf, the beta could not use many features, when you turn off features you get more speed, at least wait for the FINAL benchmarks!

~Matisaro~
"The Cash Left In My Pocket,The BEST Benchmark"
~Tbird1.3@1.5~

 

[rcf84]

Well i know a part of HyperZ-II was disabled in those bench's. I have to find what else was.

Nice Nvidia and ATi users get a Cookie.... Yummy

 

[xazos79]

How come you don't recommend he wait for the Northwood P4. Surely that would be worth his while more than the current P4's out there. Stop shoving inferior processors down this poor guys throat.