Input On This System Please

[Zadjen]

Can you tell me what you think of the following system? I'm planning on building a gaming rig. Price is not my first concern, but I don't want to spend a ton of money. I'm thinking around $1500, but the main thing is that I don't want to be outdated next week.

Athalon XP2100 1.73GHz
SX1035B ATX Mid Tower, 350W PS
KT3 Ultra Via KT333 AMD Socket A Motherboard
512 MB PC2100 DDR RAM
XTASY GeForce Ti 4600
Maxtor 80GB 7200RPM Internal EIDE Ultra ATA/133
58X Max EIDE CDROM
Linksys 10/100

Thanks,
Zadjen

 

[chuck232]

Ok, first off, do you want an AMD system? And what are you gonna be using this computer for?

The comp there looks pretty good, although, get sme DDR333 RAM. Maybe get a WD SE HDD w/8MB cache. Also, if you can wait til September, R9700 will be out and is quite a bit faster than the Ti4600.

Also, the Antec PLUS1080 case is awesome.

<i>Past mistakes may make you look stupid, but avoiding future ones will make you look smart!</i>

 

[Zadjen]

I'm not set on an AMD system, but I've heard that the Athalon will out perform the P4. Don't know for sure.

The primary purpose of this computer will be for gaming.

 

[Smokey]

Looks good man.

I would also recommend the WD/8 mb cache. I own the Maxtor drive you listed (with 2mb's) and don't get me wrong, it works great. However, if I had the chance, I would have gotten the WD (price now is SO close too).

I use the Samsung PC2700 and love it, it OC's awesome (in case you decide to try). 512mb x 1 stick

With video card, it's tough. The 4600 was priced so high because it was alone at the top. The 4400 was close but you had to pay that extra 100$ for the Best. With the ATI 9700, expect the 4600's to drop (not the best anymore). Therefore, I say decide on your budget. The 4400 will still rock (I still use an AIW 7500 that works great!), but depending on the upcoming repricing of 4600's vs. the 9700, things could get interesting...If you can afford it? 9700 All the Way!!!

<font color=purple>Pentiums are for wusses who are afraid of instability</font color=purple>

 

[chuck232]

Or, you could wait til October IIRC and get a R9500. It should perform pretty close to Ti4600 levels and will cost ~$200-250USD I'm gonna guess.

<i>Past mistakes may make you look stupid, but avoiding future ones will make you look smart!</i>

 

[aufan17]

Not sure if you are only looking at AMD, but I spent under $1500 for this system 3 weeks ago, and prices are dropping steadily

Pentium 4 – 2.26 GHz
Kingston 512MB 1066MHz RDRAM
Maxtor 60GB Hard Drive
Sony 52X CDROM
GeForce 4 Ti4200
Sound Blaster Live 5.1
Asus P4T533-C Motherboard
NEC MultiSync FE771 Superbright Diamondtron 17” Monitor
Keytronic Windows Keyboard
Logitech PS/2 Mouse
Linksys10/100 Network Card
Antec PLUS660B Case w/side panel fan

It's great if you are looking to overclock

 

[grassapa]

wait for RADEON 9700 to come out, it will benefit you in either:
-you will get a better card (radeon 9700) for the current price of Ti4600 or
-you can get ti4600 for cheaper.

the worst failure is not trying........so go ahead and TRY to overclock your cpu to 5ghz

 

[4Ryan6]

Looks Good

 

[Crashman]

That system was outdated months ago. AMD doesn't make an up to date CPU right now. If you are obsessively against overclocking, the P4 2.26 outperforms even the 2200+, and is supposed to drop substantially in price in 3 weeks. If you would rather save money by overclocking, the P4 1.8A will significantly outperform the 2.26 if you overclock it to 2400MHz, easy for most people.

AMD made a public statement several months ago which implied that they were dropping out of the performance race for the time being to focus on the much larger midrange sector.

<font color=blue>By now you're probably wishing you had asked more questions first!</font color=blue>

 

[chuck232]

AMD made a public statement several months ago which implied that they were dropping out of the performance race for the time being to focus on the much larger midrange sector.

!! Really! Why aren't they releasing faster t-breds? Are they not scaling well? You'd think at .13um they'd be able to scale better than the palominos. And I remember something about the die being so small it was hard to cool or something..

<i>Past mistakes may make you look stupid, but avoiding future ones will make you look smart!</i>

 

[Spitfire_x86]

Looks good configuration. Stick with it with few changes.

You may buy GeForce4 Ti4400 can save $100. It's very litte slower than Ti4600. You would not notice the difference.

With the saved money you can buy a LiteOn 48x/12x/48x CD-RW instead of CD-ROM. This CD-RW is great at both reading and writing. It's reading performance should be better than your 58X CD-ROM. And of course, you can backup your games with it.

You may change your hard drive to a Western Digital 80 GB (7200 rpm, ATA-100, 8 MB cache). It's faster than Maxtor 80 GB (7200 rpm, ATA-100, 2 MB cache).

 

[chuck232]

Yeah, with the money saved, you could probably get a WD 8mb HDD. They're really not too much more than the 2mb ones. I don't really feel comfortable having only a CD-RW, so I'd suggest you get a CD-ROM and a Lite-On burner. A 40X12 should be fine. Supposedly they can be *overclocked* to 48X12X48 with a BIOS flash or something like that.

<i>Past mistakes may make you look stupid, but avoiding future ones will make you look smart!</i>

 

[Spitfire_x86]

Mount Rainier burning on CD-RW does not work in LiteOn's 40X model. It works in LiteOn's 48X model.

Supporting Mt. Rainier format is important, because it allows to use a Rewriteable CD as floppy and next version of Windows is going to support this format.

 

[Crashman]

Yep, remember when Intel said the poor state of economy was caused by AMD? Besically they said that the MHz race and the price war was responsible for people now owning faster computers than they needed. Which meant that people could no longer justify purchasing new systems. Supposedly, if not for AMD, all those people would have bought Pentium III 500's instead of PIII 1000's 2 years ago, then needed to upgrade last year, then again this year...Pick a point in time, the price was too low for the fastest processor. According to Intel it was all AMD's fault. According to Intel I can't get a job as a mechanical designer in the Automotive industry because AMD cut prices too far!

AMD investers were also unhappy about the price ware because it pushed per unit profits down too far. So AMD decided that they would go back to being a cheap substitute for an Intel, kind of like in the K5 days, instead of a top notch competitor. That way Intel would be able to manipulate the prices any way they wanted, and AMD would always set theirs just low enough where it didn't cause a price cut on Intel's part.

This is my interpretation of the events and public statements made by the two companies. But I remember for certain that at the end of it all, AMD made a statement to the point that they were going to focus directly on the middle performance segment of the PC industry rather than try to compete at the top, simply becuase this is the largest market segment.

<font color=blue>By now you're probably wishing you had asked more questions first!</font color=blue>

 

[chuck232]

Exactly so with the BIOS enhancement it has support for Mt. Rainier. I have no clue what it does, but it's there. Also, you can do the same thing with a 32x12x40 Lite-on, but you have to get a specific model IIRC.

<i>Past mistakes may make you look stupid, but avoiding future ones will make you look smart!</i>

 

[chuck232]

Til Hammer right? Wonder how much they'll be... I mean they could be real cheap, but that's really not good for AMD's profit and margins.

<i>Past mistakes may make you look stupid, but avoiding future ones will make you look smart!</i>

 

[Crashman]

They didn't exactly give any details about future marketing plans!

<font color=blue>By now you're probably wishing you had asked more questions first!</font color=blue>