New Gaming Box
 

<b>Introduction</b>

In keeping with the grand tradition of telling you folks the intimate details of the hardware I'm piecing together for a new system, I have created this thread. The rumors are true - I am building a gaming box.

In the following writeup (and in the months and days ahead) I will cover the goals I wish for this system to meet, the constraints I am placing upon it, the parts I intend to use, what finally comes together and, most importantly, how you can adapt my basic design to fit your needs, whatever they may be.

<b>Introduction, Part Two</b>

I was recently approached by my division manager with a simple task - create a computer that's insanely good, and do it with $2,000. The monitor, speakers, and other accessories will be purchased separately. Just the computer. $2,000.

His list of requirements was not short but not overly long. Fast Pentium 4 processor, a gig of RAM, top-of-the-line video and 240 gigs of hard drive space. If we had money for it, a DVD writer would be nice. Nice case, but nothing fancy. USB & FireWire. Preferably on the front.

That was about it. So I started looking, thinking about what to put in it. And it was this system that got me thinking it was time to finally build the gaming box I've been wanting to build.

Using his system requirements as a baseline, I began thinking of my goals and what I would need to change in his system to make it work for me (and my budget).

<b>Goals</b>

Firstly, the system must be fast. But not just fast as in "wow, Mozilla starts up in under an hour" fast. Fast for Quake 3 fast. <i>Fast</i>.

The graphics board must be able to deliver a high framerate in Q3 and yet render some very nice looking images. Anti-aliased would be a very nice touch.

The system also needs to be relatively cheap. I don't want to spend $3,000 on a gaming computer that's totally tricked out. I want to spend a reasonable amount of money on a gaming computer that's just <i>mostly</i> tricked out. Reasonable is "more than a grand but not much".

It should be stated again that I am looking for pure game performance from this system. So it doesn't need to have a big hard drive, DVD writer or even FireWire. It simply needs to play Quake and run mIRC (so I can grab Q3 servers).

Keeping these in mind, we can begin discussing parts.

<b>Tentative Parts List</b>

<i>Processor</i> - Intel Pentium 4 2.26GHz 533MHz FSB. The performance of the Pentium 4 at Quake is exceptional (and untouched by any AMD offering) and it's not too shabby at most other things as well. Unfortunately, we don't care about the other things. It must run Windows, games (Quake specifically, though others may be added in the future) and mIRC. So a 2.26GHz Pentium 4 is in the sweet spot of the price/performance arc and should do quite nicely.

<i>Motherboard</i> - Abit IT7 MAX. I have a love affair with Abit spanning many years. They've never done wrong by me, so I tend to choose their boards when I'm building a new system. This is also convenient, as they tend to make great boards with lots of features. This one will support up to 2 GB's of RAM, 12 IDE devices, has audio & LAN integrated (important when we're keeping price in mind), has FireWire and USB 2.0 support (and boatloads of ports) and is reasonably priced. This is a fairly easy pick for me.

<i>Hard Drive</i> - IBM 40GB 120GXP. I really don't need much hard drive space as I'm not going to be putting MP3's and other such things on this computer. Windows & Intel are good at games, and I'm not going to force them to do anything that's better done elsewhere (like on my two other stupidly fast dual processor boxes). 40 gigs is much more than adequate, but it's the sweet spot in hard drive prices these days. I tend to pick IBM because I've had great luck with their drives.

<i>Memory</i> - 512 MB Crucial PC2700. This is such a no-brainer it's not even funny. I don't buy anything but Crucial anymore and you shouldn't either. 512 MB, while less than I have in my other two main machines (<b>tier</b> and <b>pimpintosh</b> both have over 1024 MB), it should be very adequate for gaming. If it becomes an issue, I will add 256 MB later on.

<i>Case</i> - Antec SX1040B with a 400 Watt PSU. This is the same type of case that Alienware uses in their machines. I have the 1030B for another machine I have (that's sitting in my office right now, being my Linux box at work) and it's a solid case. It will allow relatively good airflow, it's plenty roomy and it looks nice. I can expand into this case if I want to (4x5.25" bays, 2x3.5" bays external, 6x3.5" bays internal), so it leaves the future open.

<i>Keyboard</i> - Microsoft Natural Elite. I don't use anything else and I won't as long as this keyboard is available. I will be using a PS2->USB adaptor, however, as the IT7 does not have any legacy ports.

<i>Mouse</i> - Logitech Wingman Gaming Mouse. The goal of this system is gaming only, and this mouse is the best at that (in my not-so-humble opinion). Since I'm not going to be doing web browsing or other things that would require a scroll wheel, I don't need a mouse that has one. I already have this mouse, so it's free. Unfortunately, it's no longer produced, so it's difficult to obtain.

<i>DVD-ROM</i> - Sony DDU1621 16x DVD-ROM drive. I wouldn't put this in if I didn't have to, but, unfortunately, I do. Loading games (and the operating system) is impossible without some type of media reader and the optical drive seems to be the way to go. I would have gotten a straight CD-ROM drive but I am convinced that in a year or two or three, most games are going to be coming on DVD, and I want this system to be at least semi-usable at that time.

<i>Video Card</i> - ATi Radeon 9700 PRO. Yes, the all-important video card will be ATi's latest offering. Its FSAA leaves almost nothing to be desired, it's fast and the drivers don't seem to suck like past ATi efforts. The Linux support will undoubtedly be shabby as far as OpenGL is concerned, but since Linux isn't going to touch this box, I'm not worried about it. It'll work in Windows and that's what matters for gaming. The Radeon 9700 PRO is the obvious choice when the requirement is "fastest consumer 3D card available on the market today".

<b>Price List</b>

All prices obtained from NewEgg.com, my favorite online computer store, except for Crucial memory (http://www.crucial.com) and a guess on the retail price of the Radeon 9700 PRO, which will eventually be ordered from NewEgg.

Processor ------------- $ 269.00
Motherboard ----------- $ 152.00
Hard Drive ------------ $ &nbsp;71.00
Memory ---------------- $ 177.00
Video Card ------------ $ 400.00
Case ------------------ $ 100.00
Keyboard -------------- $ &nbsp;17.00
DVD-ROM --------------- $ &nbsp;40.00

Grand Total ----------- $1226.00

<b>Accessories</b>

I will be purchasing a monitor to use with this system, but it is not a part of the system. When this system is dead and gone, the monitor will still be around. The Sony CPD-E540 is a relatively nice 21" FD Trinitron and at $515, the price is right.

I'll also be using a set of Koss UR-30 headphones for gaming, though I already have them so I don't need to buy them.

I will be using a fUnc Industries sUrface 1030 mousepad, which I already have.

<b>Conclusion</b>

For a hair over $1,200 I am building a <b>very</b> capable gaming system. It should be noted that a CD-RW drive could be added for ~$80 and one would have what is considered a "complete" system, one like you would buy from Dell (albeit at a higher price).

It is not intended as a general use system, so it lacks a larger hard drive. However, for the price, it packs a very strong punch.

The intended finish date of the system is "late October", mainly because October is a triple paycheck month. :D

Comments and suggestions are welcome. Please keep in mind that this is a sort of "living thread" and it won't be "finished" until after the system is. Many updates will be coming in the near future.

Tomorrow I will look at how you can adapt my "Gaming System" design to meet your specific needs. There might be something more satisfying than having a computer that does everything you want it to and nothing more, but that's beyond the scope of this thread. :)

[ Edit - fixed retardified spelling - s/hare/hair, s/time/type ]

With hard drives as cheap as they are, why not blow the extra twenty bucks and get an 80-gig? You never know if you'll need more room for games, and it seems like it'd be worth it to be sure you'll never have that hassle.

Just out of curiosity, how much does a Windows XP license affect to the estimated price?

How the cooling of the processor and the case in general are done? I find the noise made by a processor fan rather annoying and for me it is quite a big distraction while playing games.

My own machine sounds like a vacuum cleaner and I'm unable to think any way to reduce the noise (water-cooling doesn't attract me).

I'd got for a segate 80G myself, dirt cheap, fastish and relaible as hell. But you've got your reasons so. I personally prefer NVidia cards, they tend to have a larger support base, particuarly in some games and the drivers are second to none.

That must be one good CDRW!!! I can get a fantastic 32x here for AU$120.

Mjk - I purchased Windows XP Pro through Microsoft's Company Store (through a friend of a friend). It was $30. But I already paid for it, so it's not thrown in. :) Have a nice shiny box and everything.

As far as cooling and noise, I'm not worried about it. First, my main machine, <b>tier</b>, has more fans than you can shake a stick at (it's a Dual Athlon 1600+). So I already have an extremely high noise level. :) But I'm going to be wearing noise-canceling headphones while I do my gaming, so noise isn't a concern at all. I can't hear the woman yell at me when I have these headphones on. :)

The processor will use the heatsink that's provided with it (I'm buying the P4 in retail box). It's got a fan on it to blow the warm air into the rest of my case. The case will have two fans in the front pulling air in (over the hard drive) and two fans in the back to suck air out. I've used this case before and although they cooling characteristics are nothing spectacular, they're nothing to giggle at either. It'll get the job done. :)

If you're looking for a case that you can get a <b>lot</b> of cooling done with, try a Lian Li with a 120MM blowhole & high-throughput fan in the top (and, of course, a high throughput fan in the back, blowing out, and two in the front, blowing in, all 3 80MM). That's my setup on my dual Athlon (with a GeForce 4 Ti 4400, which also gives off quite a bit of heat) and it's all good. No worries about heat. :)

Jag - I like Seagate just fine too (their SCSI drives are second to none, as far as I'm concerned), but IBM is my first choice.

I like ATi, but since the TNT2, I've preferred nVidia. Until now, that is. :) I honestly think that ATi makes superior products but their drivers have been rather shoddy lately. They seem to have righted that wrong and as my friend Milo would say, now it's "pure butter". If I wanted this box to run Linux, I would use an nVidia card. But Linux is a goddamn joke, so this box will run Windows (which is also a goddamn joke, but less of one when it comes to gaming).

As far as CD-RW drives go, I'm all about Plextor. I named a price off the top of my head - I've seen them for as low as $54. But once you factor in shipping, etc, you're bound to spend more. $80 seems like a safe bet to me. :)

Jag & Tobiasly - I may go with 80 gig, I may not. I'm not particularly worried about running out of space when the only apps I plan on loading are Quake III Arena, mIRC and some type of Q3 server list/launcher program. We'll see how much prices on my parts come down as a whole. Everyone knows I'm not real worried about $20, so we'll see how I'm feeling at the time. :) It would actually cost me less than $20 to upgrade to an 80 gig, so... that's probably the item I'm most willing to budge on.

I know that you would say "well hey! You've got 180GB in <b>tier</b> and 120GB in <b>pimpintosh</b>, why not go with two 80GB drives for the gaming box?"

And I would answer "don't tempt me." :)

Seriously though, we'll see how prices are when I order. The list is not set in stone yet. :)

How this design can work for you
 

I do these write-ups for a few reasons. One is so I can receive constructive criticism and comments that may help me make a better choice. The second is that I know a number of people enjoy reading them - myself included. The third, and most important, is that I hope it will help someone else out who's looking to build a computer or possibly give them ideas when the upgrade time comes around.

With that last reason in mind, it is important to recognize the fact that not everyone needs what I need. BrianR, for example, probably doesn't want a gaming box - but he might want a decent all-around system that he could store lots of MP3's on. Maybe juju wants to build a LAN gaming box - portable yet powerful. Perhaps Tony would like to have a powerful multi-media machine but he's not sure where to start.

The goal of this write-up is to expand on the original system design to show how it can be adjusted to fit most anyone's needs.

<i>What would I need to change if I wanted a...</i>

<b>good all-around computer?</b>
<blockquote>Since you're not likely to be doing as much heavy gaming, a cheaper video card (with less power) will do. Crucial makes a Radeon 8500 LE which will be more than adequate for most tasks a normal person will be involved in. They sell for about $130 at http://www.crucial.com

You also don't need to have such a fast processor. 2.26GHz is great for the gamer but unnecessary for the casual user (or gamer). A 1.8GHz Socket478 Pentium 4 is more than adequate and will cost approximately $100 less ($162 at NewEgg.com).

You may, however, want to have a larger hard drive. For $21 extra ($92 total), you can have an 80GB 120GXP hard drive from IBM. That should be plenty of space for the casual user.

You definitely want to have a CD-RW drive in addition to your DVD-ROM. The Plextor PX-W4012TA/SW burns CD-R's at 40x, ReWritables at 12x and reads CDs at 40x. That's plenty fast. And it's only $129 in the retail box.

For exactly $1,000 you could build your own 1.8GHz Pentium 4 with 512MB of PC2700 DDR SDRAM, 80GB hard drive, a 128MB Radeon LE video card, a nice mid-tower case, DVD drive (for watching movies) an a 40x CD burner.</blockquote>
<b>portable gaming computer?</b>
<blockquote>Not much at all, actually. First, we'll be eliminating the huge tower that my computer is being built into, as well as the motherboard. Everything else will remain the same.

Now, let's add a Shuttle SS51G barebones system (review at Tom's Hardware here ). This will support your AGP card, the 533MHz FSB of the fast Pentium 4, your comfortable 40GB hard drive... everything. It can be found at NewEgg for about $329, or approximately $77 more (total) than my original base system. The portability afforded by this system is amazing, and it has FireWire and USB built in, as well as all of the standard legacy ports. My friend Matt will be building one of these systems when I build my gaming box; I'll let you all know how it goes.</blockquote>
<b>multimedia super computer?</b>
<blockquote>First things first, you need to decide whether or not you'll be playing games on this system. If you are, stick with the Radeon 9700 PRO. If you're not, then you'll do fine with a Crucial Radeon 8500 LE. $400 or $130. Take your pick. Subtract $0 or $270, depending.

While the processor should still be plenty fast, you will definitely want more hard drive space. 120GB 120GXP's are selling for $134 and two of them will allow you to do whatever you want to do. Subtract $71, add $268.

512MB of memory is probably adequate, but 1GB is even better. Double the memory cost to $354 and add $177 to the total.

No multimedia box would be complete without a CD burner, so we'll want the aforementioned CD-RW drive. $129 added to the total.

We'll also want a DVD burner. :) You don't want to use the DVD burner for CD's because a) it's slow and b) you don't want to wear it out. Besides, 3 optical drives is good fun! The Pioneer DVR-A04SPK3 is $299 in the retail box and records DVD-R/RW media. It's pathetically slow at burning CD's, but you'll be able to record movies for the loved ones (or back up all your MP3's to 2 or 3 or 4 discs, which are 4.7GB each). Keep in mind that media is about $2.50 each. Add $299 to the overall price.

You're going to need some surround sound, and what better than the Creative Labs Audigy? $60 for the OEM package gets you the card and drivers.

You'll want some serious speakers to take advantage of that card and the Klipsch ProMedia 5.1 setup is just right. Hey, it's only $360 and you're getting 500 RMS watts of sonic glory. Klipsch is a trusted name in speakers and for good reason - their products are exceptional. This is no different. Add $360 to the total.

So there we have it. A stupendously good multimedia system, sans monitor and mouse. What's the total? A measly $2,448. You will be the envy of your neighborhood.</blockquote>

So there you have it. Three types of systems that are in common demand these days. Using the same basic system that I started with yesterday, we can easily adapt it to fit all three - and end up with three great computers.

Comments? Suggestions?

Mjk, it seems like only recently there has been quite a bit of interest in general in making more quiet systems, and you can find CPU fans, case fans, and hard drives that are now designed to be quiet. I hang out at amdzone.com's BBS quite a bit and several people there have discussed how which hard drives, for example, have the quiet-type fluid bearings.

Of course, replacing your hard drive for a quieter one may be a bit much, but next time you're looking at replacing it, it's something to consider. But you should be able to replace all your fans pretty cheap.

Personally, though, I like a noisy box. My Linux server has a total of three SCSI drives and nine cooling fans and it sounds like a jet engine taking off. :)

Well ya know, with Windows XP Pro's dynamic drives (basically software RAID) you could really up your transfer rate by striping two 40GB hard drives!

Board's got RAID 0,1 & 0+1 abilities built into it. So it's something to consider for future revisions. :)

Re: How this design can work for you
 

This is the first time in a few years that Intel has really pulled away from AMD in terms of performance alone (forget price/performance). And they've only pulled away a little. So while you might be able to justify a P4 for raw power, I couldn't recommend to <B>anyone</B> that they spend $162 on a 1.8GHz processor!

The XP 2000+ model is in the "sweet spot" for Athlons right now (just under $100 at NewEgg), and boards using the excellent nVidia nForce chipset (like Abit's nV7m, ~$100) have dual memory channels for very fast performance when you use two DDR DIMM's. Or if integrated video isn't your style (it uses GeForce2, which is starting to show its age if you were to do any more than casual gaming) you can still get many excellent mobo's for under $100.

Here is what happens if the heatsink falls off your processor:

http://wam.umd.edu/~kdallasd/pix

That's my friend, and that's his Athlon.

Pentium 4's don't do that.

People should keep that in mind when choosing which processor to go with.

That having been said, a friend and I built a system with an NV7m and a 2000+ (but added a GF4 Ti 4200 for video) and it's pretty quick. They're cheap, and they make for good systems. I've been an AMD fan for years (this will only be the second Intel processor I've ever purchased - the first was a Celeron 800 that I use in a Q3 server), but their chips run <b>hot</b>.

Update on the AMD overheating situation. Tom's Hardware, reviewing the new Athlons, says:

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/02q3...hlonxp-05.html

To summarize,

A few months ago AMD started shipping new processors with a overheating protection circuit. If employed correctly by mainboard manufacturers, the circuit will switch off the power supply if the CPU temperature is measured at 85 degrees C or higher. Although it adds some cost, manufacturers are slowly starting to employ the circuit, including Asus and QDI.

Q3 performance at and after around 1.8ghz starts being unimportant, as it doesn't really matter if you are getting 150 or 180 frames/second at 1600x1200x32/4xFSAA. Especially since you specified a Radeon 9700 Pro. After 60frames/second, it becomes utterly irrelevant; in theory the human brain can't really perceive more than 30fs anyway, but up to 60fs it looks 'smoother'. Then it's a moot point. However, if it makes you happy, go for it.
This, of course, is the Abit boards that doesn't have lots of features, having sacrificed any and all remains of backwardcompatibility. You won't find any PS2, Serial, or Parallel ports. At $150, it's overpriced yet popular with the L337 crowd, for obvious reasons. Although you may not need the additional ports, it's something to think about.

If you can wait just a little bit, and want to go Abit, get the ABIT SR7-8X. It'll be 1/3rd cheaper than the board you specified, it can do DDR400 to remain future-proof, it has an AGP8x slot, and it has legacy ports, just in case.

Alternatively, if you are desperate to go for the 3L337 MAX, wait for the MAX2 which is on the horizon, and which can do SerialATA as well.

If you want a motherboard now, the fairly clear frontrunner seems to be the Gigabyte 8IEXP, and it'll be about $25 cheaper than the Abit board as well, with better Quake3 performance, tweakability, and more ports.
Many other people haven't had good luck with the IBM GXP drives, dubbed the 'IBM Deathstar' due to their high failure rates.

Here's the link to show you the <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=IBM+deathstar+failure+rate">plethora of problems</a> with those drives. Don't risk your data for a couple of bucks.

Although I haven't recommended Western Digital drives in the past, their 5400rpm and 7200rpm offerings, the WD800AB and WD800JB are very good options, and only about $30 more than the dud you specified, at twice the capacity.

The mouse is free and you're comfortable with it, so there's no reason for improvement; but how can you possibly use a gaming mouse without a wheel? Faster-than-light weapon cycling/switching is ideal using the wheel.

Hopefully not, you'd be overpaying by $30. You can preorder the 9700 Pro at several places right now, at around $370.

You're overpaying by about $35, even for the 533mhz version.

You're overpaying by about $30, it's available for $485. (+shipping, obviously)

If you're ever going to use decent surround speakers, and not headphones, consider a SB Live 5.1 card in addition; it's cheap at around $30 and - for games - does all the Audigy can do.
Good God. Sanyo's 40x12x48, with BurnProof tech, is pretty fast, has never failed me or coastered, and can be had for $42.

Then definitely rethink using the MAX.

X.

Good points all around, except for framerates, which I'll go ahead and explain here.

It doesn't matter what I can <i>see</i> when it comes to framerate. It doesn't even matter if my system does 180 @ 1024x768. What is important, with Quake 3, is that my system be stable at 125fps. That is, com_maxfps will be set to "125" and my system should be on a steady 125 at all times.

This is important because of a bug in Q3 that hasn't been fixed and won't ever be. There are key framerates that cause special things to happen. At 125, you will jump higher than normal. At 144, your actual framerate max will be 166 and you will jump lower and run faster. I need to be able to jump that extra height (and thus distance) because I spend a fair amount of time trickjumping (and actually have quite a few fans in the Q3 world). What I actually see is meaningless as far as framerate is concerned - I just need my guy to jump higher. :)

As for weapon switching, I have quicker weapon switching than anyone that uses a wheel. :) Wheels are too imprecise and slow when you need a weapon quick. Many times I will hit someone with a rocket and then immediately switch to a rail to finish them off before they kill me. I do this by having every weapon bound to a key around the home row, so I can switch to any weapon with a single motion.

1 - gauntlet
2 - machine gun
c - shotgun
q - grenade launcher
r - rocket launcher
3 - plasma gun
w - rail gun
t - lightning

I don't use the BFG, so I don't have it bound. I also have individual crosshairs set for my weapons, individual sensitivities, individual zooms, etc. Yes, I'm what you could consider a "serious" quaker. It's not a hobby for me. I play competetively on a very regular basis. That's the reason I won't use a mouse with a wheel for Quake, and it's also the reason why I can justify a computer just for Quake.

Good recommendation on the motherboard; I'm definitely open to suggestions so I'll check into it. The l33t factor means nothing to me - having a working system that fits my goals is important. The IT7 was the first board I saw on Abit's site that supported the 533MHz FSB and it seemed to get fairly good reviews, so it's been in my mind since then (a few months ago). But lke I said, open to suggestion.

I'm fully aware of the problems with IBM drives, especially the 75GXP line. However, I've been running a number of 60GXP's for over a year now and a 120GXP for a few months with no problems. I'm inclined to believe that the 75GXP problems lead to over-reporting of individual problems people had with other models of the GXP series. I guess I'll find out after I get it, eh? :)

The $400 on the video card is a "absolute max it'll retail for" price. We all know I'll get it cheaper. :) As for the monitor, I'd prefer to buy it from NewEgg at whatever price they're selling it for - they've been very helpful when I got a bad motherboard and burned up the processor (took both back, overnighted me replacements at no cost to me). Their customer service has been exceptional. Plus, they don't suck on shipping prices nearly as much as others do - NewEgg doesn't lose money on shipping, but it doesn't count on it to make a profit like many outfits do nowadays. Sure, we've got the cheapest price... and shipping this stick of memory is only $20! I'll stick with a company I know will do right by me. Their prices aren't the best, but they're not bad either, and I'll never have to worry about getting stuck with a non-functioning piece of equipment.

Anyway, I'm waiting a while to build it, so we'll see how the prices fall. Hopefully I'll be saving some money ('cause hey, who doesn't like money?), but I wanted to get a list out now (with prices) so I'm not shocked when I go to build it and realize it's going to cost me more than I wanted. Prices will go down, not up. That's okay with me. :)

Jesus tapdancin' Christ. I knew Athlons still didn't have the built-in "killswtich" yet, but didn't realize they'd actually go up in flames.

I know that AMD <I>recommended</I> that mobo makers install their own killswitch, but none did until Tom's Hardware released their video on the life expectancy of an Athlon without a fan. So yes, it's up to the user to install a software monitor, and even that is a far less desirable solution.

Hopefully the failsafe is becoming standard in mobo's, and will be built into the CPU on their next architecture upgrade.

I should note that I've been considering the Abit BG7, but I can't find any really good reviews of it. Did this board just slip through the cracks? It seems to have all the features I'm looking for really (though I dig the extra IDE spots on the IT7 because it allows me to really expand), and it's the 845G chipset (the IT7 is only the 845E and only supports PC2100 vs 845G's support of PC2700), but... ? I'm sort of aprehensive about buying a board that it seems like no one has looked at. Maybe I'll take a chance and see how it goes.

Ill expand this later but just quickly...
Yes athlons whip the crap out of P4 for price/peformance but P4s are the best overall. But the heatsink design this is utter crap. I mean hell you've put on athlon heatsinks, those things require allot of force an often the assistance of a screwriver just the get those damn clips on. Fall off? It'd rip out of the motherboard first!!!

I think the white part it snaps on to broke off. :\

Okay, given my technical retardation, help me here.

As I understood it, when the P4 first came out, it wasn't anything spectacular, as it apparently was no better than the best P3. Based upon what I'm hearing here, it's a good chip now. So, did I mishear? Or, has it just been greatly improved?

Pretty much, mostly other issues like busses and ram types.

The white bit? Makes more sense. What mobo and how forcefuly di he isntall it... Most mobos i think you can set to shut down if the temp goes over X.

P4's, IMHO, are still crap. They're a crap design pushed out by Intel because they were getting their butts handed to 'em by AMD. In its original design, P4's were supposed to have various cool features that would have made them much better all-around chips.

However, realizing that most consumers pay attention to only clock speed, they took out a lot of that to make a chip that would run faster. The P4 is the first chip they have ever released that performs <I>worse</I> clock-for-clock than a previous chip; you are correct about that syc. Underclock a P4 to 1GHz, and a 1GHz P3 will beat it on some tests.

However, as jag alluded to, what really hindered P4's at first was the fact that you could only get them with expensive Rambus or ancient SDR-SDRAM, due to marketing and political reasons. Rambus is actually a better match for the P4 than DDR is, but it's just too expensive for most people, so they eventually came out with support for DDR.

I'll take issue with "P4's are best overall" though. Athlon XP's will hold their own quite nicely to a comparable P4. By "comparable", I don't even mean clock spead, I mean 2200+ vs. 2.2GHz. The reason P4's are best right now is that Intel currently has the leg up on manufacturing (although I haven't read the entire THG article that UT linked to, and it looks like this new 2600+ is more than just a rush job to close the gap..)

So even if one argues that P4's are better, I couldn't justify buying one unless you just have gobs of dough and want the absolute fastest possible right now. If you have $<I>n</I> to spend, your best bet is to spend that $<I>n</I> on an Athlon setup instead of a P4.

P4s are, clockspeed-for-clockspeed, an inferior CPU to the current Athlon XPs. A 1.6ghz P4 is inferior to a 1.6ghz Athlon XP, simple as that. There very, very few applications where the P4 will have any advantage, and if so, a minor one, unless the code was specifically P4-optimized. Fact.

They are, dollar-for-dollar, an inferior CPU to the current Athlon XPs. A 1.6ghz P4 costs around $125, a 1.6ghz Athlon XP costs around $85.

P4s ramp up to higher clockspeeds than Athlon CPUs, and it is at those very high clockspeeds (2.2ghz and above), that the P4 can pull away from lower-clocked Athlons. At those speeds, the P4s are usually more than 50% more expensive than comparable Athlons.

The P4 was designed with Rambus memory in mind, which offers higher memory bandwidth, with some latency penalties. Poor design and bad marketing decisions have led to a reversal of that policy, most new P4 boards are geared towards high-performance DDR memory, such as the upcoming DDR400 sticks.

The P4 was also designed with high clockspeeds in mind, this not necessarily being a reflection of actual resulting speed. Thus, the P4 core can probably be pushed higher for another few GHZ, whereas the current Athlon core can not. The marketing war is being won by GHZ, since that's supposedly a reflection of speed. The chip hasn't stopped underperforming, but if you are prepared to pay a considerable premium, you can get a version of it that's been tweaked enough to be faster than any AMD offering. A minor performance bonus (that doesn't make any difference for 98% of applications) for a major markup. As - at such high speeds - the CPU is almost never the bottleneck, paying a premium for such a small difference is utterly nonsensical; disk/memory/bus/graphics bandwidth will be a bottleneck long before the CPU becomes an issue, unless every single component bar the CPU is absolutely top-of-the-line.

The Athlon core does run hot, but any correctly installed heatsink/fan (such as the ones that'll be sold to you by almost any half-decent dealer, or MB/CPU combos sold on the net) will do its job well enough to prevent trouble. Horror stories of burning computers and melted CPUs are usually the result of amateurish tinkering.

As a side-note, the current fastest available Athlon XP, at 1.8ghz, costs $146, and is a very fast CPU. A P4 cpu with comparable performance is more expensive; the second-fastest P4, ignoring the 'flagships' which always carry a premium, at 2.4ghz, costs over $300. While it is slightly faster at a variety of tasks, it doesn't warrant the markup under any circumstances. As a final technical note, the just-announced (and very soon available) Athlon XP 2600+ levels the playing field again, matching the P4 2.53ghz at most benchmarks, also seeming to be very overclockable (The Athlon seems to go up to 2.8ghz without too much trouble.) See the story at http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/02q3/020821/index.html

AMD has a very good history regarding their chipset/motherboard/upgrading policies, whereas Intel has a history of trying to force MB upgrades as rapidly as possibly, making their newer products incompatible with older boards; they also tried to control the market for intel-CPU chipsets, attemtping to sue competitors out of the market. (trying to create a quasi-monopoly to control prices on motherboards, and chips). They also have a rich and varied tradition of ruthlessly exploiting and discriminating against their workforce. (www.faceintel.com and http://www.faceintel.com/whoweare.htm ) That's just an 'added bonus' in addition to their overpriced, overhyped, and underperforming hardware, however.

X.

<center>
<a href="http://www.de.tomshardware.com/cpu/02q3/020821/images/start2.gif">Athlon, effortlessly running at 2.88ghz</a></center>

I think the issue with the P4 was to get those clock speeds they made the pipe too damn long. As a result every time i screwed up it lost 16 or so cycles. Frankly i only buy Athlons, i don't like P4s and i don't like Intel. The only exception is laptops, i prefer not to ignite my pants. As a result ill probably get a G4.

If i wanted to splash out i'd got for faster and more RAM, RAID, SCSI and better gfx over a P4 any day.

Jag - the PowerBook gets quite warm. Play with one for a while and you'll see. :)

Xug - you're spot-on.

Probably the biggest reason I want to build a P4 system is because I haven't done it yet. I've built everything from 486's up to some pretty fast Athlons but I haven't touched a P4 yet. The Athlon XP 2600+ has me reconsidering whether or not I'll go with a Pentium 4, simply because it <b>is</b> that fast. But I must have built 20 Athlon boxes, so it's just not that exciting...

Ah, decisions, decisions... :)

So, if I wanted to create a good porn computer...you know, one that allows me to watch high quality streaming video and download a ton of pics...what would you recommend?

Eh, I'd personally recommend taking the "home" system I have up there. Radeon 8500 LE graphics would be great for watching [porn] movies, 512 MB of RAM is definitely enough... I'd probably put 2x80GB hard drives in it though. And you could swap out the motherboard/processor for an Athlon solution to save a few hundred bucks. 1.4GHz or above would be all you needed to watch porn all day.

You'd also want to get some pretty fast DSL or a cable connection. I'm all about DSL because my experiences with it have been better than cable (I've had 2 cable providers, 1 DSL, guess which I use now :) ), but you can still get decent cable if you live in the right place.

Actually though, I guess I really need to recommend a Macintosh. Probably the new 17" iMac. iPhoto would be great for organizing your pornographic images and QuickTime 6 takes the cake for streaming video. Yeah. And that 17" wide display would make you drool over the crisp nipples it displayed.

Well, you know, I HAVE wanted a Mac for a while now. ;)

Seriously though, $10 says that someone out there actually HAS built a computer strictly for hitting porn sites.

X, I'm as big an AMD fan as the next guy (I've never bought an Intel chip either) but I don't agree with this statement. As that latest THG article points out, AMD's weakness is still in chipsets -- the memory controller is still too much of a bottleneck right now. I realize AMD doesn't have the resources to produce chipsets as well as Intel, and they've even said they don't want to be in the chipset business. But that's a mistake.. if they don't want to make them themselves, then they should partner much more tightly with a third party to make kickass chipsets.

So anticompetitive attempts aside, I think Intel is more in control of the infrastructure situation for their chips than AMD. And yes, they released the P4 knowing full well that they'd be changing the chipset within a year.. but who really plops a new CPU into their system? As you point out, there are other bottlenecks that are more pressing than the CPU. I upgrade the graphics card once or twice during the life of the CPU, but by the time I want to replace the chip, it's time for a new mobo anyway.

Effortlessly? Using a cooling system to keep the chip at -41°C, and even then only for "a short time"?

Syc, the thing is, the whole problem changes once you apply price sensitivity to it. That's where the Macs fall down - still.

You can get a Lindows system (or an operating-system-less system) on Walmart's website for $299 and there is a rumor that it may fall to $199. Unless you need to run highly graphic games, you'd hardly need anything else.

This is technologically true, but it has nothing to do with what I said; I merely stated that their policies regarding chipset/motherboard upgrading are good, i.e. that you don't need a new motherboard every year as the CPU form factor and chipset du jour require a new motherboard/cpu/memory purchase.
Many people do, including me. I am currently typing this on an Athlon-800, which is more than fast enough for 99% of what I need to do, and for what the vast majority of people need to do, since I don't need to play any particularly new games on it. If it did slow me down, I'd plop in a CPU that's twice as fast, for about $85. If I had an intel CPU at 800mhz and wanted to go faster, I wouldn't have a choice but to completely upgrade everything in my system. If you own a DDR-MB and an Athlon XP, upgrading the CPU is an easy - and cheap - way of improving system performance.
Read the article. The <a href="http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/02q3/020821/athlonxp-02.html">point</a> isn't that such a setup was required, but that contrary to previous Thoroughbred cores tested, (even when extreme watercooling was previously employed), the CPU did manage to ramp up to much higher clockspeeds. That suggests that the CPU core does have a future at higher clockspeeds, Athlon overclockability having indicated such in the past. That's why the THG article, on its first page, states that "Intel, for all its ambition, has failed."

X.

Agreed, and I did read the entire article. I understand what you're saying now, but maybe "effortlessly" wasn't the best choice of words. If it can only run that fast for a "short while", I don't consider that effortlessly. It ran <I>stably</I> at <I>2.6GHz</I>, not 2.8.

And unfortunately, some of us are running our Linux server on a Slot-A Athlon setup, and there's really no room for us to upgrade either. :) I think once I upgrade to Red Hat 7.3 I'll go ahead and plop a new mobo/CPU combo in there. But that's another great thing about AMD; I can do that about as cheaply as I could by just upgrading the processor if it were a P4!

Updates
 

Couple of changes have been made and I'm still ~$80 under my original budget.

Video card & RAM stay the same. 80GB Western Digital "Special Edition" is the new hard drive (Hi, Tobiasly!). 2.53GHz Pentium 4. Asus P4S8x motherboard (wow these boards are fuckin' cool - I just built a system around one and it's <b>awesome</b>). Other than that, it's pretty much the same. Target build date is still late October; I'm half hoping the P4 3.06GHz will be out by then so I can build a 2.8GHz into my box for the same price. :) Also hoping for RAM prices to fall a bit... but I can live with their current prices.

Anyway, I'll post here more as things change, but I think that's pretty much what I've settled on as the system. In other words, probably not much more to say about it until late October. :)

Re: Updates
 

These are the ones with the larger cache, right? I'd be curious to see a comparison of those to see what kinda real performance boost that gives.

I'm in the middle of assembling my new server box. Got an Asus A7M266-D board -- MP capable, but I'm only putting in one XP 2000+ for now. It seems like XP's are easy to mod into MP's if I decide to later. It'll also be interesting to see whether I see any noticeable improvement with my 64-bit SCSI card in a true 64-bit PCI slot.

I've had two friends that have put XP's into SMP motherboards; one had miserable troubles and the other... had miserable troubles. Both are technologically aware. I bought MP's and have been sailing smoothly. :) In other words, good luck, but caveat emptor.

To answer your question, yes, they are.

Really? And they did the L5-bridge mod?

The latest BIOS of this board has a setting that says "don't check whether the CPU's are MP or not". Maybe that will help. Now you have me worried. :)

They did something. I wasn't paying much attention 'cause back then I wasn't real interested.

We're all using the Tyan Tiger MP though - it was the first generation SMP board for Athlon, so I'm sure the Asus one is vastly improved.

Buy everything from NewEgg - they'll take it all back, so if you put in 2 x XP's and it doesn't work, just send it back and ask for MP's. It's all good. :)

Now, modding your CPU probably voids the warranty....

hey, worst case scenario is you end up with 2 XP 2000+ boxes instead of 1 dual XP 2000+ box :)

I just did some pretty major computer upgrading, but not nearly at the level Mr. Dhamsaic did:

Processor: AMD Athlon XP 2000+ @ 1.67ghz ($105)
Mobo: Asus A7V333 (also $105)
RAM: 256mb Samsung PC2700 DDR333 SDRAM ($67)
Case: Crappy 300W case ($35)

Then I threw in the rest of these parts from my old computer:

HD: Seagate 4.3 GB @ 5400rpms
HD: Maxtor 15 GB @ 5400rpms
DVD-ROM: Creative Encore 6x
CD-RW: TDK VeloCDWriter 8x4x32
Video Card: PCI Voodoo5 5500 (64mb) (old computer didn't have an AGP slot!)
Sound Card: Soundblaster Live! MP3+
NIC: US Robotics something or other

*shrugs*

Hey man, if it fits your needs, no reason to do more. I do it because it is an <b>addiction</b>. Be glad you aren't like me. :)