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I'm putting together a system for a friend, we're going for a Conroe E6600 system, and I'm not to familiar with Intel motherboards. If anyone has a recommendation I'd like to see it. Also, I'm trying to decide between a X1900XTX and a Geforce 7900GTX.

His total budget is around £1500 max for case + internals if anyone has other suggestions. No disc drives are needed. He has 160GB and 400GB IDE hard drives. Would dumping the IDE drives for something faster be worthwhile?

Acidburns wrote:I'm putting together a system for a friend, we're going for a Conroe E6600 system, and I'm not to familiar with Intel motherboards. If anyone has a recommendation I'd like to see it. Also, I'm trying to decide between a X1900XTX and a Geforce 7900GTX.

Availability for Core 2's seems like it will be very good once they get going, but they're taking their sweet time getting them to market in large quantities. The E6600 in particular is hard to find for non-gouge prices, so you might want to wait a couple weeks for more retailers to get them in stock.

As for motherboards, it depends on whether you want to overclock. In my opinion, overclocking is stupid because you end up spending more on the fastest motherboard, best RAM, and upgraded cooling than if you had just sprung for a better CPU, but I realize some have different views. In general, the Intel 965 series is Core 2 native, and the 975 series is reported to work. Others may or may not work on an individual basis. I understand Intel has a 965 motherboard for only $110, so that might be the way to go.

As for the vid card, the 7900 GTX is a lot cooler, quieter, less power hungry, and I think it might also be smaller. But the 1900 series can do HDR+AA and generally has better image quality. The performance difference is negligable. However, I'd probably go with the X1900 XT instead of the XTX. The difference is a measly 25 MHz Core and 50 memory for a large increase in price. I doubt anyone would notice any performance difference between the two.

His total budget is around £1500 max for case + internals if anyone has other suggestions. No disc drives are needed. He has 160GB and 400GB IDE hard drives. Would dumping the IDE drives for something faster be worthwhile?

As far as I know, hard drive speed is an incredibly insignificant factor in overall performance.

Acidburns wrote:His total budget is around £1500 max for case + internals if anyone has other suggestions. No disc drives are needed. He has 160GB and 400GB IDE hard drives. Would dumping the IDE drives for something faster be worthwhile?

Not really. If he wanted a really big ePenis he could grab a Western Digital Raptor hard drive so that Windows loads a few seconds faster, but I don't think it's particularly worth the money.

List of advantages of SATA over IDE:

One) the cable is thinner, so it doesn't block airflow as much as IDE.

Two) Easier installation. No futzing about with Master/Slave setting when expanding storage (if the need ever occurs).

Three) The 965 chipset (the budget-conscious one that supports Conroe) doesn't support IDE natively. Mobo manufacturers, as such, have to add a controller to their board. The upshot, of course, is that for mobos with the 965 chipset, chance you'll get only one, which would probably get used for the optical drive(s).

Four) If you're spending for a Conroe E6600, it really doesn't make sense not to get the faster drive. The data speed for IDE is something like 133 MB/s, versus 1.5 GB/s to 3Gb/s for SATA.

Elaro wrote:Four) If you're spending for a Conroe E6600, it really doesn't make sense not to get the faster drive. The data speed for IDE is something like 133 MB/s, versus 1.5 GB/s to 3Gb/s for SATA.

133 MB/s vs. 1.5Gb/s isn't a big difference. SATA I is only 33MB/s faster or so. In any case, drives are largely limited by the drive speed itself for large file access.

I invite anyone to show me a 7200 RPM hard drive which can max out ATA/133.

Elaro wrote:List of advantages of SATA over IDE:

One) the cable is thinner, so it doesn't block airflow as much as IDE.

Two) Easier installation. No futzing about with Master/Slave setting when expanding storage (if the need ever occurs).

Three) The 965 chipset (the budget-conscious one that supports Conroe) doesn't support IDE natively. Mobo manufacturers, as such, have to add a controller to their board. The upshot, of course, is that for mobos with the 965 chipset, chance you'll get only one, which would probably get used for the optical drive(s).

Four) If you're spending for a Conroe E6600, it really doesn't make sense not to get the faster drive. The data speed for IDE is something like 133 MB/s, versus 1.5 GB/s to 3Gb/s for SATA.

I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure that by "He has 160GB and 400GB IDE hard drives." he means that he already has two hard drives and wants to know if it would be worth the cost of replacing them.

And, master/slave?! Cable select.

Personally, having a Raptor, it has a noticeable boost, but not something to spend cash on. Get one of the new 16MB cache drives and you'll be fine.

I've never tried this but I would wonder what the difference would be for speed: 1 raptor vs 3 or 4 normal drives in RAID?

For example I could buy a 150GB raptor for $422AUD, where for $413AUD I could buy four 160GB drives, or for $488AUD I could get four 200GB drives. If your motherboard doesn't support RAID, then install Windows on one and use Windows software RAID for the rest.

Any idea what the performance difference would be like?

Thing is with RAID 0, if one hard drive goes your entire array goes. As a backup paranoid, I can't discount that drawback.

Ypoknons wrote:Thing is with RAID 0, if one hard drive goes your entire array goes. As a backup paranoid, I can't discount that drawback.

I thought about that too, but I was wondering more about pure speed. Though if you wanted to get a slightly smaller & cheaper drive than those I mention above you could get a whole RAID 5 array for the same cost as the single Raptor.

Don't go for a Raptor either way unless load times really matter to you, a modern drive with 16MB cache can equal or eclipse a Raptors preformance.

RAID 0 will not net you appreciable performance gains except in very specific applications, like video editing, and even then it's probably not worth it unless you're a pro who absolutely has to have the best performance possible. For most people, RAID 0 is a stupid marketing gimmick.

Don't go for a Raptor either way unless load times really matter to you, a modern drive with 16MB cache can equal or eclipse a Raptors preformance.

Raptors have 16MB of cache... and how can you say "unless load times really matter" when you then turn around and say that other drives "equal or eclipse" a Raptor's performance? That's something of a contradiction.

Also, which drives beat the Raptor?

Only the newer Raptors have 16MB cache, not the older 74GB versions.

I can turn around and say load times matter due to the fact with newer drives, you also get the massive storage capacity.
Check out benchs here, while the Raptor wins some, by differant margins, when you consider the price premium you are paying for basicly 150GB of slightly better preformance..

Apologies for being unclear.

no it's cool

I agree with regard to Raptor performance - the premium is simply too high when, for the price, you could be getting four times the storage at minimally inferior performance.

I have to admit I hadn't seen any recent benchmarks with the Raptor, so it looks like the performance margin is even tighter.

It was clearcut win for the Raptor in 2004, when the Diamondmax10 came out, first drive with 16MB cache and did a tie with the Raptor, but now every drive can come very close to the Raptors preformance at a huge margin for GB per dollar. I wouldn't be suprised if other, non enthusiast drives had double or triple the GB per dollar.

I was just checking motherboards and other stuff for an E6600 system, and ASUS has several models that would work well. Depending on whether you want SLI-capable mobo, your choices vary. The PB5 Deluxe looked like a very good choice, it has both SATA and IDE support (max two IDE drives) and looked a good choice all around. Costs €200 here. Thing has a 965 chipset. It's NOT SLI-capable, though.

When you toss in a Geforce 7900 card and all the other stuff (320 GB hard drive, DVD RW drive, 2x512 800MHz DDR2, case), it came to around €1400, and a system like that should be good for several years.

I'm probably getting myself something like that, it's going to be about as cost effective as I'll be able to get, since I need to upgrade my machine come hell or high water before the motherboard dies and (if shit happens) takes everything else with it. It'll just be a bugger that I'll have to abandon the extra 40 GB hard drive I've got in this system because there's no room for it.

Edi

If you want to save abit, go for Gigabyte rather then ASUS, or Abit. Abit isn't bad, just not the best.

Ace Pace wrote:If you want to save abit, go for Gigabyte rather then ASUS, or Abit. Abit isn't bad, just not the best.

The selection of available non-Asus mobos that support Conroe is completely non-existent here unless you want to order them separately, which is just going to jack the price up enough that it's not worthe the hassle. For AMD mobos and the older Intels, there's selection out the wazoo, but for Conroe, Asus is about the only game in town at present. Otherwise we're talking delays of several weeks.

Edi

I don't know how much things cost in Finland, but I specced out a Core 2 system for a lot less than 1400 Euros, so I'm guessing there are a few things you're overspending on. For one thing, I don't understand why you would want to pay so much for a mobo. You can get an Intel one with all the same features for like half that, and a Core 2-capable Asrock that's supposed to be pretty solid for a quarter the Asus one.

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:I don't know how much things cost in Finland, but I specced out a Core 2 system for a lot less than 1400 Euros, so I'm guessing there are a few things you're overspending on. For one thing, I don't understand why you would want to pay so much for a mobo. You can get an Intel one with all the same features for like half that, and a Core 2-capable Asrock that's supposed to be pretty solid for a quarter the Asus one.

What part of "almost fucking zero availability aside from Asus" did you not understand? Do you really think I wish to pay that much? I'm going with the options that are available in a reasonable timeframe.

I could probably knock off 100-200 euros off the price by selecting a cheaper graphics card and doing some other tweaks. My price figure also assumed that the case of the machine would not come with a power source and that I'd have to shell out for a 450-500W power source that is optimized to be quiet (which runs an immediate €100 cost). You see, I need to consider such things as what my gf will say about the noise level over time. The current old box makes enough noise already. Besides, I'm still at the exploring options stage.

Edi

All I'm saying is that if I had to wait a week or two to save $100 on a motherboard, I'd do it.

I did decide on a somewhat cheaper motherboard, an Abit one, which is going to save me ~€35 compared to the Asus. If I wanted the cheapest thing with a 965 chipset to be had, it would have been ~€45 euros. And I I really went shopping around, I might get to savings of 70 euros compared to the Asus, but those mobos are off my list for a couple of other reasons of practicality.

But I can't delay making the purchase order anymore, because my current comp could be fried literally any second. The only reason it even survives at this point because it's an ancient Abit BP-6 from back when they built motherboards to last, and it's currently limping along with one processor socket broken, over half the capacitors nearly blown and the replacement coils I switched into it starting to burn out. I couldn't really care less about any of the hardware except for the HDs (data), but if those get fried when the mobo goes, I'm going to be severely fucked. I'd rather not take that chance.

Edi