Time for a new PC, which motherboard?

Hi,

its been more than 3 years since I built my PC, and now its time to
upgrade my wife's. But I can see much has happened since, and I am quite
confused about which hardware to choose.

I am quite content with what I have now on my last home-built. It has an
Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz CPU, an ASUS P4PE motherboard with onboard sound
and netcard and 533 bus speed and AGP 4x video card slot.

I would like to build something that is like this, but of course using
today's technology, but within a reasonable price.

I intend to stay with the Pentium 4 CPU (not the extreme, too expensive
for me) and probably with ASUS for the motherboard (unless there is
something as good or better). But I am confused about the following points:

1) what type of RAM is best for today?
2) what chipset to use for the motherboard?
3) what bus speed to look for (again, within reasonable expense)
4) PCI-express or AGP (I think the answer is PCI-express)

I should mention that this is to be an ordinary gaming computer, with only
1 CPU and not 64bit.

Can anyone give me some tips on the motherboard? Netcard and sound can be
onboard, but not the video card. Links to places which give good overviews
would also be much appreciated.

Thanks for any help!
Steve, Denmark

"coolsti" wrote in message news
Hi,

its been more than 3 years since I built my PC, and now its time to
upgrade my wife's. But I can see much has happened since, and I am quite
confused about which hardware to choose.

I am quite content with what I have now on my last home-built. It has an
Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz CPU, an ASUS P4PE motherboard with onboard sound
and netcard and 533 bus speed and AGP 4x video card slot.

I would like to build something that is like this, but of course using
today's technology, but within a reasonable price.

Define reasonable.

I intend to stay with the Pentium 4 CPU (not the extreme, too expensive
for me) and probably with ASUS for the motherboard (unless there is
something as good or better). But I am confused about the following points:

1) what type of RAM is best for today?
2) what chipset to use for the motherboard?
3) what bus speed to look for (again, within reasonable expense)
4) PCI-express or AGP (I think the answer is PCI-express)

With Conroe/AM2/Direct10/MS Vista/etc on the horizon, if
some degree of future-proofing is important it would be best
to wait a few months before investing in new system hardware.
Very few current motherboards are purported to be compatible
with the upcoming cpus, and no one's really sure yet about the
few that claim to be.

In the Intel realm, Conroe will represent the first substantial
performance increase from the higher-end P4 Northwoods.
But almost all socket 478 motherboards are AGP and not
PCI-E, so that platform is pretty much a dead end at this point.
Meanwhile almost all PCI-E motherboards still won't be
compatible with either Conroe or AM2 in the AMD realm.

Just my $.02.

On Wed, 21 Jun 2006 11:22:00 +0200, coolsti wrote:

Hi,

its been more than 3 years since I built my PC, and now its time to
upgrade my wife's. But I can see much has happened since, and I am quite
confused about which hardware to choose.

I am quite content with what I have now on my last home-built. It has an
Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz CPU, an ASUS P4PE motherboard with onboard sound
and netcard and 533 bus speed and AGP 4x video card slot.

I would like to build something that is like this, but of course using
today's technology, but within a reasonable price.

I intend to stay with the Pentium 4 CPU (not the extreme, too expensive
for me) and probably with ASUS for the motherboard (unless there is
something as good or better). But I am confused about the following points:

1) what type of RAM is best for today?
2) what chipset to use for the motherboard?
3) what bus speed to look for (again, within reasonable expense)
4) PCI-express or AGP (I think the answer is PCI-express)

I should mention that this is to be an ordinary gaming computer, with only
1 CPU and not 64bit.

Can anyone give me some tips on the motherboard? Netcard and sound can be
onboard, but not the video card. Links to places which give good overviews
would also be much appreciated.

Thanks for any help!
Steve, Denmark

This is another post to add to my collection of evidence that Moore's
Law is delivering spec improvements with no benefits.

Go to www.motherboards.org and do some searches. If you are satisfied
with what you've got and just want to upgrade your wife, I would go
for 1 or 2 gb of Corsair Value RAM, an ASUS board with 800mhz fsb,
another 2.4ghz p4, an ATI PCIE video card with 256mb of ram, an Antec
PSU. In US$ that would be about $75 per gb of RAM, $50 for the board,
$100 for CPU, $150-200 for video card, $65 for PSU.

The reason I suggest ATI is because nvidia cards seem to have lots of
problems these days, although I know there are some good ones and
satisfied users.

I think you can get a little more oomph per dollar (kronar) with an
AMD setup, but intel is good too. Here is one I built a few months
ago that I'm very happy with:

www.geocities.com/wilkes_charlie/new_system.htm

Charlie

On Wed, 21 Jun 2006 09:41:57 +0000, Jack F. Twist wrote:

With Conroe/AM2/Direct10/MS Vista/etc on the horizon, if
some degree of future-proofing is important it would be best
to wait a few months before investing in new system hardware.
Very few current motherboards are purported to be compatible
with the upcoming cpus, and no one's really sure yet about the
few that claim to be.

In the Intel realm, Conroe will represent the first substantial
performance increase from the higher-end P4 Northwoods.
But almost all socket 478 motherboards are AGP and not
PCI-E, so that platform is pretty much a dead end at this point.
Meanwhile almost all PCI-E motherboards still won't be
compatible with either Conroe or AM2 in the AMD realm.

Just my $.02.

Hi, and thanks for your input!

What I mean by reasonable? When I buy or put together a PC, I usually do
not use the latest and the fastest components, due to the expense. That
means I would choose a 2.4GHz CPU when the best out there is 3GHz, or
today I would choose a 3 GHz if the best out there is 3.3GHz. The same
with video cards. It is a matter of economics, and due to the sharp
decrease in price of things after the next model is available. I haven't
looked at CPU prices much yet, but I guess I would like to pay around a
max of 1500-2000 Danish Kroner ($200-$300?). I can see that the price of a
Pentium "extreme edition" is much more than I wish to spend.

Your comment about waiting for the Conroe is significant. However, I would
imagine that the first of these new series will cost far more than I am
willing to spend. Although I can wait a number of months, I do not want to
wait more than a half year for prices to decrease. So I think that for
this next computer I build, I will stay with the Pentium 4 CPU's.

Whether the CPU is 3.0 GHz instead of, say, 3.4GHz is for me not
essential. More important is that I choose the correct chipset, the
correct bus speed (I guess 800 would be the way to go today?) the correct
RAM type (hey, I my wife's computer uses RDRAM and we all know how
expensive that is! Dumb choice!), the correct interface to the video card
(sounds like AGP is on the way out for PCI-express) and the correct
manufacturer to get a robust board with no complications (Asus?).

Thanks for any additional tips and help!

Steve, Denmark

--
"coolsti" wrote in message
news
On Wed, 21 Jun 2006 10:16:22 +0000, Charlie Wilkes wrote:

Go to www.motherboards.org and do some searches. If you are satisfied
with what you've got and just want to upgrade your wife, I would go
for 1 or 2 gb of Corsair Value RAM, an ASUS board with 800mhz fsb,
another 2.4ghz p4, an ATI PCIE video card with 256mb of ram, an Antec
PSU. In US$ that would be about $75 per gb of RAM, $50 for the board,
$100 for CPU, $150-200 for video card, $65 for PSU.

The reason I suggest ATI is because nvidia cards seem to have lots of
problems these days, although I know there are some good ones and
satisfied users.

I think you can get a little more oomph per dollar (kronar) with an
AMD setup, but intel is good too. Here is one I built a few months
ago that I'm very happy with:

www.geocities.com/wilkes_charlie/new_system.htm

Charlie

Hi Charlie and thanks for the reply!

I am definitely satisfied with what I have now, except for the fact that
when I read the PC requirements for a game like Oblivion, I see that my 3
year old home-built is just at the bottom of what is acceptable to run the
game. So definitely when I upgrade my wife's HP Vectra 800 1.5GHz 400mhz
fsb with RDRAM, I certainly would like it to be able to play current and
future games well for a number of years.

So I think a move to at least 3ghz p4 would be wise, wouldn't it?

I have only experience with nvidia cards, so that is why I look in this
direction. It could be I should consider ATI. But the choice of
motherboard is not determined by the video card, or is the situation
different today? I am thinking of deciding on the video card later, after
I get the CPU and motherboard chosen.

Whether to go AMD or Intel CPU? Again, I only have Intel experience, and I
have read three years ago that building a PC with an Intel CPU is far
easier than with AMD (how the CPU is attached to the motherboard).

If Intel Pentium 4, is there a particular chipset I should go for?

Another problem I experienced 3 years ago is that once I chose the CPU and
chipset, I suddenly found that each motherboard manufacturer had not one
but several choices of motherboards, all with different "extra" features.
Very confusing! I can deselect all those that have onboard video, but what
of these other features? Obviously I want USB and firewire, but is there
anything else that I should make sure I include?

Thanks for any help!

Steve, Denmark




Whether to go AMD or Intel CPU? Again, I only have Intel experience, and I
have read three years ago that building a PC with an Intel CPU is far
easier than with AMD (how the CPU is attached to the motherboard).

Well in the 3 years that you've been on hiatus from building, AMD has made
it exactly the same as Intel to plant a HSF on top of a processor.
It's no easier and no harder. The difference is that you're paying less for
more.
I used to feel exactly as you did, being conservative and going with the
Intel attitude. But I realized six or so years ago that AMD was giving a lot
more for the money, even if it was a little trickier to install the HSF.
Today one installs both cpu's the same way from both companies. CPU temps
also came down considerably, and are comparable to Intel. But like then (6
yers ago) one still gets more for the money with AMD.

Jan Alter

or

On Wed, 21 Jun 2006 11:17:45 +0000, Jan Alter wrote:

Wow, then that gives me another whole topic to explore and understand
before I even go for the motherboard! I can understand (more or less) what
I am getting when I buy an Intel Pentium 4 CPU, but I never did understand
the AMD products.

But this is not the forum for CPU's. Assuming I stick to the Intel Pentium
4 series, I still would appreciate tips on the motherboard. Like, what is
the chipset to go for?

Heh heh, this is probably going to be complicated!

Regards,
Steve, Denmark

"coolsti" wrote in message
news
On Wed, 21 Jun 2006 11:17:45 +0000, Jan Alter wrote:

Wow, then that gives me another whole topic to explore and understand
before I even go for the motherboard! I can understand (more or less) what
I am getting when I buy an Intel Pentium 4 CPU, but I never did understand
the AMD products.

But this is not the forum for CPU's. Assuming I stick to the Intel Pentium
4 series, I still would appreciate tips on the motherboard. Like, what is
the chipset to go for?

Heh heh, this is probably going to be complicated!

Regards,
Steve, Denmark

Steve - I'll make it real simple for you. There is no difference between
Intel and AMD, at the moment. AMD has been kicking Intel's ASS, performance
wise, for years. However, AMD are in such great demand now (because they
are kicking Intel's ASS) that their prices are actually higher than Intel
chips, last I checked. So you can't go wrong, regardless of what processor
you choose. They are about the same price bang/buck wise, neither one is
harder to build with.

But you need to back up a bit and not worry so much about the AMD/Intel
issue. What you should be thinking about is this: Any system you build
today should be DUAL-core. So that narrows down your choices quite a bit.
In your price range, you are looking at an AMD Athlon64 X2 3800+, which is a
great processor. Or for less money, you could go with a Intel Pentium D 940
(Presler, dual-core). Both are 64-bit processors, so you'll need Windows XP
64-bit edition, or you could download the Beta 2 of Windows Vista, 64 bit.
It's buggy, but free, until the retail version is released.

Once you pick the processor, then you look at mainboards. I'd suggest the
following:

http://us.dfi.com.tw/Product/xx_prod...YPE=LP&SITE=NA
( AMD Proc., DFI INFINITY NF4 ULTRA )

or

http://www.intel.com/products/mother...5psn/index.htm (Intel
proc., Intel D945PSN )

Then get a gig or two of high-quality name-brand memory to match your chosen
motherboard, and do NOT skimp on the power supply. Get yourself an Enermax
or fortron/sparkle or Seasonic power supply in the 500W range, after
verifying that it has all the connectors needed for your chosen
ainboard. -Dave

In article , coolsti
wrote:

Hi,

its been more than 3 years since I built my PC, and now its time to
upgrade my wife's. But I can see much has happened since, and I am quite
confused about which hardware to choose.

I am quite content with what I have now on my last home-built. It has an
Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz CPU, an ASUS P4PE motherboard with onboard sound
and netcard and 533 bus speed and AGP 4x video card slot.

I would like to build something that is like this, but of course using
today's technology, but within a reasonable price.

I intend to stay with the Pentium 4 CPU (not the extreme, too expensive
for me) and probably with ASUS for the motherboard (unless there is
something as good or better). But I am confused about the following points:

1) what type of RAM is best for today?
2) what chipset to use for the motherboard?
3) what bus speed to look for (again, within reasonable expense)
4) PCI-express or AGP (I think the answer is PCI-express)

I should mention that this is to be an ordinary gaming computer, with only
1 CPU and not 64bit.

Can anyone give me some tips on the motherboard? Netcard and sound can be
onboard, but not the video card. Links to places which give good overviews
would also be much appreciated.

Thanks for any help!
Steve, Denmark

Single core (netburst) Intel processors tend to have Hyperthreading.
When Hyperthreading is enabled, Windows shows two processors in
Task Manager, but there is only about a 10% performance boost
available with Hyperthreading. The latest dual cores (the
cheap ones) tend to not have Hyperthreading, but as they have
dual cores, you still see two (real) processors in Task Manager.
The duals are priced to move right now, and maybe if you were
to wait a month, the pricing would make some of the others
a better option from a price perspective. (The Cedar Mill 661 3.6GHz
single core at $183 on July 24 would fulfill your single core
wish, but is too expensive right now. I'm kinda curious what
the sale price on a 670 would be, when July 24 comes.)

(Note - there are some typos in this table - PD 820 is listed twice,
and one instance in the table should have been PD 805.)
http://www.hkepc.com/hwdb/x6800vsfx62-7.htm

If we are talking "dirt cheap", you can get a dual core 805
(2.66GHz/FSB533/2x1MB L2, 90nm) for $111. These are overclockable
but cooling is an issue if you try to overclock too far.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819116001
http://processorfinder.intel.com/det...px?sSpec=SL8ZH

Presler 940 dual core 65nm (3.2GHz/FSB800/2x2MB L2) for $220
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819116239
The Newegg 940 is a B1 stepping, and a C1 stepping would be better,
if it has started shipping (I don't see the C1 yet on
processorfinder, and I guess only the EE version is shipping C1).
http://processorfinder.intel.com/det...px?sSpec=SL94Q

As for RAM, there are two types. DDR400 you are familiar with,
as you could plug that into your P4PE. DDR2 is the newest RAM
standard, and to match the performance of DDR400, you would
use DDR2-533. Other speeds available are DDR2-667 or DDR2-800.
Some manufacturer play games, and there are a couple other
odd-ball speeds listed as well. Much of the DDR2 is overclockable,
if you loosen up the timing parameters, so there should not
be much of a premium for clock rate. But tight timing
(like CAS3 instead of CAS5) would bin a lot thinner than clock
rate, so finding high speed RAM at CAS3 should cost a lot more.

Use two matched sticks for dual channel operation. Many boards
support dual channel, and if you want 1GB total RAM, buy two
512MB sticks.

These are JEDEC DDR2 values (CL = CAS Latency):

DDR2-800 CL-tRCD-tRP = 4-4-4, 5-5-5, 6-6-6
DDR2-667 * * * * * * = 4-4-4, 5-5-5
DDR2-533 * * * * * * = 3-3-3, 4-4-4
DDR2-400 * * * * * * = 3-3-3, 4-4-4

N.B : Some Intel chipset do not support DDR2-667 4-4-4. Don't
be surprised if it runs at 5-5-5 instead. I haven't seen much
in the way of comments about this issue.

Enthusiast memory suppliers will supply a whole lot of
other varieties, but the SPD on the DIMM should contain
one or more of the above standard values. When an enthusiast memory
is plugged into a motherboard, the "Auto" setting would
result in one of the above values showing in the BIOS.
Using a "manual" setting, allows entering the enthusiast
values, like 3-4-3-9 or whatever.

On the motherboard front, things at Newegg are a mess. Things have
been so thin on the Intel side of things, for so long, that with
the drop in price of the Intel processors, that has tended to clean
out the reasonable motherboards.

This P5LD2-VM DH is $116. It is a microATX board. If you use a
fat-ass PCI Express video card, it is hard to get at the PCI
slots. Memory speed limit is DDR2-667. I presume, if you lift
the FSB speed, the memory would go higher. It does have built-in
graphics, but they are disabled when you plug in a real video
card. So the built-in is a hidden bonus.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131006

I don't think there would be much point recommending a P5WD2-E
at $240. If you were buying further up the price chart for a
processor, then it would hurt a bit less to buy a motherboard
like that.

Rather than drag this on, the way to shop is - use the
CPUsupport page, to list all the motherboards that support the
processor you are interested in - then try and find them at
retail. I tend to recommend Intel chipset, as there are fewer
surprises. If you have the time, you may be able to track down
an acceptable non-Intel board.

http://support.asus.com.tw/cpusuppor...Language=en-us

The master list of boards is here, and this will give you some idea
as to how many models are missing from retail. Personally, I like
to spend a bit more on a motherboard, but there are not many
customers like me :-) I would recommend a full sized ATX motherboard
rather than microATX. The microATX has limited slots for
expansion. Due to the dimensions of some video cards, and the
lousy choice the motherboard designer made for slot layout, you
are not left with much in the way of slot options on some of the
microATX boards. I like to see room for at least one PCI slot,
for an Audigy or something a bit better than onboard sound.

http://www.asus.com.tw/products2.aspx?l1=3&l2=-1

The main benefit of PCI Express video card slots, is more choice
in cards. There are some recent AGP cards that are still worth
getting, but they've been de-clocked on purpose to make the
PCI Express cards more desirable. With the wider range of
performance options on PCI Express, it is a bit easier to
find something that supports DX9c in hardware, and fits the
budget.

With a board like the P5P800 SE, you could reuse more of your
old hardware, but I don't know if that is the direction you
should be moving or not. At some point, you have to "move on",
hardware wise, and depending on your gaming aspirations,
maybe having another AGP slot is not the right answer. Easier
I think, to get new RAM, and have more choice in video cards.

If you need more feedback than the Newegg customer reviews,
you can look in these forums:

http://vip.asus.com/forum/topic.aspx...ge=1&count=446

Paul

On Wed, 21 Jun 2006 10:16:22 GMT, Charlie Wilkes
wrote:

Here is one I built a few months ago that I'm very happy with:

www.geocities.com/wilkes_charlie/new_system.htm

OMG, what a beast... I guess aesthetics were not a consideration at
all.

A_C

On Wed, 21 Jun 2006 12:34:46 +0200, coolsti wrote:

On Wed, 21 Jun 2006 10:16:22 +0000, Charlie Wilkes wrote:

Go to www.motherboards.org and do some searches. If you are satisfied
with what you've got and just want to upgrade your wife, I would go
for 1 or 2 gb of Corsair Value RAM, an ASUS board with 800mhz fsb,
another 2.4ghz p4, an ATI PCIE video card with 256mb of ram, an Antec
PSU. In US$ that would be about $75 per gb of RAM, $50 for the board,
$100 for CPU, $150-200 for video card, $65 for PSU.

The reason I suggest ATI is because nvidia cards seem to have lots of
problems these days, although I know there are some good ones and
satisfied users.

I think you can get a little more oomph per dollar (kronar) with an
AMD setup, but intel is good too. Here is one I built a few months
ago that I'm very happy with:

www.geocities.com/wilkes_charlie/new_system.htm

Charlie

Hi Charlie and thanks for the reply!

I am definitely satisfied with what I have now, except for the fact that
when I read the PC requirements for a game like Oblivion, I see that my 3
year old home-built is just at the bottom of what is acceptable to run the
game. So definitely when I upgrade my wife's HP Vectra 800 1.5GHz 400mhz
fsb with RDRAM, I certainly would like it to be able to play current and
future games well for a number of years.

So I think a move to at least 3ghz p4 would be wise, wouldn't it?

My guess is it doesn't matter if you have a good video card. I think
the 2.8ghz pentium looks like the best cost/benefit tradeoff in the
intel series.

I have only experience with nvidia cards, so that is why I look in this
direction. It could be I should consider ATI. But the choice of
motherboard is not determined by the video card, or is the situation
different today? I am thinking of deciding on the video card later, after
I get the CPU and motherboard chosen.

I think branding is more of an issue with nvidia, because they license
to more companies. Nvidia seems to be the popular VPU, but I like
ATI. I got a semi-obsolete 9800 pro AGP card w/128mb for my
semi-obsolete nf3 AGP board. I have this superstitious view that
buying late in the cycle yields better stability because the bugs are
resolved. Reading this group does not make me less superstitious.
I'd say, get something that is well into the cycle with lots of
enthusiastic fans.

Whether to go AMD or Intel CPU? Again, I only have Intel experience, and I
have read three years ago that building a PC with an Intel CPU is far
easier than with AMD (how the CPU is attached to the motherboard).

If Intel Pentium 4, is there a particular chipset I should go for?

I think Dave is up-to-speed and I'd go with what he suggests.

Another problem I experienced 3 years ago is that once I chose the CPU and
chipset, I suddenly found that each motherboard manufacturer had not one
but several choices of motherboards, all with different "extra" features.
Very confusing! I can deselect all those that have onboard video, but what
of these other features? Obviously I want USB and firewire, but is there
anything else that I should make sure I include?

Gigahertz ethernet? I don't know. Get one that is certified not to
run Windows Vista and you'll save yourself some heartache down the
road.

Charlie

Thanks for any help!

Steve, Denmark