My Current Upgrade Plan

I'm building a WishList at Newegg for my upcoming upgrade. Here's the list
currently:

- MSI Neo2 - FIS2R
- P4 2.4CGHz 800 MHz FSB
- 2 x CORSAIR XMS 512MB 64MX64 PC-3200C2PT (1 GB total)
- 2 x 160GB Western Digital 7200rpm 8MB cache drives (I've actually had one
for about 6 months, so I'm buying another to match it for RAID 0)

I'm still researching to see if I need to upgrade my stock cooling to
something heftier. Any suggestions? FYI, I like a quiet system (I'll be
using an Enermax PSU).

I don't see lots of posts of people using the MSI Neo2 board; is there any
reason? I've read nothing but good things about it. I found out about it
at THG, of course, but I followed up by finding several other reviews, all
very favorable. The P4P800Deluxe seems to be a very popular board here. Is
there any particular reason people like it over the Neo2-FIS2R?

I'm still waffling on my committment to the 2.4 processor as well. Will a
2.6 or 2.8 actually allow me greater overclocking speeds, or are the rumors
about all the new P4s reaching the same o/c'd speeds true?

Should I get memory for higher fsb speeds? Is Corsair my best bet? Will
the performance gains from o/c'ing offset the performance loss from using
higher latency sticks?

I'm dropping a lot of cash on this, and I AM on a budjet, but this is my
first major upgrade in five years. My current system has seen me thru
because I tried to take care to choose quality components (BH6 w/300a, more
recently w/1100). I'm in this for the long haul. The MSI board seems not
to have skimped on features and is fully loaded, even including CSA Gigabit
LAN. Are there unpublicized issues of which I should be aware? I'm willing
to spend a few more bucks if it means my system will have an extra year or
two of useful life before obselescence overtakes it, or if it will ensure
greater stability.

Thoughts? Opinions?

Thanks to all in advance.

BJ

"His eyes were empty, like two pools of water that were also empty."

1. The MSI Neo2 gets good reviews and has pretty much the same features as
the ASUS P4P, but it does cost a little more. If you're on a budget why
spend the extra? The ASUS P4P is pretty widely accepted as an excellent
choice and there's a far larger base of users. On the other hand for the
extra $9, you probably wouldn't go wrong with the MSI.

2. If you go with a 2.4 Ghz processor and want to overclock to maximum
potential, memory is most likely what will hold you back. With PC3200,
you'll be exceeding memory spec with any overclock if you want to run memory
in sync, which you should. A decent overclock would be about 3.2 Ghz, which
would require any currently available memory to run less than 1:1. The
hottest setup would probably be the 2.8 Ghz processor and PC4000 memory
running 1:1. The cheapest would be the 2.4 Ghz with PC3500 running
something like 4:5.

3. Why do you need 1Gb of memory? Unless you do stuff like intense video
editing, more than 512Mb in two sticks isn't going to do you much good.

4. Before you drop a lot of cash for another HD and RAID-0 go he
http://www.storagereview.com/index.html Do some homework on the subject,
and you may change your mind. RAID-0 is for data you don't mind losing. You
must backup frequently, and the speed improvement is debatable. With just
two drives in RAID-0, where are you going to backup? Further, to implement
RAID-0 your existing drive will have to be formatted. Do you really want to
go through the hassle of moving all your data around? Your best bet for
speed and reliability might be to add something like the WD Raptor SATA
drive as your boot drive. For most applications, it will give you close to
the same improvement you'll get from RAID-0, it's cheaper than the 160 GB
drive, you won't have to transfer data from your old drive.

Here's my recommendation, with a lot more performance potential for about
$12 more (unless you do lots of video editing, then add more memory and
consider RAID-0 and another backup drive).

ASUS P4P Deluxe
P4 2.8 Ghz 800 FSB
2 x 256 Mb OCZ PC4000
WD Raptor SATA drive

Hey? What are you going to do for a video card?




"Bryan L" wrote in message
news:ZRd8b.421694$Ho3.67421@sccrnsc03...
I'm building a WishList at Newegg for my upcoming upgrade. Here's the list
currently:

- MSI Neo2 - FIS2R
- P4 2.4CGHz 800 MHz FSB
- 2 x CORSAIR XMS 512MB 64MX64 PC-3200C2PT (1 GB total)
- 2 x 160GB Western Digital 7200rpm 8MB cache drives (I've actually had
one
for about 6 months, so I'm buying another to match it for RAID 0)

I'm still researching to see if I need to upgrade my stock cooling to
something heftier. Any suggestions? FYI, I like a quiet system (I'll be
using an Enermax PSU).

I don't see lots of posts of people using the MSI Neo2 board; is there any
reason? I've read nothing but good things about it. I found out about it
at THG, of course, but I followed up by finding several other reviews, all
very favorable. The P4P800Deluxe seems to be a very popular board here.
Is
there any particular reason people like it over the Neo2-FIS2R?

I'm still waffling on my committment to the 2.4 processor as well. Will a
2.6 or 2.8 actually allow me greater overclocking speeds, or are the
rumors
about all the new P4s reaching the same o/c'd speeds true?

Should I get memory for higher fsb speeds? Is Corsair my best bet? Will
the performance gains from o/c'ing offset the performance loss from using
higher latency sticks?

I'm dropping a lot of cash on this, and I AM on a budjet, but this is my
first major upgrade in five years. My current system has seen me thru
because I tried to take care to choose quality components (BH6 w/300a,
more
recently w/1100). I'm in this for the long haul. The MSI board seems not
to have skimped on features and is fully loaded, even including CSA
Gigabit
LAN. Are there unpublicized issues of which I should be aware? I'm
willing
to spend a few more bucks if it means my system will have an extra year or
two of useful life before obselescence overtakes it, or if it will ensure
greater stability.

Thoughts? Opinions?

Thanks to all in advance.

BJ

"His eyes were empty, like two pools of water that were also empty."

Thanks.

3. Why do you need 1Gb of memory? Unless you do stuff like intense video
editing, more than 512Mb in two sticks isn't going to do you much good.

I actually do a lot of editing of very large digital audio files, and have
always had to deal with the bottleneck of paging large amounts of audio
data. The 1GB of RAM, and the RAID 0, is my attempt to get as far away from
that as possible. I'm not much into gaming these days, and bragging rights
don't mean much to me, so I'm not into this so I can boast about some
benchmark score to strangers in newsgroups. My main objectives are 1) to
optimize my system for editing and manipulating huge amounts of raw digital
audio data, and 2) to get some hands-on with hardware RAID 0, since I've
wanted to try it for years. As an IT professional, I naturally don't see
much RAID 0 in an enterprise environment. I want to play. :-) The faster
bootup times will be nice, too. I have an older 45GB drive that'll work
fine for archival purposes, and I also keep CD backups for the really
important stuff. However, I may later invest in an extra-large capacity
drive for archival purposes (I have another use to which I can put that 45GB
drive.)

Hey? What are you going to do for a video card?

My video card will probably remain unchanged for now, as I'm not taxing it
in the slightest these days. I'll upgrade it later.

Here's my recommendation, with a lot more performance potential for about
$12 more (unless you do lots of video editing, then add more memory and
consider RAID-0 and another backup drive).

ASUS P4P Deluxe
P4 2.8 Ghz 800 FSB
2 x 256 Mb OCZ PC4000
WD Raptor SATA drive

I'll look more closely at the 2.8 and the faster memory. Thanks again.

BJ

"Frank Weston" wrote
snip
4. Before you drop a lot of cash for another HD and RAID-0 go he
http://www.storagereview.com/index.html Do some homework on the subject,
and you may change your mind. RAID-0 is for data you don't mind losing.
You
must backup frequently, and the speed improvement is debatable. With just
two drives in RAID-0, where are you going to backup? Further, to
implement
RAID-0 your existing drive will have to be formatted. Do you really want
to
go through the hassle of moving all your data around? Your best bet for
speed and reliability might be to add something like the WD Raptor SATA
drive as your boot drive. For most applications, it will give you close
to
the same improvement you'll get from RAID-0, it's cheaper than the 160 GB
drive, you won't have to transfer data from your old drive.


Hi,
interesting statement you made there. It makes me wonder how you came to
this conclusion?. Did you spend a heap of time doing web-research or is
this based on personal experience? Up to about one months ago I was
believing the same thing but I decided to check out RAID-0 for myself using
the onboard SATA ports 1 & 2 on the NF7-S (v2.0) with 2 x WD-Caviar SE 120GB
drives. I am a total nOOb when it comes to RAID but I did a bit of simple
reading and followed the instructions and voila!. I am very pleased with
the 223GB C:\ drive I now have in Windows XP Pro, it has made a *MASSIVE*
difference to the overall performance of my system. Didn't get to do any
benchmarks yet but I did notice how fast it saves a 1GB DivX to disk. . .in
1 minute. This same task took something like 5+ minutes on my old ATA/66
IBMs.

I guess what I am saying is, SATA RAID-0 is totally *JUICED!*

Keeping in mind that I now have twice the chance to lose my system disk, so
I will have to make sure I implement a good backup system. WD Raptors look
nice but 36GB is whack. . . .except if you are running say a small database
server or something like that, but for the same price you can get a nice
120GB SATA disk, like mine, it's was an easy choice for me to make. . .

Wayne ][

"Bryan L" wrote
I'll look more closely at the 2.8 and the faster memory. Thanks again.


Hi,

I just built my new play system and it is going well so far. Just to touch
base on a few points to do with memory. I too am swaying back & forth in my
decision to go 512Mb total or 1GB. More than likely I will put in my order
soon for 1GB.

Now as to the Brand of memory well. . . . .I went with TwinMOS 2 x PC3500
256MB sticks (TwiSTER cas2) and I am not totally happy so far. I have since
spec'd up some new Mushkin PC3500 memory (Level II cas2,2,2.0) which from
the reviews I am seeing is the current *Ultimate* DDR memory for the nForce2
platform. Costs about £285.00 for a *matched module* kit containing 2 x
512MBs. . .certainly not small change but I am beginning to see how
*quality* memory can make quite large *performance* gains. I'm still not
100% sure whether to stay with PC3500 or try for something higher (PC3700 or
maybe PC4200) to try and future proof the investment, but knowing my luck
they will bring out a new memory form-factor so my modules will be
*incompatible* with future motherboards :P

I think good PC3500 (read:Mushkin) can hit PC3700 speeds with pretty good
timings. . .

Wayne ][

My comments are based on personal experience and on doing a lot of research.
I'm currently running two Raptor SATA drives in RAID-0 with two IDE drives
serving as backup. For most applications I run, I see little performance
improvement. Benchmarks are super with the RAID-0, but don't seem to
translate to the real world for me. But.....as I said, if you're doing a
lot of video editing or similar work, lots of memory and fast drives will
probably pay off.



"Wayne Youngman" wrote in message
...

"Frank Weston" wrote
snip
4. Before you drop a lot of cash for another HD and RAID-0 go he
http://www.storagereview.com/index.html Do some homework on the
subject,
and you may change your mind. RAID-0 is for data you don't mind losing.
You
must backup frequently, and the speed improvement is debatable. With
just
two drives in RAID-0, where are you going to backup? Further, to
implement
RAID-0 your existing drive will have to be formatted. Do you really
want
to
go through the hassle of moving all your data around? Your best bet for
speed and reliability might be to add something like the WD Raptor SATA
drive as your boot drive. For most applications, it will give you close
to
the same improvement you'll get from RAID-0, it's cheaper than the 160
GB
drive, you won't have to transfer data from your old drive.


Hi,
interesting statement you made there. It makes me wonder how you came to
this conclusion?. Did you spend a heap of time doing web-research or is
this based on personal experience? Up to about one months ago I was
believing the same thing but I decided to check out RAID-0 for myself
using
the onboard SATA ports 1 & 2 on the NF7-S (v2.0) with 2 x WD-Caviar SE
120GB
drives. I am a total nOOb when it comes to RAID but I did a bit of simple
reading and followed the instructions and voila!. I am very pleased with
the 223GB C:\ drive I now have in Windows XP Pro, it has made a *MASSIVE*
difference to the overall performance of my system. Didn't get to do any
benchmarks yet but I did notice how fast it saves a 1GB DivX to disk. .
..in
1 minute. This same task took something like 5+ minutes on my old ATA/66
IBMs.

I guess what I am saying is, SATA RAID-0 is totally *JUICED!*

Keeping in mind that I now have twice the chance to lose my system disk,
so
I will have to make sure I implement a good backup system. WD Raptors
look
nice but 36GB is whack. . . .except if you are running say a small
database
server or something like that, but for the same price you can get a nice
120GB SATA disk, like mine, it's was an easy choice for me to make. . .

Wayne ][

Thanks for all replies.

I think I've made most of my decisions with the helpful input from
this group. My few remaining questions have to do with cooling and
cases.

For the moment, I think I'll see how far I can go with stock cooling,
and make changes if I'm not satisfied with the results.

I need a new case and PSU as well. I plan to go with an Enermax PSU,
but have no strong feelings about a case at this point. I don't need
anything flashy, at this point. Something well-designed and compact
will fit the bill. Anybody have a favorite case?

Once I've placed my order, I'll post the system details here, and
follow up with my experiences when I get my parts and start to play.

BJ

"Bryan L" wrote in message
om...
Thanks for all replies.

I think I've made most of my decisions with the helpful input from
this group. My few remaining questions have to do with cooling and
cases.

For the moment, I think I'll see how far I can go with stock cooling,
and make changes if I'm not satisfied with the results.

I need a new case and PSU as well. I plan to go with an Enermax PSU,
but have no strong feelings about a case at this point. I don't need
anything flashy, at this point. Something well-designed and compact
will fit the bill. Anybody have a favorite case?

Once I've placed my order, I'll post the system details here, and
follow up with my experiences when I get my parts and start to play.


Regarding case and cooler, BestBuy has the Antec Sonata for $129 with a $30
rebate through the end of the month. It's a top-notch case designed for
looks, convenience and quiet (reviews all over the web,) with an Antec
TruePower 480 watt psu and a 120mm case fan thrown in. Yes, it's a bit
pricey, but it's one of the best around.

Like you, I decided to see how well I could do with a stock P4 cooler. It
didn't inhibit overclocking, but once I got to 3.2g the temps were high
enough to cause me concern. I got a Vantec Aeroflow from www.11cb.com for
$24 with free shipping and it knocked 2-3 degrees C off idle and 8-10 off
max load. 3.3g was squirrrely before, stable now.