Time to upgrade

[robinturner]

While my geekiness is legendary, I usually manage to contain my enthusiasm for the newest and best to software and avoid upgrading my hardware as much as I can. Unless you're very well off, buying anything electronic can be a frustrating experience: you rush out and buy the latest, fastest gizmo on the market, only to find that a month later a faster and cheaper one has just been released by a rival manufacturer. That's fine if you have enough money to shrug your shoulders and say, "OK, I'll skip this release cycle and wait for the new VX Powerforce Blaster 128G to come out," but if you blew a month's pay on that white elephant, it can bring tears to your eyes.

This is why for the past five years I've been using a Pentium II, and the only upgrades I made were extra RAM, an optical mouse, an external modem, and a GeForce 2 graphics card (and I only got that after the release of the GeForce 4 brought the price way down). However, the fact that I've been upgrading my software continually (at least on the Linux side - no point in upgrading Windows) means that things have become intolerable. I'm used to going and making coffee when I open OpenOffice, but now I've started going to the toilet when I change tabs in my browser. My 4GB hard disk is never less than 90% full, and that is with regular deletion of anything unnecessary. So it's not time to upgrade the odd component here and there; I need to buy a whole bloody computer.

This puts me in a quandary. I will be spending a large amount of our hard-earned cash, and I don't want to blow it. That's why I'm asking my good geeky LJ friends for some advice.

I'm looking for a system that won't cost me much over $1,000. This is rather depressing, considering that a quick look on CNet has the "mid-range" models weighing in at $2,000, and parts are slightly more expensive over here (e.g. an Athlon XPRequirements:

• Linux-compatible
• Win98-compatible, because I still need Windows for games, and there's no way I'm going to buy Windows XP
• able to do video editing, with capture from camcorders
• able to produce good sound and have good responsive MIDI in/out
• needs a nice big monitor area (min. 19") without the monitor being so big it won't fit on my desk (a 19" LCD is probably out of my range)
• needs a graphics pad

Some issues:

• Athlon or Pentium? Should I just wait until 64-bit CPUs become affordable, or is that just wet-dream material?
• Graphic card - nVidia or ATI?
• Any hardware I should avoid like the plague?

Comments

[rodneyorpheus.livejournal.com]

Athlon or Pentium? - Ahtlons are much better bang for the buck, so if cash is the big thing, go that way. I'm a Pentium man myself though.

ATI is cheaper too, but for gaming nVidia can't be beat for compatibility, especially under Linux. I'd always go nVidia.

The most important thing is the motherboard. ALWAYS buy a motherboard with a good chipset. This means nothing from SiS for example - do not buy SiS chipsets!!!

Actually, strikes me that what you want is an nVidia nForce motherboard. It will take an Athlon, and has built-in nVidia graphics. And digital audio capability.

http://www.nvidia.com/page/nf3.html

If I were you I'd go for one of those, plus a decent 32-bit Athlon, get a good HD and DVD writer and you'd be good to go within your budget.

This is assuming you're being geeky and building it yourself of course...

[evan.livejournal.com]

if you're willing to buy (and accept the dangers of) buying parts, it shouldn't cost you over $500 for a super-fast system.

but a 19" lcd is more than that by itself.

to answer your questions:
athlons are cheaper, but p4's are supposed to be good too. 64bit cpus aren't gonna be worth it for a long time.

graphic card depends on what games you want. whatever you get, it'll be obsolete immediately, so you may as well get something cheap.

avoid non-name brand hardware like the plague. don't be tempted to buy brand x when a good brand is $10 more. in my experience the difference is always worth it, even for silly stuff like keyboards.

[circumambulate.livejournal.com]

The video editing is the one that's going to get you into trouble - if you want to do reasonable editing of large files, you need a nice, fast HD, a fast processor, with fairly large L2 cache, lots of fast RAM, and a good video card.

If you want to do video editing, that won't be out of date in a month, I'd do this:
Asus P4P800Deluxe MB - $80-$90US
This will give you a good MB, that will last a while, and has decent onboard audio and networking.

P4 2.8ghz/800mhz FSB w/ Hyperthreading Proc - ~$200
Don't cheap out on the CPU - this will be the thing that you want to get the most life out of. You get faster clocks, for your buck, with AMD, but I've had nothing but trouble with them as far as broad HW/SW compatibility, and they still run too hot. HT will help a lot with video editing sort of tasks, and will get your further than any 64-bit proc will, in the short term.

Get at least 512MB of the fastest DDR memory you can afford - 512MB should run you ~$150 - get two 256MB sticks so you can utilize the dual-channel memory on the MB

Your video card should be OK, upgrade if you can afford it.

Your HD will get you by - although if you're going to do much video, you'll need larger, and make sure it's an ATA100 UDMA drive.

If you don't care as much about the video editing end of it, I'd get a Celeron MB combo from somewhere like Pricewatch, although I'd stay away from totally generic MB's - Asus/Abit/Intel are all really solid, and less memory.

You'll probably need a new case, or at least a new powersupply, too - ~$50-75

CD/DVD/RW things can be swapped later, as funds allow.

[solri.livejournal.com]

I might build it myself, or I might just get a shop to build it for me - Ankara has plenty of places which will put together a computer according to your specs. What you lose on the cost of the labour, you make up for with trade prices on the parts.

The nForce3 looks pretty sexy, if you can use that word for something as mundane as a motherboard. What's the onboard sound like?

[solri.livejournal.com]

graphic card depends on what games you want. whatever you get, it'll be obsolete immediately, so you may as well get something cheap.

So I guess I won't buy that GeForce Quatro, then ;-) It seems to be the case with graphics cards that there is a massive gap between the latest and fastest card and the next one down, hence my good deal on the GeForce2 - The GeForce4 had just come out, and no one was touching the 2 series, despite the fact that at the time there was hardly any software out (outside 3D modelling) that could really take advantage of it.

avoid non-name brand hardware like the plague.
That's one reason why I don't buy the local premade computers. You look at the items at the top of the hardware list, and it's all well-known brands, then you look down to the things most people think aren't important, like the mobo, and it's "Huh? What's that?" Acid test: ask the shop assistant what chipset it uses, and if his/her eyes glaze over, walk out the door.

[solri.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the comments.

Upgrading parts later isn't really an option, as I plan to give (or at least loan) the old box to my sister-in-law.

Is it worth going up to a gig of RAM?

[circumambulate.livejournal.com]

More memory is always better, if you're going to be editing large files. Unless you're going to do large video editing, 512 is probably plenty - what you really want is to have the system have to access the HD as little as possible, because that's the slowest interface on your system. Proc to L2 is the fastests, L2 to RAM second, RAM to HD slowest. So, if you can get the whole file into memory, you can work with it much more seamlessly.

If you can't swap parts, this is what I usually do:
Spend the bulk of your money on Proc and memory - get the fastest of each you can afford.

Next priority is the MB - try to get one that supports speeds well above the proc you're buying, or at least the max for the proc-family you are buying, and supports whatever is the current fastest memory config that doesn't cost an arm and a leg - that would currently be dualchannel PC4200 DDR (533mhz memory), and the fastest FSB(front-side-bus) you can afford.

HDD - fastest, largest you can get, for under $150 - I've never spent more than this on a drive, and probably never will - I usually spend ~$100 on a drive

Floppy/CD, etc., cheapest I can get with the features I want, although read reviews on CDRW's, because you'll chew through the savings in bad burns in no time, with a bad one.

Building a machine is really easy - pretty hard to screw it up, really. I'd recommend it for the learning experience, if nothing else.