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Building a new PC
The Count Of Midget Fisto
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
It's come time to replace my 9 year old PC. It'll mainly be used for surfing the web with some slight gaming. Half-Life 2, Supreme Commander, WoW, Company of Heroes are the only games that I want to play. I've decided to build my own this time.
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Windsor 2.6GHz
ASUS T3-M2NC51PV BareBone
Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JD 80
CORSAIR XMS2 2GB
GIGABYTE GV-NX86S256H GeForce 8600GTS 256MB
Total. $656.95
I'm going to use the DvD burner from my current computer because it's only 3 months old, and my Monitor is about a year old and very nice so that's staying. Anything else you guys can suggest?
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Windsor 2.6GHz
ASUS T3-M2NC51PV BareBone
Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JD 80
CORSAIR XMS2 2GB
GIGABYTE GV-NX86S256H GeForce 8600GTS 256MB
Total. $656.95
I'm going to use the DvD burner from my current computer because it's only 3 months old, and my Monitor is about a year old and very nice so that's staying. Anything else you guys can suggest?
In Low Orbit Over Budapest
The Count Of Midget Fisto on
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And unless you don't download porn, I'd get a larger hard drive.
Agreed. Especially considering you want to play Supreme Commander, which is a resource-sucking system-raping mofo. http://www.techspot.com/review/51-nvidia-geforce-8600/page6.html Please note in those benchmarks that a geforce 7900 will outperform an 8600.
That being said, if you're waiting for octo-core stuff, you can work it so you can upgrade and keep the same motherboard using an existing AMD chip. Interesting.
If you can, you may as well wait the month and see how those turn out. That is, if you're really looking for a good midranged card.
Go with either a Core 2 Duo OR a Quad core.
Core 2 Duo - these things are fast and take take the equalivent AMD CPU any day.
They are also fairly cheap.
They have low power requirements.
Mmmm... 2 cores.
They overclock like butter! These are the new "celerons".. you can take a 2.4 to 3.0 on Air
975x chipset is very nice.
Low Heat.
Quad Core:
Like above, but they cost a ton more.
In June/July - it's rumored that they will drop to around $250-300!
In all seriousness, Quad core is probably way more then you would ever need for your setup.
In fact, Core 2 probably is too - but it'll cost about the same so why not get some "extras" for "free"?
??
GHz is "Giga"-Hertz. I'm not an expect at this, but the way I understand it is this:
Every CPU has a "cycle"... "Cycles" are measured in Hertz (ie 1 cycle per second == 1 hert (??)). Giga just means "Thousand" (1024?)... so 3.0 Ghz is really 300,000 Hz (yea?)... something like that, the point is, that it has a "bunch of cycles per second"
The CPU also executes instructions... It can execute X instructions per cycle... or hert.
Say you have a CPU that can execute 1 instruction per Hz and that it's rated at 3.0 Ghz.. that is apox 300,000 Instructions per second. (1 * 300,000Hz).
But now, say you have a CPU that can execute 2 instructions per Hz and it's rated at 3.0 Ghz.. then that would be 600,000 Instructions per second OR twice as fast as the above CPU, even though it has the same "speed" rating.
the "speed" rating (2.8Ghz, 3.0Ghz, etc) is just rating the number of Hz it can do... how many cycles it can go though per second... it tells you nothign on how "effective" it is at using those cycles.
So, in short... the two ways to speed up "raw" CPU calcuations are:
Increase Number of Hz
Increase effectivness of the instruction set.
One way to see this... is do bench marks on a Core 2 Duo and a Pent IV when they are both at the same clock rating (2.4Ghz, 3.0Ghz, etc).. the core 2 duo will win hands down.
Also Core 2 Duos have more "cache" which also helps performance.
Disclaimer: I'm not an expect on this, but that's how I understand it.
EDIT: Actucally 1Hz is 1000 Cycles per second... so 3.0Ghz would be 1000 * 3000 or 3,000,000.. either way.. really fast. .
Rhino has the right idea, but we are talking many many times faster than the examples given.
This is why AMD advertises their processors with a number like 5200+ in the name. It's not actually that GHz, but it performs to that level in practice. And yes, this was the whole debate years ago when AMD started rating their brand with said number instead of focusing on the hertz total. Consumers were looking at Intel offerings then looking at AMD offerings and going, "Hey, Intel has more hertz! That's the whole point! I want that!" But in reality the AMD chips performed just as well at lower numbers, thus why those babies are on there.
Anyway, these days neither number helps that much when figuring out horsepower of a CPU. My current CPU is one of those ancient AMD XP 3200+ chips. Can't even touch the 3000+ equivalent chips of today.
Warframe: TheBaconDwarf
So there is no way you can compare the two by things as Mhz. Adding cores does NOT double the speed f.e. Quad Core doesn't mean the speed will increase by 4 times.
And as is said, AMD has had this same "problem". People would look at the Ghz a processor had (shops also advertised it that way) and thought they had a number to compare with.