Speccing out a new PC

Posted by: Roger

Speccing out a new PC - 22/08/2003 08:35

As some of you may know, I'm moving in with my girlfriend in a few weeks time.

Unfortunately, her flat (in London) is significantly smaller than my (rented) house (in Cambridge), so I'm going to have to downsize my computer collection.

I'm thinking of replacing my main Windows PC with something like a Shuttle XPC box. It's going to be my main hacking/gaming box, so it's got to be fairly nippy, but because it's going to be in Jen's flat, it's going to have to be fairly quiet as well.

It's been a while since I last looked at getting a new PC. Other than my laptop, my last PC purchase was a 900MHz Athlon.

So. My questions: AMD or Intel? The Intel CPUs seem to be more pricey, but if they run cooler, that might be fine. I'm not looking to overclock in any way, and the Shuttle case limits my after-market cooling abilities. 400FSB or 800FSB? How do the PCxxxx numbers on RAM map to the DDRxxx numbers? How do they relate to FSB. If I get an Athlon 3200+ apparently, I need to use PC3200 RAM. Where can I find some big sticks of PC3200 RAM? I'd like to fully populate this box with 2Gb. Crucial only seem to have it in 512Mb sticks.

What graphics card should I be looking at? I'm planning on playing a load of Half-Life 2 when it comes out, so something that can do that would be good.

I'm also planning on putting a 250Gb Maxtor disk in it (which is currently sitting unused on the shelf here), so something that supports LBA48 and ATA133 is a must.
Posted by: cmtempeg

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 22/08/2003 08:47

As for video card, Outpost has a great deal right now on a Geforce FX 5900 (not the Ultra) by BFG... comes with a lifetime warranty and 24/7 technical support. I ordered mine at 5:30PM and got it at 9:30 the next morning! (overnight shipping $9.75!). But... haven't had a chance to try it out yet as my mainboard blew up. I'm using a backup PC (win95 Pentium 110mhz )

As for RAM, I always ordered Crucial until I found there are problems with Crucial registered memory and AMD Tyan boards (My dead board is a Tyan dual athlon). I hear Corsair is a good brand. Check pricewatch.com...

Also, I believe AMD and Intel are pretty close as for the amount of heat they put out. Intel has a larger physical die size, so it's easier to cool, however.
Posted by: peter

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 22/08/2003 08:50

How do the PCxxxx numbers on RAM map to the DDRxxx numbers?
DDRxxx is in MHz, PCxxxx is in Mbytes/s. Modern chipsets transfer 8 octets per bus transaction (some have two buses), so DDR400 = PC3200 and so proportionally. (Older, two or three digit, PCxx/PCxxx numbers such as PC66 or PC100 were MHz, confusingly enough.)

How do they relate to FSB.
The FSB is also measured in MHz and 8 octets wide. If you have an 800FSB and one bank of DDR400 memory, then your memory performance will be no better than with a cheaper 400 or 533FSB. If you have 800FSB and two banks of DDR400 memory, then you can saturate FSB and your memory still keeps up. Bear in mind though that, in a gaming machine, some of your FSB (up to 2100Mbytes/s for AGP8x) is spent talking to the AGP and not the RAM, so it's not necessarily a problem if your RAM is a bit slower. Modern chipsets, unlike old Triton-era stuff, usually don't require the FSB and memory speeds to be synchronised in any way (though I imagine you get better performance if they are). Check your motherboard manual.

If I get an Athlon 3200+ apparently, I need to use PC3200 RAM. Where can I find some big sticks of PC3200 RAM? I'd like to fully populate this box with 2Gb. Crucial only seem to have it in 512Mb sticks.
If Crucial don't make them, that's IMO a big hint that they can't be made reliably. Big sticks, even in slower speeds, tend to only be available in registered DRAM (i.e. with another set of latches to reduce bus loading), which needs specific chipset support and is not pin-compatible with normal DIMMs.

Peter
Posted by: tfabris

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 22/08/2003 09:20

What graphics card should I be looking at? I'm planning on playing a load of Half-Life 2 when it comes out, so something that can do that would be good.
The demos of Half-Life 2 that you've seen on the net were running on the latest ATI card if I recall correctly. The Nvidia card was the one being used to demo Doom 3.

I was hoping that the "which card is best for HL2 and D3" question would be settled by now, but it's not. So when I took the plunge, it was with the Nvidia card. My friend Tod's planning on going with the ATI card. I still don't know which of the two will play HL2 and D3 best, I guess we'll find out. Just make sure that if you get the Nvidia card, it's the one with 256 megs of video ram. It's not cheap (about $500.00 US), but that'll really help with the new games. I don't know if there's a 256 meg version of the ATI card or not.

AMD or Intel?
Intel.

400FSB or 800FSB?
I dunno if the shuttles will do 800, but obviously faster is better.

I considered getting a shuttle, but I don't see how I can cram a hot video card, a hot CPU (I just *had* to go with 3.2 ), and a hot hard drive in there and not have it turn into a doorstop after a month of use. Will the shuttles even take a 3.2?

How do the PCxxxx numbers on RAM map to the DDRxxx numbers?
 Dunno exactly, but I think that 3200 means that the ram runs at 400mhz (which is different than the CPU FSB speed). My motherboard will do 3200 which I think is 400mhz. My Corsair RAM chips will do 466mhz but the mobo won't.
Posted by: pca

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 22/08/2003 09:27

Well, I personally would go for an AMD processor, since you tend to get more speed for the money. Their only drawback is that if the heatsink comes off you're stuffed, since the things die immediately.

I'd get a Shuttle SN45, which is the one with the 400MHz FSB, and put an XP3200 in it, along with two 512MB PC3200 DIMMS. The SN45 is based on the Nvidia Nforce2 Ultra 400 chipset, which bank-interleaves the ram for higher throughput. Put an ATI Radeon 9800 in it, along with your 250GB drive and a DVD/CDRW drive, and you've got a small, portable box that will make a damn fast games machine as well as do pretty much anything else you'd require. My games box is basically this setup, only slightly lower spec as it's older.

You can't put any of the high-end Nvidia card in a shuttle box, as they have the HUGE fan on the wrong side. The shuttles have the AGP slot on the side nearest the case lid, so the fan overhangs the case.

You can get the shuttle carry bag as well, to make the thing completely portable. In fact, I have the one here I was going to let you have, which I forgot to bring up with me. I'll bring it next time

The best place to get the shuttle from is probably here . They have pretty good prices on most other things as well.

pca
Posted by: RobotCaleb

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 22/08/2003 09:27

heh, idno. i went with the amd xp 2700. im not extremely rich but i dint want anything horribly slow.
and i got the ati 9700. good bang for the buck. but if youve got the money, go all out.
personally, im an amd fan myself.
Posted by: robricc

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 22/08/2003 09:34

im an amd fan myself.
I was a big AMD fan in the K5, K6 and early K7 days. I switched to Intel once AMD started requiring a jet engine to cool the CPU. My boxed 2.4GHz P4 with Intel OEM fan runs very quiet in a mid-ATX case. I used to have an XPC, but I eventually needed more drive bays.
Posted by: tfabris

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 22/08/2003 09:39

If you have an 800FSB and one bank of DDR400 memory, then your memory performance will be no better than with a cheaper 400 or 533FSB. If you have 800FSB and two banks of DDR400 memory, then you can saturate FSB and your memory still keeps up.
 Interesting. Can you clarify this more? Do you mean "bank" or do you mean "chip"?

I've got two 512-meg chips on a "3200" board with the CPU running at 800mhz FSB.

There are four slots for RAM chips on the board, arranged in two pairs, like this:

----------------
----------------

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----------------

Is each slot a bank, or is each pair a bank? In other words, Right now, the chips are installed thus:

|========|
|========|

----------------
----------------

If each pair was a bank instead of each slot being a bank, would I get better performance if I plugged them in thus?:

|========|
----------------

|========|
----------------

Posted by: RobotCaleb

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 22/08/2003 09:39

on that note, i believe amds are designed to run at higher temperatures, are they not?
Posted by: peter

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 22/08/2003 09:49

I'm also planning on putting a 250Gb Maxtor disk in it (which is currently sitting unused on the shelf here), so something that supports LBA48 and ATA133 is a must.
The Shuttle SB61G2 supports 800FSB P4, dual-bank DDR400, and AGP8x. It only does ATA100, though (and SATA).

Peter
Posted by: peter

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 22/08/2003 09:59

Interesting. Can you clarify this more? Do you mean "bank" or do you mean "chip"?
I don't mean "chip" (I don't even mean "module"). Some people use the word "channel" instead of "bank". Yet others call this an "interleaved" memory subsystem.

These chipsets basically have two independent memory interfaces on, so they can get 3200Mbytes/sec (for DDR400) out of each of them. The chipset accesses them alternately, so the CPU effectively sees a single 6400Mbytes/sec memory subsystem.

Is each slot a bank, or is each pair a bank?
That depends on your motherboard; it should say in the manual whether or not you have a dual-bank memory controller, and, if so, which DIMM slots belong to which bank. If you have four slots, it's not at all likely that each one is in its own bank -- only the biggest-ass chipsets have four memory banks.

If each pair was a bank instead of each slot being a bank, would I get better performance if I plugged them in thus?:

|========|
----------------

|========|
----------------
Yes, if that's indeed the layout. Some chipsets (e.g. Serverworks 3LE) won't boot the machine unless the two banks are matched (much like the old days of SIMMs being installed in pairs or fours); other, more consumer-targeted ones, will boot with mismatched banks but operate them as a single bank.

Peter
Posted by: peter

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 22/08/2003 10:16

If each pair was a bank instead of each slot being a bank, would I get better performance if I plugged them in thus?:

|========|
----------------

|========|
----------------
Asus's US website seems to only have the international version of the Quick-Start Guide for the P4C-800 downloadable, but it turns out that yes, for une configuration à double-canal you need to install une paire de DIMM identiques in the blue slots, and/or une autre paire in the black slots.

Peter
Posted by: Cris

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 22/08/2003 10:21

I've got a Shuttle I don't use anymore !!! You can have it if you are interested (for a small fee ). It's just sitting on my shelf, but I still have the box and everything.

It takes an Intel CPU, I have taken all the bits out and put them into my new system. It's a SB51G, good condition. I upgraded as I needed more space inside for a 3rd Harddrive.

Make me an offer if you are interested.

Cheers

Cris.
Posted by: BartDG

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 22/08/2003 10:22

If each pair was a bank instead of each slot being a bank, would I get better performance if I plugged them in thus?:

|========|
----------------

|========|
----------------
Yes, Asus even color-codes their motherboards specifically for and like this.
Posted by: tfabris

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 22/08/2003 10:29

Wow, I love this forum. That's great information! Thanks everyone!

/me makes note to re-arrange his chips when he gets home.
Posted by: Roger

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 27/08/2003 06:51

I took the plunge today, and my new PC is on order:

  • Shuttle SN45G (from Microdirect)
  • Athlon XP3200 (also from Microdirect)
  • 2x512Mb PC3200 DDR (from Crucial)

I've already got these other ingredients:

  • Monitor, Keyboard, Mouse, etc.
  • Maxtor 250Gb ATA133 hard disk


For now, I'm going to be putting a PlexWriter 24/10/40A in it. I'll look at DVD/CDRW combo drives later.

The next thing on the list is a graphics card. I'm intrigued by pca's comment about fan placement. Can someone explain this more fully?

Anyway, given that, I'll probably plump for the ATI Radeon 9800. From reading Tom's Hardware, it seems that getting the 256Mb model is not worth the expense compared to the 128Mb model. What do others think?

More importantly, however: which brand card should I get? I'm a little confused by the plethora of different options. Should I get a Hercules or a Gigabyte? Do ATI do their own retail version?

Normally, I'd have gone for a card from Asus, but they only seem to do nVidia, and apparently, they won't fit.
Posted by: pca

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 27/08/2003 07:09

Actually, looking at the new nvidia cards, it may no longer be a problem.

When I put together the shuttle games machine, the high-end nvidia card was the FX5800, which had a soddin' ENORMOUS fan and heatsink on it, which used up an entire extra slot to the left of the card. The shuttle motherboards have (unusually) the AGP slot to the left of the PCI one, so if you attempted to fit an FX5800 card you'd find that the fan assembly stuck out past the side of the case by about a centimeter. I ended up going for a 9700 instead, which aside from anything else was faster anyway, and fitted neatly.

Now, however, it seems that the FX5900 chipset has a better thermal management system(tm), as can be seen here. You may well find that everything fits, although I'm not sure whether the power requirements might be a bit much. That said, the 9700 isn't exactly low-power either, and it's fine in my shuttle.

pca
Posted by: cmtempeg

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 27/08/2003 08:27

The fan assembly on the BFG 5900 I bought occupies the adjacent pci slot. There are a bunch of brands with different cooler designs that only occupy the AGP slot.
Posted by: drakino

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 27/08/2003 08:39

Be careful when shopping for FX 5900 cards for Shuttle systems. While they don't all have massive blowers sitting on top, some do have larger then normal heatsinks still that will hang out the side of the Shuttle. I'd check some place like the SFF Tech.com boards for compatibility.

Memory wise, 256 might be a bit much. All hints from id were pointing to probably 128 needed to run Doom 3 with the highest quality textures. Games will probably start going beyond 128 sometime in late 2004.

ATI, They do make their own cards as well, but I hear in Europe, the "powered by ATI cards" are more common. In most cases, they are the same board design, but with a different company actually doing the manufacturing work. Overall, I have heard good things about the Hercules boards.
Posted by: Roger

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 28/08/2003 00:04


  • 2x512Mb PC3200 DDR (from Crucial)



...has now turned up. Not a lot of use without the rest of the PC. Most frustrating.
Posted by: andy

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 28/08/2003 00:59

...has now turned up. Not a lot of use without the rest of the PC. Most frustrating

I've had the same problem before, Crucial can be most irritatingly quick at deliverying sometimes. I once ordered at about 10pm on a Tuesday and the goods arrived at noon on Wednesday, no idea how they managed that...
Posted by: wfaulk

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 28/08/2003 06:22

FWIW, my recently ordered Crucial memory (two pairs of 512MB sticks for a total of 2GB of memory) was all bad. I'd suggest you run Memtest first thing.
Posted by: Roger

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 28/08/2003 06:54

I'd suggest you run Memtest first thing

Good advice. I find that surprising though -- I've had no problems with Crucial in the past, and have had lots of problems with other brands.
Posted by: wfaulk

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 28/08/2003 07:00

Ahh, dammit. I meant Corsair. Nevermind.

Still a reasonable thing to find out about first, though, and not after you're done configuring stuff. As it is now, I've got an oddly corrupt Windows filesystem due to it.
Posted by: tman

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 28/08/2003 07:37

My 256MB SODIMM from Crucial went bad after a while. I wonder how long the guarantee on these things are?
Posted by: ricin

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 28/08/2003 07:54

Most have a lifetime warranty.
Posted by: robricc

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 28/08/2003 07:55

I wonder how long the guarantee on these things are?
Lifetime
Posted by: tman

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 28/08/2003 08:15

Cool. I'll have to see if I can get it replaced. And now to find the receipt which I've most probably thrown away...
Posted by: Tim

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 28/08/2003 09:54

I just put a new machine together 2 weeks ago. The video card I chose was the Radeon 9800 Pro AIW. I am waiting for HL2 (played HL and TFC religiously for a LONG time), and wanted a vid card that I figured could push the game.

So far, I love the 9800 Pro AIW. I haven't tried hooking it up to the satellite yet to play with the PVR, but will probably get to rewiring the house for it over this weekend. The framerates in the games I have been playing (BF1942, DC and SWG) have been great with most of the detail maxed.
Posted by: tfabris

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 28/08/2003 10:46

FWIW, my recently ordered Crucial Corsair memory (two pairs of 512MB sticks for a total of 2GB of memory) was all bad. I'd suggest you run Memtest first thing.
Hmm, I bought Corsair, too, so I'd like to take your advice do an extensive memory test. I'm aware that the cursory RAM test the BIOS does at bootup can't show all possible kinds of memory errors, but I've never bothered to do a full test using third-party software. What's the best "free" memory test utility out there?
Posted by: wfaulk

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 28/08/2003 10:52

Memtest86
Posted by: Roger

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 28/08/2003 10:53

What he said. It rocks.
Posted by: tfabris

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 28/08/2003 10:58

Cool, a bootable ISO image. Nice. Burning now. Thanks, guys!
Posted by: wfaulk

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 28/08/2003 11:01

One of the cool things about it (and this is not really about Memtest, even though it factors into it) is that there exists a Linux kernel patch that makes it reliably use bad memory by avoiding the bad spots. Oftentimes, memory goes bad in such a way as to cause only particular offsets to fail, and you can use Memtest to find those bad spots and produce the correct configuration information to then tell Linux to not use those areas of memory. And it's a pretty slick solution, too; it just allocates those areas of memory in the kernel as if they were being used as data and then never uses or releases them.

Anyway, not really about Memtest, but it talks about it in the Memtest config, so I get reminded every time it's brought up.
Posted by: peter

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 28/08/2003 11:59

One of the cool things about it (and this is not really about Memtest, even though it factors into it) is that there exists a Linux kernel patch that makes it reliably use bad memory by avoiding the bad spots. Oftentimes, memory goes bad in such a way as to cause only particular offsets to fail, and you can use Memtest to find those bad spots and produce the correct configuration information to then tell Linux to not use those areas of memory. And it's a pretty slick solution, too; it just allocates those areas of memory in the kernel as if they were being used as data and then never uses or releases them.
That's definitely cool, but you've got to reckon that nowadays it's a technology whose time has come and gone.

(Oooh, can we have a "when I were a lad" thread? Can we? Can we?)

When I were a lad, RAM upgrades for A540s cost UKP400 for 4Mb, because the memory architecture was such that a new memory controller chip was needed for each 4Mb. We Archimedes users jealously eyed PC users whose RAM came in commodity SIMMs, and for the sizes anyone would actually need (4Mb, 8Mb) cost about UKP25 per Mb. Then the RiscPC came out, and it took two standard SIMMs up to 128Mb each. Atomwide published SIMM prices all the way up to 64Mb, and also offered 128Mb SIMMs. They didn't publish the price for 128Mb SIMMs, but did say that if you bought two 128Mb SIMMs they'd throw in a free RiscPC worth UKP1500 to put them in.

And nowadays Scan are flogging off 64Mb SIMMs at UKP9.50 and 128Mb SIMMs at UKP10. Mapping out bad RAM blocks just isn't worth the candle...

Peter
Posted by: julf

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 28/08/2003 12:37

Oooh, can we have a "when I were a lad" thread? Can we? Can we?)
Nooo... Please, nooo!!!

(when I were a lad, memory size was in K's, not M's. Or for micros, in *bytes*, not K's. And some of it was ferrite core, not semiconductor!)
Posted by: genixia

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 28/08/2003 12:51

(Oooh, can we have a "when I were a lad" thread? Can we? Can we?)

And nowadays Scan are flogging off 64Mb SIMMs at UKP9.50 and 128Mb SIMMs at UKP10

Is SIMM a new brand of winchester that I hadn't previously heard of? My 10MB fileserver is getting full.
Posted by: Dignan

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 28/08/2003 17:01

Memtest is absolutley great. It was very useful in diagnosing any problems I might have had with my first set of memory sticks. This turned out to be a lot, as I got many errors all throughout the test. Those sticks were really bad. My current set gets no errors.
Posted by: tman

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 28/08/2003 18:04

Ah yes. I've got a whole bag of 1MB SIMMs. If I could only time travel back about 10 years and then I'd be rich! Muhahaha...
Posted by: wfaulk

Re: Speccing out a new PC - 28/08/2003 20:16

you've got to reckon that nowadays it's a technology whose time has come and gone.
As I remember, it's actually a fairly new patch and was intended for those platforms where memory is harder to come by. Of course, that means that Memtest86 is not very useful in such cases, but you could also conceivably use that unwarranted bad RAM you've got lying about that you already replaced and nearly double your memory for ``free''.