System Recommendations?

[Drake]

Hey all.

Building a system for someone again, but this time the budget is ~$2000 USD.

He works mostly with photoshop and programs like that, with a little video editing off to the side. Because of that I figured that the bandwidth of a Pentium-based system would probably be a greater benefit than what an Athlon-based system. Am I wrong?

Also, I've only paid attention to Athlon news, so I have no clue what's what with Pentiums. Help?

[Synthohol]

Oh, Gabriel.... where are you???
photoshop and quark Fara can help here possibly the high end stuff too. Gabriel however runs a AMD system and the 3-d rendering stuff was kikkin arse on that PC.
Even with the P4 commercials on multimedia, I've been very impressed with the AMD performance on my own system. (one AMD and six pentium based boxes. the AMD is the best I've seen)
with an XP CPU and Raid and a GOOD vid card you cannot go wrong!

(just make sure he/she crunches for LN SETI ok?)

[Drake]

Heh, he may be able to donate his old box to the cause.

I was only thinking Intel for the RDRAM and greater bandwidth between the northbridge and CPU. If there's a good reason to go AMD, then that will be the road taken. I, myself, have an AMD box and love it to death :D. But then again the only Intel systems I've used are the 1.6GHz celeries at school and the old P166 I gave away, so I don't have much to compare to my 2100+.

[WesM63]

Hey drake,
This is a tuffy. As much as i want to recommend AMD, I would have to go with a P4 on this one. RDram is nice if you can find it, and a motherboard. Intel cut Rdram, and just yesterday we (the computer store i work at) had a hell of a time finding a Rdram board. We ended up going with ddr and doubleing the memory. If this system is going to be used for Editing here's what i suggest and what we build our clients :

P4 2.53
Asus P4T533 Mainboard
1Gig Rdram (this was more of a cad machine)
120Jb westren digital harddrive
ATI Fire Gl (8800 i beleive)
Floppy,CD-RW,DVD, Case, PSU


As you can tell my company is intel biased. I'am shure someone has a good AMD recommendation.

Good Luck

[Drake]

Thanks! A good mobo was all I really needed to know. If we do decide to go AMD our setup would probably be an Asus board (perhaps an nForce2 and raise the FSB up as far as it could go). Heh, I'm hoping the guy will think the 3.06GHz p4 would be a viable choice, but at $799 it doesn't look like I'll be handling one any time soon. I did see a 2.8GHz at newegg, and only for $300 so that'll prolly be the CPU of the system.

Finding RDRAM isn't a problem. If Fry's doesn't have it then I'll just order direct from Corsair or another company.

Another question though, what's the highest level of RDRAM I can put in the system without either the FSB or the RAM being a bottleneck? And how does RDRAM work? I've read that it only works in pairs, but I'm not sure.

And would SCSI be a better option for a HD? I mean, with photoshop you're constantly loading/saving 100+ MB files, so would the faster seek times and RPMs do anything for me?

Or perhaps RAID 0+1 if SCSI is too limiting? And scince in RAID 0+1 two drives are mirroring and two are striping, would you have to get, say, two 40GB drives for striping and two 80GB drives for mirroring?

[WackyComputer]

It's unfortunate that I can't find the full article online, but here's the teaser anyway.

EDIT: I can't get the url to work so go to google (http://www.google.com) and do a I'm feeling lucky search for: "best graphics workstation for less than".

It was the PC Challenge for the month of November 2002 in CPU magazine.

They both picked out AMD processors, one a athlon MP 2000+ and the other a athlon XP 2200+. One guy picked out a nice vid card a "3dlabs wildcat vp870 128MB".

The full article is worth a look if you can get your hands on it.

[dicki]

hummm tricky one, photoshop is heavily optimised for p4's but they are so much more expensive...

your choices as i can see it are either a dual AMD or a single really quick P4 either one should have loads of ram and raid... graphics card... howabout a parhelia from matrox? and make sure you get 2 nice big moniters that makes graphics work soo much easier :)

dicki

[Player0]

P4s are the best performers right now in ANYTHING. And do amazingly well in graphics applications (mostly cause of SSE2). However, with a limited budget like $2000, you might be better off going with AMD, depending on what else he wants in the system. (A WildCat VP could set you back like $600 alone).

You could always get something like the Abit TH7-II RAID with the new P4 3.06HT proccessor and some PC1066 RDRam. Of course, thats half your PC budget gone right there.

But, with an OKAY video card ($200-$300) and with good IDE RAID (you want good disk performance), a good PSU and case, and skimp on the accessories, you might beable to build one for under $2000.

Going Dual AMD would be you're next best choice. I doubt this would perform much better than a 3.06HT, but...thats the only P4 processor that would out perform it. With a couple MP2200+ chips, and maybe an MSI MPX board, and some good ddr, you might save a couple hundred over the 3.06, which is money you can use for a better video card ($500-$600) or a SCSI160 drive.

[Drake]

Arr, here's what I'm thinking so far for a p4 system:

Asus P4T533
Pentium 4 2.4BGHz
Samsung RIMM4200 256 MB (2)
Matrox Parhelia 128MB
CHENMING ATX case (420W PSU)
WD 80GB 8MB Buffer
Lite On 48x24x48 CDRW
MITSUMI 1.44MB FDD
WinXP Pro

Total: $1368.99

and if he plans to use his old system still...
Sony CPD-E540B 21" Monitor

Total: $ 1,895.99

Now, I was told that his budget was 'A couple of grand' so it could be anywhere from 2k-4k, thats why I'm trying to stay under 2k. When I next hear from him I'll have a bit more info.

[EDIT] Did some reading on Intel boards... If the Granite Bay chipset will match RDRAM in bandwidth... That may be a more viable solution due to the wider availability and lower cost of DDR RAM.

[Drake]

What I've worked out for an AMD system...

Asus A7V8X
Athlon 2600+
Corsair XMS C2 DDR333 512MB (2)
Matrox Parhelia
CHENMING ATX case (420W)
WD 80GB 8MB Buffer
Lite On 48x24x48 CDRW
MITSUMI 1.44MB FDD
WinXP Pro

Total: $1,591.00

With monitor: $2,118.00

This is all NewEgg.com (http://www.newegg.com), by the way.

[WesM63]

Both systems sound good to me, Really it's just weither you want AMD or Intel.

[Drake]

Bah. The complete lack of RDRAM in sizes above 256MB makes me want to consider Athlon, but It'd probably be best to wait for a Granite Bay board...

[Farabomb]

If going Intel definitely wait for the Granite bay. Shouldn't be too much longer berfore you see some boards.

[Player0]

Granit Bay still doesnt match 850 performance.

I still am not sure why you can't use a 3.06HT or a dual athlon board. You should beable to get either for under $2000.

And why Parhelia??

[Drake]

I'm just trying to stay in the sub-$2000 budget until I can get in touch with him again. I'm fairly certain he'll be willing to pay at least that much, but if not I wont have to make too many cuts to get us back on budget.Granit Bay still doesnt match 850 performance.Arr, nothing is written in stone, and the budget is the only limiting factor, but from what I've seen Granite Bay is barely tailing 850.