?s on Building a PC

[klinky]

I agree w/ madmag9999, I like his setup.

32-bit vs 64-bit: There is no use right now and most likely in the future you will have no use for this feature. It is many many years down the road before we will need this.

History: Intel had the first 64bit processor in the Itanium. However it was based on IA32/IA64 architecture vs x86. It would emulate x86 code to work with it for backwards compatibility. Intel was trying to move us away from the x86 architecture and in this IA realm. However the Itanium had delays and suffered from poor initial performance. AMD was working on extending the x86 architecture to 64bit land. The Athlon64/Opteron use the x86-64 architecture. Microsoft adopted x86-64 and announced they would only be support x86-64 for 64bit versions of windows. This forced Intel to adopt x86-64 as well, which is what is in the new Xeon processors. Itanium is pretty much sunk.

PCI-Expression(PCIe): Not needed. PCI is going to be around for alteast a few more years. There is no need to buy an Intel board now just because it has PCIe and there are a handful of PCIe video cards available. Regular PCI & AGP slots will work fine for the next few years.


I would recommend getting and Nforce2 board that has Serial ATA(SATA) on it. A Seagate SATA drive(biggest you can get). The fastest AthlonXP you can afford. The most ram you can get(get two sticks so you can operate the board in dual-channel mode, this will give you a slight performance boost). Make sure the memory you get meets the requirements of CPU you're purchasing.

Bus/DDR requirements:
266Mhz bus = PC2100
333Mhz bus = PC2700
400Mhz bus = PC3200

If you want to play games pick up a Radeon 9600 Pro or XT like madmag has. If you're not going to play games, no need in wasting your money. In that case get a Radeon 7500 or a Geforce2 mx. Make sure they have "DVI" outputs for your LCD before you purchase the card.

A good power supply is a must. Look for brands like "Sparkle" "Channel Well" "Antec". You don't really need a lot of watts. 300Watts should be enough. If you can afford a higher watt power supply from the same company then go for it. Don't fall for one of those $12 "500 Watt" power supplies, they can cause instabilities by not supplying porper voltage.

[klinky]

it's PCI-Express not PCI-Expression, I shouldn't post when out of it...

[Scintilla]

The fastest AthlonXP you can afford.

Or, as of yesterday, the Sempron.

[klinky]

The fastest AthlonXP you can afford.

Or, as of yesterday, the Sempron.

Sempron is to replace the Duron line, not the AthlonXP. The XP wills till have more cache than the Sempron. The prices quoted for the Sempron do not seem to really reflect their "value" part nature either. You can get an Athlon XP @ the same clock for the same price as a Sempron. You just get more cache with the XP. At this time, I'd have to say the Sempron is a no go.

[Scintilla]

The fastest AthlonXP you can afford.

Or, as of yesterday, the Sempron.

Sempron is to replace the Duron line, not the AthlonXP. The XP wills till have more cache than the Sempron. The prices quoted for the Sempron do not seem to really reflect their "value" part nature either. You can get an Athlon XP @ the same clock for the same price as a Sempron. You just get more cache with the XP. At this time, I'd have to say the Sempron is a no go.

I remember reading in <a href="http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/2004072 ... html">that Tom's Hardware article</a> that the Semprons are nothing more than renamed Athlon XPs, based on the Thoroughbred B core, except for the Sempron 3100+ for Socket 754, which is just an Athlon 64 with the 64-bit capabilities removed.

And also from that article, the Athlon XPs are soon to be phased out... so if you want to get one, you'd better do it fast.

[klinky]

Well for now most of the Semprons are Athlon XP cores with half the cache disabled. In the future it seems that the Sempron name will take over the Athlon XP name, so new Athlon XP parts will be coming out with Sempron names. So we'll have 512KB Semprons in the future. They most likely will be Socket A compatible, but I wouldn't get a 256KB Sempron. I imagine AMD is going to keep the Athlon XP line going until they have a comparable Sempron product out to fill the gap.

[slackergirl]

Thanks klinky! That pretty much answers any questions I had!

I don't really play games on my computer that are more advanced than minesweeper, so that will save me in the video card department. (I prefer console platforms myself.)

One last thing... Do I have to worry about going overboard on the wattage of the power supply? Say the case I want only comes with a 500W (of a recommended make, of course). Would I be in danger of damaging any components? (Stupid questions are always preferable to stupid mistakes.)

[Kalium]

No, too much wattage isn't an issue. That's really just the upper limit of what you can draw, power-wise.

[klinky]

No, too much wattage isn't an issue. That's really just the upper limit of what you can draw, power-wise.

Exactly. The only problem is that a lot of powersupplies you get with the case are crappy. Do you have a link to the case you want to get? It might be a good idea to budget in a different power supply. You could pick up a 350W sparkle for $25 from NewEgg.com. Even though it's rated for less watts, it provides better current, which means it's less likely to give you stability issues.

[LovEnPeaCE]

i'd just like to say that right now, a lot of the amd processors, including teh amd64, are cheaper than many intels :-p