Which would be better?

[pbpancho]

I am debating what to get for my new setup.  I am looking at the DFI LANPARTY NFII ULTRA B or ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe for motherboards, and the AMD athlon xp 2500+ or 3200+ for CPU ( i would oc the 2500 to 3200)
Will i notice a difference between the two if the 2500 is OC'd?

and finally, would a AMD Athlon 64 3000+ with an ASUS K8V Deluxe mobo be noticably faster?

All this is assuming the same RAM, and everything else in the system.

[Mark H]

Of the two motherboards, I prefer and have the Asus board you mentioned. It is sweet!

As to the processors, I don't recommend overclocking, although it is your processor to do as you wish. The 3200 is obviously the faster chip. It boils down to what you want to do with the PC and how much you want to spend. You won't see much difference between an overclocked 2500 and a 3200 XP, but you will void your warranty.

As to the AMD 64 chips, they are proving to be faster than the Athlon XP chips, although the 3200 XP may have a slight edge on the 3000 AMD 64. I do know that the 3200 AMD 64 is faster than the equivalent XP chip.

Mark H

[pbpancho]

would the 64 be better overall for a mix of gaming and A/V editing slash tv watching/recording w/ an AIW 9600 pro?

[Tranquility_Base]

Audio/Video encoding = Pentium 4

[pbpancho]

it will be mostly games i think, would the 64 be alot slower than the P4?

[Chandler]

To be honest, except for in benchmarks you're unlikely to notice any speed difference.  Getting a good graphics card is more important.

The P4 does have the edge for Video encoding, but since the AMD processors got SSE2 the gap between them has closed.

For the same amount of money, you can get a faster AMD based machine than Intel.

[pbpancho]

that has been my thinking, the video card will be an ATI all in wonder 9600 pro.  I am leaning toward the 64 because it does not cost too much more and every little speed edge helps.

[Tranquility_Base]

Thats the whole point. for gaming the Athlon 64 is better, but for A/V encoding, the P4 is better but not by much. But then again its gonna cost u more to build an intel solution on a Canterwood motherboard with at least a 3.2 GHz P4 to compete with a lower end Athlon 64 in general purpose apps and games.

[pbpancho]

Allrite, after some discussion, here is what i plan to build:

AMD Athlon 64 3000+
ASUS K8V Deluxe
1 gig DDR 400 (prolly crucial, maybe corsair)
430 watt Antec Power supply (already have from old comp)
ATI All in Wonder 9600 Pro (already have)
2 maxtor 120 gig IDE HDs (already have, i think theyre diamondmax 9's i know the model #'s are Maxtor 6Y120L0  and Maxtor 6Y120P0. one of my concerns is if they will connect right? Im unclear on the difference between IDE, ATA, and SATA HDD's)
Liteon DVD burner(already have)
Liteon DVD ROM drive(already have)
SB Audigy 6.1 card(already have)
Thermaltake Highest Xaser II A5000C Chassis Without Power Supply

I hope to add 2 new hd's in raid 0 soon, prolly 120-200 gigs

How does that sound?? Everything compatible?  This will be used for school, music, gaming, TV capture, and pretty much everything.

[Mark H]

It looks good to me.

IDE and ATA are the same thing. The motherboard you selected has an ATA133 controller on board, so you will be able to use your hard drives with it fine.

As to the differences between IDE and SATA: The IDE drives use a parallel interface, which has several pins that are on a ribbon with a wide end. SATA drives use a serial interface that uses a thin round cable with small ends.

Mark H

[Allie-Baba]

Just a couple of quick comments from the peanut gallery -

1) While I don't have a lot of experience with it yet, I have been doing a lot of research. Maybe it's just picking nits, but your best route for Audio/Video [ul]encoding[/ul] is to go the specialized hardware route IMHO. It's not really even close. But of course there's the cost factor. And like modems in the past, it seems to be getting harder and harder to tell if a particular card is nothing more than an A/D converter and software on the main Proc. v.s. a true hardware decoder. Certainly, Audio/Video [ul]editing[/ul] is driven almost strictly and completely by the main proc., MoBo, Memory, and the HDD. That is essentially just memory steering and math though, until of course you get into things like Type Graphics, Overlay, and Special Cuts.

2) High speed SATA drives are just around the corner. They're here actually but prices/G are still on the high side for my blood. Essentially the new 10000 and 15000 RPM SATA HDDs are off shoots of the SCSI drives available on servers, main and mini frames, and High end Macs.

3) Even still today - if you want to get into professional or near professional Video and Audio Editing  - your best and cheapest bet is still probably the Mac.

THNX
BRAD

[pbpancho]

I will just be dabbling in it for fun, and doing alot of TV caps w/ the AIW.  I am also now considering a P4 2.8, not sure tho.  On a side note, i might be getting a damaged (dont know how much) G4 desktop soon from a friend, if i can get it running i will use that for editing.

[Rick G]

Too whoever that nasy person was that says no overclocking, I say POOH, look at my specs and see what can be done easily AND keep idle temps at 32C and heavy use temps at 48C. no damage there and the mobo and DDRAM are gauranteed even if you overclock, the P4 automatically cuts off if temps reach 70C so no damage occurs to cpu.  The most important factor is to have an excellent PSU to provide clean, consistant and rated wattage.
The system PB has listed is not too bad except for the PSU, you need at least 400watts for that system and any additional headroom or overclocking.  Look at the MSI latest board for your AMD and Kingston Hyper-X ram.

[pbpancho]

you need at least 400watts for that system and any additional headroom or overclocking

i have a new antec 430 watt power supply.  Im pretty sure i will go with the P4.  What cpu cooler do you guys recommend (fan and heatsink, not liquid or anyhting)?

[Rick G]

The one the only, the best, ZALMAN 7000 get the alum and copper combo to save weight on the mobo, also has a large and very quiet fan. AND whenever your friends see this beheomouth, they will be impressed and there only about $40 USD.
I  have written an article on how to build your own water cooling system if interested. Vewy, Vewy quite, silly rabbit.

[trav]

I would go with the DFI LANPARTY NFII ULTRA B - I've used this board on some computers, and i like it :) , its allso very VERY good for overclocking if you plan to do than :)

[Carskick]

I'd rather have an Athlon 64 over a P4 anyday to tell you the truth. I can rip a CD at full 48x with my AthlonXP 2600+ converting to MP3 while only utilizing about half the CPU. The 64s are even better at encoding, and although they may not quite surpass the P4s yet, I'll bet once 64bit encoding software comes out, it will show their true potential.

Here is an encoding benchmark between the P4 3.2, P43.2EE, Athlon 64 FX-51, Athlon 64 3400+, and the AthlonXP 3200+ regarding encoding at the bottom part of the page. It shows the Athlon 64's improvement over the XPs, but they still lag behind the P4s. But remember, your looking at a 2.8ghz P4 non EE edition. This means ecodding would be about the same in the P4 2.8 as it would with an Athlon 64, give or take a few seconds, no big deal. But the Athlon 64 would also give you the ability to use 64 bit software in the future. The Athlon 64 will outperform the non EE P4s in almost all current games and other tasks, so you'll be good there.

The P4 is certainly not a bad choice. I just believe the Athlon 64 is a better choice for the price.

[Roopert]

Make sure you get the best ram you can in terms of latency. The 64's get a boost from their onboard memory controller.