new machine

[Red_Hex]

now im not saying right now, but this side of autumn, i plan to build a whole new system, including a new monitor. my gf2mx and athlon 900 dont hack it anymore, and yesterday my hd corrupted itself and i dont think i can fix it. but since ive been out the loop for 4 years - since my last one - i just dont know what there is and i dont have the time currently to read up, though i will.

when these occasions approach, i like to issue myself a bottom line, of hardware with the maximum performance i can stretch to afford. normally, thats hard. this time, i have sufficient cash to skimp on nothing. top of the line, across the board. but of course we all know that beyond a certain point, it becomes stupid to buy TOP top of the line, because it starts to cost hundreds more than one step down for fractional performance increases.

i want to iron those out. i could afford them anyway, but i dont want to, itd make me a pleb. where does that fine line of sensible but quality purchases lie? radeon 9800 pro or xt? athlon64 or 64fx? consider it as if it were you yourself with the budget for anything, but you had a cynical and evil auditor watching you and you didnt want to make him cackle and froth in your face.

[river]

http://anandtech.com/guides/index.html

-river :)

edit: you will probably want to wait a month or so for the next gen of graphic cards to appear. And if decide to go the 64 bit cpu route, too.

[arrrse]

Yeah, new gen of graphics cards coming out soon, unknown which is gonna be best, though many are guessing.
My guess is that nv40 will be up to most/many of the same er 'tricks' as nv3x, though it does appear to have fixed several of the missing features like multiple render targets & may have workable fp32 performance...

I'm inclined toward straight athlon64 rather than fx.
There's again a better version coming soon, with dual onboard memory controllers but not needing to use ecc ram (though that may be just for fx models?).

I've never been a fan of Intel & all I know is that Prescott p4s seem to be fairly dissapointing -hot, slow per clock & limited overclocking.

Meanwhile PCI express is on its way in motherboards, OSes and graphics/expansion boards.

All up, not the greatest time to be buying a new PC unless you wait for all that lot to come out.

Me, I ain't expecting to upgrade till next year at the earliest I think (though if I get a decent job...)

[river]

Yeah. I plan on building a new system this summer myself; I've got 20+ years of family video that I want to get from tape to dvd before it deteriorates. Editing them (and the super8 film of my parents) will take more than my current system has....

....well, that's the reason I'm giving my wife. It makes sense that I'll also need a super fast graphics card for video editing; 2d, 3d, what's the difference? :D

Seriously, I was going to go with the best of the Athlon XP bunch--proven reliability, very decent cost--and there's a good chance that the current generation of AMD 64 processors will be orphaned.

So I decided to wait till this summer, and take a look at the next gen of the 64s. That may not be what you will want to do, Red_Hex, but it is what every site that I trust advises.

Also: I've seen a couple of articles about pci express, and I gather that it will be a few years before there will be anything that will push the graphics enough to need the extra bandwith; I tend to be leery of the 'latest and greatest' until its been tested in Real Life, so unless I see something amazing about pci express this summer I would advise staying with agp.

-river

[MajorTom]

If you really need to do it now . I would recommend a more conservative approach as River suggests. (which would be less expensive too)

If you wait a month (or so) the decision will probably be made for you because you won't be able to get a new motherboard with an AGP slot in it pretty soon.

[arrrse]

Yeah, if you go for topish of the athlon xp (or p4c I guess) range now, you should be able to get a pretty damn fast PC for relatively cheap compared to the top top end.

[Red_Hex]

i fixed my machine with clever dos jiggery pokery. so its not urgent. but i do have a time limit on this, id say to the last quarter of this year.

ive read some things. i dont anticipate pciexpress being anything much for at least another year so i doubt itll have an impact on me. whatever new chipsets the vidcard people have ready to roll out, unless they are that **** hot that ill feel depressed without them, will only have a knock-on effect in making my current interests cheaper.

i certainly plan to go for a 64bit cpu. when you want to squeeze half a decade of use out your rig, you want every ounce of future proofing you can get, and 64bit sounds pretty vital. not to mention that pricewise, the athlon64's are worth every penny, considering their equal if not superior performance to the highest end p4's. id call it a no-brainer.

as it is, i think ill buy one element now - a new monitor, i thought a nice 19 inch (once i establish if the height spec includes a stand or not... got to fit under my damn shelves). its the single most expensive part, whilst its also hardly going to be old tech in 6 months - afaik, the technological progress of monitors is fairly sedate. am i right?

[river]

Right, if you mean to get a crt.

Re 64 bit cpu; that's why I decided to wait myself. Should be interesting to see how things shake out during the summer.

-river