building a new rig

[chin808]

Yes thats right! After 5 years with my faithful p3 550, Im finally set to build a new rig! Im here asking for opinions and suggestions. I use my machine for photoshop, online gaming (looking to run far cry and half life 2), Music production (in the future), and all the other good internet activites. Im getting a LianLi case with 5 hd bays :D Im thinking about doing a dual WD SATA raptor setup for RAID 0 with the 38 giggers. with a 250 gig WD for storing files, as well as one or 2 of my old drives for whatever.

Question one:

Is there going to be any real performance improvment running the 10000 rpm hd's in RAID 0, or will one be speedy enough?

Two:

Is SCSI better for RAID?

Three:

can I get good performance off 2 WD 72000 rpm ide drives in RAID 0?

Four:

Will mandrake work well with any of these configurations/any distro better suited for this such as SuSE or Gentoo?

 

Ill be going with the AMD chip this time, looking at something in a 64bit.

Question five:

Should I wait for Intel to release there 64bit for the AMD price drop?

Question six:

Should I wait for PCI Express?

 

As for the rest of the rig Im gonna be sporting a gig of ram (not sure what speed yet), an ABIT mobo, a sound blaster audigy, and most likely a radeon.

Question seven:

Which radeon? (at least a 9800)

Eight:

Should I wait for a better GeForce card?

 

Looking at an Enermax 550W psu

Question nine:

Is that enough juice? (im pretty sure it is)

 

Ill be using mandy 10, suse, and windows xp (photoshop)

Any comments, suggestions or ideas are welcome!

 

-C

Edited June 11, 2004 by chin808

[VeeDubb]

whoa, hold up there, you're going about your hard drives all wrong.

 

If you want serious high proformance, you're wating time with scsi and everything else. What you need is SATA (that's Serial-ATA) You can do SATA in a single drive configuration OR a raid array.

 

There's a number of companies that produce boards that support SATA drives and my personal favorite is SOYO. I've used a ton of soyo products, though admitedly, I haven't used their SATA yet.

 

As for 64bit, I'd wait for intel so I could get the amd for less, if you're not in a hurry. But don't expect MAD to drop the same day, it may take a while and people may not snap up those intels, so the diff might not be big. The only reason I'd wait is because I'm realy cheap.

 

MIxed fealings about PCIe, maybe someone else can offer more of an oppinion.

 

No, realy, don't get an ABIT. I know, I know. ABIT mobo's are realy nice. Yeah, everybody has one. WHoopi..... I'm telling you SOYO makes better motherboards. I build computers as a home bussiness. I'm telling you. At least go to http://www.soyousa.com and check them out. Best of all, they all play VERY nicely with linux and include some awsome hardware.

 

What's wrong with the current GeForce? I have an old GeForce 4 and I get 45fps in UnrealTurnament 2004. The new GeForces get so many frames that most monitors can't display them all. If you want a radeon go for it, but I'd get the current GeForce. Also, you have to be carefull with the GeForce line. Each model actualy includes a whole product line of slightly different Chipsets. The GF4 is a perfect example. There's something like a dozen or so versions of the GeForce 4 chipsets, and this is further complicated by the fact that most nvidia cards aren't made by nvidia, the chipsets are sold to companies like pny that use them to build cards.

 

A good nvidia is way better than the best ati.

[chin808]

Thanx V... I do know about SATA, I was jus wondering if scsi was better performance wise. I also still havent decided if I want to setup 2 sata raptors in raid 0, or just go with one 70gig raptor and be done with it. As far as Abit, Im a fan only because I have had no problems EVER with mine for 5 years and they just seem very well built and good for oc'ing, although I doublt Ill be oc'ing this box too much. I personally would rather get an nvidia card, I have a tnt2 right now.... haha yea its old but it would still do well on q3, but I have read alot of nvidia vs ati threads and reviews and although the nvidias offer better performance in most areas, they are still at least $100 more than the comprable ati, at least on newegg.com. I have read that the nvidias play much nicer with linux and for me thats huge, but I REALLY want to play half-life 2 in all its glory, even if that means booting into xp or running an ati card. I will look into the soyo's though, we sell them at work I can can probably get one at cost :D

Thanx alot for your input... this is a big descision for me as it has been 5 years since I got my p3.

[VeeDubb]

Just so you know, sinc eyou mentioned OCing. Many of the soyo boards allow you to adjust your fsb in 1mhz steps through the bios, much better than fiddleing with the multiplier (which you can still do if so inclined)

[mdg]

If you're looking at OC'ing, remember all Athlon 64 multipliers are locked. The 64 FX is the only one which allows you to raise and/or lower the multi from the default setting. The normal 64's only let you lower the setting

[chin808]

If you're looking at OC'ing, remember all Athlon 64 multipliers are locked. The 64 FX is the only one which allows you to raise and/or lower the multi from the default setting. The normal 64's only let you lower the setting

I was not aware of that - thank you

[chin808]

This is what I got so far:

 

Lian-Li Aluminum Case with Side Panel Window & 1 Ball-Bearing Fan on the Top (Black), Model "PC-65B" -RETAIL

 

ASUS "SK8V" K8T800 Chipset Motherboard for AMD Socket 940 CPU -RETAIL

 

ASUS nVIDIA GeForce FX5950 ULTRA Video Card, 256MB DDR, 256-bit, DVI/VIVO, 8X AGP, Model "V9980 Ultra/TVD" -RETAIL

 

ENERMAX 550W Power Supply (with Copper Shielding for better EMI reduction) for AMD K7 & Pentium4, Model "EG651P-VE(FMA)" -RETAIL

 

AMD Athlon 64 FX-51, 1MB L2 Cache, The Only Windows Compatible 64-bit Processor Retail

 

Kingston HyperX Series 184 Pin 1GB(512MBx2) ECC Registered DDR PC-3200

 

Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000RPM SATA Hard Drive, Model WD740GD, OEM Drive Only