My First PC Build

[catamount]

- i recommend one of the new lian li cases PCV-1000? especially if noise is an issue.
- for your hard drive get 2X 160GB and put them in RAID 0. segate is quieter than WD
- for your RAM unless you want to overclock get the corsair value.
- for cooling the cpu, pickup one of swiftech or zalman's offerings.

you wont notice mutch of a jump over your previous system.

[SweetDreamz]

Looks fine.

If you want quiet, then go Seagate drives. But WD is right in the middle in terms of performance, noise & other stuff. Maxtor drives are just loud, Seagate drives are slower(not much).


Go BFG for video card, but eVga is fine also.

[irieken]

Overall, it looks like you are heading in the right direction, but I would recommend an Antec Sonata over the Praetorian, because the Sonata is quieter.

The Antec Performance Solution SLK3000 is also a very good, solid, quiet case for $50 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811129152)

The OCZ 520w is a great power supply; it is nice and stable.

As for the processor: The X2 3800+ is a great processor, but it is not ideal for applications such as Cinema 4D. I would instead recommend buying the single core 4000+. The 4000+ will give you a little more performance that you can actually use, and also has a slightly lower overall thermal output.

The motherboard that you chose is... just ignore Asus... They were great 5 years ago, but currently lack the type of quality control that I would want to associate with my work box. Asus is OK for games, but you can do better. MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum and Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra-9 would be my recommendation on that front.

As for the Hard Drive, I would recommend going with a Hitachi SATAII drive (you'll need to use Hitachi Feature tools to enable SATAII on their drives), because they are every bit as quiet as Seagate's drives, are a little faster, are just as reliable, and are about the same price. I don't recommend going RAID 0 for reliability reasons (the performance gain is negligible in real world applications).

Corsair makes some good RAM, but make sure that it is their low latency memory (CAS 2).

EVGA's 6800GT is a great card:) However, if you don't plan on going SLI in the near future (I don't recommend that you do), the Radeon X800pro and x850xt are great cards.I have been an Nvidia fan for a long time, but I have been dissapointed with their equipment and number nudging they have done lately. Nvidia's cards take sudden massive gulps of power, which puts a lot of stress on your power supply (something you don't want happenning in your workstation). ATI just seems to make better hardware lately, and even though they might not perform as well in specialized tests, they outperform Nvidia in real world applications.

Another thing to consider is that the Radeon cards from companies such as Saphire will perform just as well as the ATI reference cards at reference clock speeds. So, if you don't plan to overclock your video card, there is a lot of value there.

The Plextor drive is awsome, don't change that:)

I hope that this helps, and best of luck;)

P.S. The he Zalman 7700CNPS as a nice silent CPU air cooler.

[irieken]

Post was delayed again.

[irieken]

Damn delayed posts.

[jblee]

Thanx guys, I have taken your suggestions and changed up to refect your comments. I only hope that I don't have any major problems putting it together. :applause:

[Sp1ice]

- i recommend one of the new lian li cases PCV-1000? especially if noise is an issue.
- for your hard drive get 2X 160GB and put them in RAID 0. segate is quieter than WD
- for your RAM unless you want to overclock get the corsair value.
- for cooling the cpu, pickup one of swiftech or zalman's offerings.

you wont notice mutch of a jump over your previous system.

I agree with everything but the CPU cooling.. if you get the retail 3800+ the heatsink/fan combination is more than acceptable unless you plan on overclocking the CPU.. so I would not spend the money on that and maybe upgrade the video card to the 7800GT which you can get for the price of the Zalman and most 6800GT cards.

[irieken]

I agree with everything but the CPU cooling.. if you get the retail 3800+ the heatsink/fan combination is more than acceptable unless you plan on overclocking the CPU.. so I would not spend the money on that and maybe upgrade the video card to the 7800GT which you can get for the price of the Zalman and most 6800GT cards.

When Schnappy mentioned the Zalman, I think that he was concerned with noise level, and not cooling performance. The AMD stock cooler does just fine to cool the CPU, but it can get loud at times (Zalman also has a very nice quiet cooler for video cards).

[SweetDreamz]

Replace the AMD fan with a Panaflo and be happy.

[MadMax]

Your original "wish list" was fine.

The Asus board is an excellent choice and quite reliable for a workstation that you rely on. Just read the comments here and other forums about it. Most rave that it is the best board they have ever owned.
As for the recommendation of going for a single core 4000 over the X2 3800+ and the reasons stated are complete nonsense.

In direct comparison the X23800+ is FASTER than the single core A64 4000+, substantially so in all of the Cinema 4D benchmark tests than the 4000+ is.

TECHREPORT BENCHMARKS (http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q3/athlon64-x2-3800/index.x?pg=7)

Further, the X2 3800+ has lower power consumption that the 4000+ as evidenced by actual figures here:

POWER CONSUMPTION (http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q3/athlon64-x2-3800/index.x?pg=13)

As you can see, again the X2 3800 is substantially better than the single core 4000+. There is a 10.00 difference between the 4000+ and the Dual core X2 3800+. I would hate to see you misled by misinformation.

ATI Cards. Do a simple search on these forms regarding the differences between ATI and nVidia. You bet bet is to stick with a card that has decent support for OpenGL, and that isn't ATI. Numerous users, and it is a frequent complaint here and at other forums, that they regretted buying any ATI cards.

ATI Support of OpenGl is vey weak and it shows. Do yourself a favor and avoid ATI for a graphics workstation.

[lots]

I'd have to agree with MadMax. I would assume, like all other 3D apps, that C4D is capable of using multiple CPUs during rendering (it wouldnt be very practical if it couldnt ;P). In this case the 3800 wins hands down. On top of this the Athlon64 4000+ is a 2.4GHz part, the X2 3800 is a 2.0 GHz part. With just a few nudges, it can have a clock speed well beyond the Athlon64 4000+'s speed, and at that point provide MUCH more performance. Not to mention the X2 will bring better multitasking abilities to the table. You could watch a movie in realtime play back while modelling for example.

There really are very few reasons to think about single core CPUs these days. Even the "fast single core CPU" argument is somewhat misleading when you realize just how close, in MHz, the two platforms are. And especially after you relize how much you multi task. I've been known to surf the net, play in PS, model in lightwave, chat, and watch a movie all at the same time (I know .. a bit much ;P), but I couldnt do that at a reasonable speed on my older system.

[SweetDreamz]

How can you watch a movie and model & all that other stuff at the same time? Takes the enjoyment of the movie away.

[rebo]

Dont go single core, dual cores or dual cpu are essential for any graphics oriented work station.

[MadMax]

How can you watch a movie and model & all that other stuff at the same time? Takes the enjoyment of the movie away.


start render and then what? twiddle your thumbs?

I always have 4 or more things going at once.

[irieken]

Went and reinstalled Windows, reinstalled XSI, and now I feel really really stupid. The X2 3800+ system that I was so dissapointed with is... ouch. You guys are right.

[irieken]

Why do so many people believe that these dual core chips will magically make their computer faster? Most people understand that they are not the same as a dual processor system; both cores share the same bus, so they are limited there, but that isn't the main problem.

The current generation of power processors have cores that run hot, and sticking two of them on a single chip is not feasible. So, guess what AMD and Intel have done to make dual core chips. They stuck two fairly low powered cores under the hood, so that together they are as powerful as whatever single core chip they are comparable with. The only real advantage comes in handling multiple threads simultaniously, but the boost in performance is limited.

Intel's Hyper-Threading is a aproximation of this on a single core chip, and allows for switching threads to be faster, but as many of you may have noticed, it doesn't really increase performance by much. (Switching between threads is a little bit faster).

Intel has recently showed that they are changing direction with their next chip architecture, and their high performance to watt ratios should make powerful dual core processors a possibility. So, when they start putting two of the fastest processor cores on the same chip, I'll be pulling out my wallet. Until then, I'm sticking with the single core processor.

[irieken]

I forgot to post my major reasons for not liking the current dual core chips.

The current dual core chips have two lower end cores on them. Together, they are as powerful as the more powerful single core processor, but they require SMP enabled software to make use of that power. If the software is not designed to run across multiple processors, they either use one core, or are forced to use both, neither of which is an ideal situation (forcing SMP-unaware programs to run accross multiple processors isn't very efficient). This means that though you do have the benefit of running multiple threads at the same time, software not designed to do so will run slower than on a single core processor.

So, for the next few years, a single core processor will perform just as well for programs that are SMP-Aware, and you will actually take a performance hit in programs that aren't SMP-aware.

[MadMax]

MadMax, you have a sharp eye, but please don’t compare the 4000+ referenced on that website to the San Diego core 4000+ that I recommended. The 4000+ that they are referencing to is a 4000+ Clawhammer core chip. Clawhammer is a 130nm core chip, which means that it runs hot and uses a lot more power than the newer 90nm cores (more heat).


Nope. See below.


It also uses the old integrated memory controller, and is not known for having good L2 cache interaction speeds.

To use that reference when considering a new San Diego core chip is ridiculous. The improvement in speed for tasks such as LAME encoding is staggering. The improved memory controller that comes with the Venice/San Diego cores makes good progress in increasing memory performance (with main memory). The L2 cache has also been redesigned.

Staggering? hardly. Feel free to point out some solid evidence to back that up.


Power Consumption of CPU:

AMD gives their processors thermal ratings based on some sort of average for peak, but it does give a ball park idea of thermal output. As for the new 4000+, it is a SD core chip with a thermal rating of 67watts, and should be fairly close to the 3800+ single core (they showed a 90nm 3800+ chip on that website).

I have snipped a lot of your eply due to redundancy and errors that you repeated. Unfortunately it does not sem as you have much experience with AMD procesors, very little of your reply is accurate.

First off, the 30nm is not substantially hotter. In fact if you look at AMD's specifications, both versions of the 4000+ (130 and 90nm) are listed as 89w. The only single core a64 listed at the 67w you mention is the 3500+

the 130nm is 1.5v, the San Diego core is 1.35-1.4v. Any differences are going to be so minimal as to be indistinguishable.

you claim the numbers are better on the 4000+, and yet AMD's own CPU reference database shows that the X2 3800+ is 89w, and 1.35-1.4v, exacty the same as the 90nm 4000+ .


The X2 3800+ is rated at 89watts. On the website, they are measuring power consumption for the entire system at the wall, so the other equipment, as well as the PSU and video card play into the numbers they show. Trust me, the X2 3800+ runs hotter than the 4000+ San Diego core (but that isn’t really a concern anyways).



As I pointed out, all of the above quote of yours is incorrect.


OpenGL performance:

Admittedly, OpenGL performance on ATI cards has been shown to be weaker than their NVIDIA equivalents, but they’re so close at the X800pro/XT level that I challenge you to spot the difference in actual use (again, I have seen ATI cards outperform NVIDIA cards in OpenGL applications). Once you go on up above the $300 mark, you might as well start considering going into FireGL/QuadroFX territory.


I am skeptical that you actually have working experience in this. Unfortunately a benchmark application isn't the same as real world performance. ATI may support OpenGL, and you may be able to come up with numbers that make ATI look like hot stuff but in the real world, benchmarks don't mean squat when you are suffering poor viewport performance, weird artifacts etc. because ATI has sub standard drivers.

for the 300.00 to 500.00 cost of the 7800 series, you can BARELY get a decent quadro, and as others have pointed out there is little to no visible difference in performance. I have FX4400's, 7800's and 6800's. unless I told you what was in a specific machine you will not be able to tell.

[irieken]

Nope. See below.
ATI may support OpenGL, and you may be able to come up with numbers that make ATI look like hot stuff but in the real world, benchmarks don't mean squat when you are suffering poor viewport performance, weird artifacts etc. because ATI has sub standard drivers.

for the 300.00 to 500.00 cost of the 7800 series, you can BARELY get a decent quadro, and as others have pointed out there is little to no visible difference in performance. I have FX4400's, 7800's and 6800's. unless I told you what was in a specific machine you will not be able to tell.

I was probably a little bit out of line saying that it was might be worthwhile to consider the workstation cards. We don’t pay very much of a premium for the workstation card over the gaming card, but I don't think that the situation is the same in the consumer arena. And, you're right, synthetic benchmarks are not representative of the real world. It is pretty hard to see much of a performance difference between the last wave of top end cards and the new cutting edge, let alone the difference between the workstation and gaming card. I doubt that you’d be able to tell the difference between the Nvidia card and the ATI either.

As far as the cards are concerned, I used to agree with you that ATI was buggy, underpowered, and flaky. Yet, I was getting ATI samples on a regular basis, and had to put them somewhere. So, as the hardware and drivers improved over the past 9 months, my opinion of ATI has really changed. The kinds of problems that I had been associating ATI have disappeared. Nvidia cards are more often the ones with heatsinks that don't sit properly, fans that die, artifacting, window contents drawing in strange places, etc. Even games that carried the Nvidia seal of approval look better on the ATI hardware (not always better framerate, but water, texture, and reflections actually look better). Even the increased performance of the dual 6800GT, 7800GT SLI setups were underwhelming.

Watching the current meter on my Fluke "jumping up and down like a jack-russell ****ing terrier" wasn't reassuring either. So, I'm considering ATI to be the winner for the time being, because that little extra bit of polygon fill rate "don't mean squat when you are suffering poor viewport performance, weird artifacts etc."

[deathman20]

Madmax mentioned dual cores a post or 2 above. And I agree with him.

Had a huge writup but thought it was pointless so lets get to the stats :)

4000+ = 2.4Ghz
X2 3800 = 2x 2.0Ghz (Or 3.6Ghz if used in SMP theretically taking into account 80% output of second core)
Overall about 66% faster

Now take into the fact if both Chips can be overclocked to say 2.7Ghz (seems to be a nice sweet spot with many of these chips).

4000+ = 2.7Ghz
X2 3800 = 2x 2.7Ghz (Or 4.86Ghz if used in SMP theretically taking into account 80% output of second core)
Overall about 55% faster

If no SMP is taken into account, you gotta look what apps in the background is running and using CPU power also. But anywhere from around -5% to 5% boost is showing in non-threaded applications.

[deathman20]

Even games that carried the Nvidia seal of approval look better on the ATI hardware (not always better framerate, but water, texture, and reflections actually look better).

Now that I find to be true, and many review sites have been showing it recently and in the past where nVidia is cutting corners in quality to make it faster. One of them recently was stating 6800's normal quality is still better then 7800's higher quality settings for picture claritiy. I've always found since the 9600pro I owned through the 9800pro and now X800Pro that the images look nicer then fellow friends with nVidia cards.

Even the increased performance of the dual 6800GT, 7800GT SLI setups were underwhelming.

Now I'm guessing some sort of it has to deal with what the dual core CPU's has too. Where even though theres 2 cards they communicate to each other and eats up some processing power. Then on top of that drivers/games affect the overall speed too. SLI is only used in games currently that I've seen, so having it in a workstation is quiet wasteful. And the way I think of it, SLI really only helps people with HIGH res screens mainly, since you need all the extra power you can get to view it at high res.

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