I for a long time didn't really know what made a system, while something show a significant improvment. Such as upgrading a video card, I really wanted to know how to make a system at utmost the fastest for the cheapest or fastest if I came into alot of money.

Processing Power:

This is important of course, having low processing power can really hinder your system. Processing power counts in Compiling, Rendering, Editing Videos, games sometimes. As it stands as of this date a intel 4 3.0 478 pin CPU is absolutly fine and I find it a bit greedy. I had, had a 2.4 intel celeron before and it was really okay, the Celeron are not so good when it comes to compiling or rendering or anything that really requires alot of Calculations. It was okay for gaming, video card is somewhat important for that factor so you really didn't notice that much though it does but not much. I use Seti@home for my benchmarking letting me know what kind of calculating power the processor has. My 2.4 would calculate in about 6 1/2 to 7 hours, I thought how much could it improve if I throw in a genuine Intel with only 600 more mhz. The 3.0 was poping out work units in 2 hours. It was more than double the speed in doing math calculations, I do alot of rendering and compiling so it was really nice to see that kind of a difference from just going strickly intel. It is Hyper Threading enabled processor but I disabled it since Cloning in Adobe Photoshop CS 2 seems to freeze the computer. Now the truth is that the extra 600 mhz wasn't the kicker it was the fact I had switched to an actual intel. After testing both processors in Counter Strike: source FPS tester my frames went only up 10. From 50 to a steady 60 to 65. My video card is hardly latest or greatest but it should be able to do atleast 100 I thought with a nice processor like that but Processing power for games means little. If I had switched to a genuine Intel 2.4 Processor I would have probably seen about the same increase in FPS in CS:S. Now remember that his is caculating power, if you want a true gaming processor you can't beat AMD chips. They are just genuinly better at processing games. They do run a bit hotter and that can cause the system to freeze, I have seen a number of AMD systems running with the side panel of the machine to allow the processor to cool off faster. But for about 30+ you can get a decent heatsink that will keep it around 30 degrees which is more than reasonable for keeping your chip cool.


The Video Card:
Having a great video card is literally iceing on the cake. You can eat cake with out iceing but it tastes better with and the more iceing you can afford the better the cake tastes because you can have layers of iceing. poor metaphore perhaps, but that is how it is. There are literally hunderds and hunderds of choices from Video card companies, such as Sapphire ATI cards or Asus ATI or Asus Nvidia. What this basically means is that they bought the little chippy thing that does the calculating of polygones from either Nvidia or ATi the 2 big companies in video cards and slapped it on there board which features there ram and variouse other things. Most of us have either a Asus Mother board or a MSI Mother board if you want to really marry parts together get the ASUS ATI/Nvidia card or the MSI ATI/Nvidia, you will usually have less problems. Though a Geniune ATI video card or Nvidia will work nice too the ASUS or MSI version's of the ATI/Nvidia card are usually less expensive. If there is a price difference I would definatly go for the cheaper one, but of course thats if its ASUS or MSI. The are many other companies out there that buy the chips from ATI/Nvidia and slap it on there card but most of them are junk. I have had neither in my system though and have run Sapphire's ATI cards which are 99% alike and are about 2/3 the cost of a ASUS, MSI or Genuine ATI/Nvidia. I have placed a actual Genuine ATI in my computer of the same kind as my Sapphire and there was no difference in what I could see. The drivers for my sapphire are from ATI it's litterally the exact same as far as I have looked into and it's much cheaper. Back when ATI had there big ATI readon 9800 just coming out I went and bought a Sapphire 9600 and it's been able to play everything I have thrown at it. Though since the release of oblivion I have noticed that I can't put up all the eye candy on it with out seeing some seriously low FPS. More Ram on the video card doesn't neccessarly mean better performace. The cost of more ram on your video card is actually less peformace. For example if you had the ATI readon 9800 256 mb for 200 dollars the 512 version will probably be like 275 dollars and you might see an extra 5 frames. Jumping generations of video cards can significantly improve peformance. Usually a Generation of video card I find is when they stop making the new video cards for a couple of months. ATI jumped from the 9400 which was a good card to the 9800 in just a few months. The 9800 would wipe the 9400 easily but there was a giant price gap, but like I said the 9800 was awesome and it was on top of the pile for awhile. I call those the generation cards since they usually mark a leap in Card Processing power allowing them to stay on top for awhile. The next leap was the x800 by ATI but there were several cards inbetween that were also good but nothing like the x800. To stay on top of the generations of cards you really need to know your stuff and watching the features of the cards. So generation video cards are good, especially from ATi. But your literally dealing about 5 fps on a standerd system if you upgrade so usually its worth waiting for the Generation cards to come down in price. It does suck having to turn off the eye candy in oblivion, I have seen it run on a nice system and it's pretty fantastic. But when the next gen comes into a decent price range I will be able to play with all the eye candy. You don't need the latest in greatest in video cards. If your building a system I would definatly look into many many cards before buying one. There are tons and tons of reviews for almost all brands and kinds of the Video cards out there. When I build a system I usually take a look at what's greatest and then go back a couple of versions. As of right now I for anyone I would recommend the ATI 9800 sure it's almost a year old, and I don't know if you can get them in most computer stores but honestly it's an awesome video card for little money. If you want to save even more get a sapphire ATI readon 9800 256mb. Though some people will say get this or that, it usually always boils down to an extra few fps. Do you honestly care if Quake 3 plays at 1100 fps or 900 fps, naw didn't think so look at the prices read the reviews a decent (meaning good price! and atleast 50fps on the newer games) video card can set your system up for some nice gaming.

Random Access Memory:

Ram has been around for a long time and it's not exactly hard to make ram so everyone and there uncle will offer you different sizes of ram with different bus speeds. Usually you want to match your FSB (front side bus) of your Processor, though that is not really important. Though there is no point in getting ram with a FSB of 500 if your processor only does 400 so that's usually one little thing to check for when upgrading or buying a system. Though usually companies are pretty good at setting up computer systems now, even little hobby computer shops. I have boughten a system literally only for the ram. for 400 bucks you can get 512 of ram which runs out at about 70 bucks. Plus you get a decent hard drive usually 100g or more so thats another 100 bucks. Plus moniter and back up parts and so forth an so on. Though that is definatly not a recommended idea but that just to say that those systems are actually decent enough to just get stuff off. Back in the day when we only had 32mb of ram to have something like 256 would have seemed to much. Most stuff would run with much less and to have tripple that would have been pointless. Thus I learned a lesson with XP. XP will take up 256mb alone to just bout into windows. That is why most systems will offer 512mb since you literally need it to do anything half decent. I had run with 512 which I thought was being zelouse from my 32mb days untill I had boughten a new stick of 512mb with a bitt better FSB. I gave my old stick to my friend who also had the same FSB and had a 512 stick too. Just a quick note if your buying or upgrading your system make sure to get the same FSB on your ram or you will screw your system up something fierce. Anyways after he put it in we did some bench marking and the improvement in my eyes was really amazing. For his system it was like buying a brand new video card. Though he still can't turn up all the eye candy because of a crappy video card, the games he could play showed a Significant improvment of FPS. Almost double. So I had to see if I could get some more FPS on my system for 70 bucks, with out having to spend 200 on a new video card. Upgrading to 1gig of ram really can make a difference I went from 50 fps to 100 fps in CS:S. And that is with all the eye candy turned up so I would recommended any system anyone is building that will have XP as an operating system have atleast 1gig of ram. It will give you decent FPS on your video card and let that old video card you have stay on top a tiny bit longer plus give you some nice FPS on past games.

Though it sounds insane Hard Drives can make an improvment:
For a long time I was always puzzled by the fact why a hard drive would have any effect on performance in gaming or runing applications. But the truth is it does a bit. I would never say get a faster HDD than the standered out there because the improvement isn't worth it. I mean the latest and greatest is really developed for companies like pixar or Lucas arts. They need that extra power and there really only the ones who can use it. But this is how a HDD can slightly improve performance. Basically the more platters your Hard drives have the better, oh and rpm's are also important. If you have heard someone using a scuzi drive or your mother board comes scuzi enabled. basically that means you can link to Hard drives together creating more platters thus reducing your seek time. Seek time is important in HDD terms so the more the platters the less seek time. Also if you keep your hard drive nicely defragged and about 2/3 filled it should work as if it were wipped and on a new system. If anyone has ever had something like 1gig left or 500mb left of space and there system is slow that is because of your seek time on your hard drive. Thats because your HDD is full and it takes a while to try and find the information your looking for. So keep the HDD someone clean having them completly full will really slow down your computer but if you can get em 2/3 full then do it because you will see significant improvment. Some HDD out there can run at 10 000rpms though the standered is 7200rpms in most computers across the globe. These HDD are fine. HDD is one of those things upgrade it if you need the space otherwise don't worry about. If you want really fast HDD then get 2 scuzi and if you can afford it get the 10 000 rpm ones but I wouldn't recommended.

Latest and Greatest is it for us:
Nope, if you got the money ya sure it's nice but it really isn't that great. dell was offering a 10 000 dollar computer set up awhile back there and sure it had lots of nice features but what I would consider a good system won't brake the pocket books. It will impress your friends but will impress you more because it didn't cost you a fortune to build it. My current build of system would probably run someone something like 600 bucks excluding a monitor and it comes close to benchmarking with the latest and greatest and thats what counts.


Current build
Intel P4 3.0 Hyperthreading 500FSB 478 pin
2X512mb Kingston 9300/400 FSB
Sapphire ATI readon 9600 256mb
MSI Motherboard 865 PE Neo 2 - V
2x60gig HDD 7200RPM's


All I want to know is what other systems do other's have. How are you experiencing your builds. How does ram or processor's effect your system building. Do you have 2 gig's of ram with a really crappy video card that can pump it up because of the extra ram! I want to know so other's can know to and we can all stop talking about buying the latest 700 dollar video card that's going to get us an extra 30fps.

 

 

 

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This is a very good guide! I love the work you have put into it!
Very nice, I hope others see this.

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Lot's of remarks:

Processing Power:
1) A CPU has several soft of processing capabilities, like ALU en FPU. The improvemts in power depends on what kind of calculation the program requires (it's not that Intel overrules AMD in ALU AND FPU, no, Intel is better at FPU, while AMD is better at ALU).
2) No, AMD cpu's do not run hotter than Intel CPU's, that's absolutely NOT true, in fact, Intel still run hotter than AMD's do (a few years ago, yes, then the AMD AthlonXP's were hot, until Intel created the Prescott, wich was hot enough to overheat in normal conditions).
3) The amount of cache also impacts the performace, why do you think the Celeron's are so bad, just because they only have a tiny L2 cache.

Vid Cards:
1) ATI Radeon 9400 ? Doesn't exist as far as I know, there is 9200, 9500, 9550, 9600, 9700, 9800 but no 9400.
2) The mainboard brand and videocard brand does not have to match, absolutely not. You can easly mix different brands without having problems.
3) Different drivers brands are indeed the same, but that's because they use the driver packs from ATI and NVidia (they sometimes add some extra stuff like overclock-controls or some other controlls and information).
4) More video memory can sometimes mean less performance. Only few games use more than 128Mb video memory, so 512Mb is way too much. But, some companies add more memory, but they use SLOWER memory.
5) Don't forget new GPU's run pretty hot too (80°c is normal, even 90°c, but these chips can run over 100°c)
6) SLI/Crossfire allows to link 2 (or 4) graphic cards, theoreticaly doubling the power. It's great if you're gaming on a High Defenition TV (high resolution and high AA and AF settings), but it only draws more power and is pretty useless for the main user (gamer).
RAM:

Never use ram that runs at a slower FSB than your CPU does, by doing this the RAM will be a bottleneck.
Another important factor are the memory timings. Most important are the CAS and RAS timings.
Memory running at CAS2.0 is faster than CAS2.5 or CAS2.0, some for the CAS timings.
Ow, and not to forget, Command Rate. This setting is realy imporant. A while back, the AMD memory controller could not access 4 memory sticks at 1T, causing quite a loss in performance. But now it's more or less fixed.

HDD:

You're realy confusing lot's of things. The amount of platter has nothing to do with performance. If a disk has 1 more platter, it just means it is bigger, nothing else. What does improve performance is the density of data. The denser it is (the center of the platter, the beginning of the disk), the faster.
Then there is the cache, it also improves performance a bit, but not THAT much.

Then SCSI thingy. SCSI is actualy what is used in servers. SCSI drivers are made to run 24/7 (the drives we buy seriously suck when compared to SCSI drives).
SCSI allows to run several drives in RAID. There are several RAID modes, 0, 1, 0+1, 5, 7, ... .
RAID 0 (striping). This splits the DATA in 2 and saves on 2 different drives. This is of course a lot faster, because 2 drives are doing the work of 1 drive.
RAID 1 (mirroring). It just keeps a mirror and protects data in case a disk fails.
RAID 0+1. Combination of RAID0 and RAID1. This is very important, because in case of RAID0, you have 2 the chance of losing your data (and if one disk fail, you'll loose all your data, and nothing that can resue it).
RAID5 (Striping with distributed parity). A bit hard to explain, but this mode splits data on several drives, but always this mode allows data to be rescued. This mode uses at least 3 drives, more drives are faster. The downside is that this RAID mode needs processing power, if a cards lacks this processiong power then the write speeds will be utterly low.
RAID x. These RAID modes are less popular, mainly because they are so expensive. For more info: http://www.acnc.com/04_01_00.html

PSU:

New hardware requires a lot of power (and it also runs a lot warmer). Except a minimum of 80W for a new CPU and 70W for every graphic card you add. You'll need a lot of spare power too, so at least get a high quality 420W PSU. Ow, and don't forget to pay the electricity bill.

 

 

 

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Yes, sorry wutske. I realized I had made some mistakes afterwards on the hard drive section. But I didn't want to go into too much detail. But as you have put it is exactly that.

And I am also sorry for using the 9400 series I was just using it as an example, I didn't think there was a 9400 but for sake of an example I used it.


As for the processors I had completely forgot to mention that yes the L2 Cache is important in a Processor and that the Celeron's are really lacking in that category.

As for the Processors overheating, I have built alot of systems on the Technology of Yesterday and not today. And I hadn't realized that the AMD's had gotten alot cooler while the Intel's have gotten hotter I am glade you had the courtesy to post with the Information about today's technology. I decided not to get into to get into to much detail about the way the Processors calculated, because I don't have that great of understanding and didn't want to confuse anyone, though I did that quite well with the HDD portion. But what I know exactly what you corrected is dead on the money.


Thank you wustke for taking the time and reading through it and improving the topic. Especially the HDD part since I knew that it was lacking. Perhaps someone out there knows a bit more about the RAM side of things who can post about it. When orginally buying my CPU I had matched the FSB but then I upgraded the CPU I couldn't afford to match it by buying a new stick and I realized I Limited for awhile. But agian I thank you for Pointing that out.


Also what kind of system are you running wustke, and does it seem to run well for you?

Cheers
Happy Computing
-Lenbot

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No problem.

I must admint my systems aren't that up-to-date (XP2500+ and a spare PIII), but most of my knowledge is gathered from loads of reviews and forums.

I must say that my post could have been a lot better too (I looks a bit rude if I re-read it atm, so sorry for that). Today it's pretty hard to remain simple if it comes to explaining computer stuff. There are so many options compared to the begin '90s or something. (there was hardly any overheating, mostly Pentium, only a small speed difference between 3D cards, ...), but any try is a good try. I learned computer stuff using post like yours, advancing more and more, reading such post .

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A lil' comment on your processor section. I've used my Pentium 4 2.53 Ghz for years now, and I haven't seen any performance losses. My compilation, although a little bit slower, but it's still comparably as good as a 3.0 Ghz.

In computing, the speed of your processor is not the main thing that drives the speed of your computer. If you run the correct operating system and optimize it, you'll still get the power and speed of a 3.0 Ghz w/ my 2.53 Ghz.

I run Linux, and it has a fantastic memory and processor management.

Also, the numbers do not always represent if it's more powerful than others. For example, when you take a Single Core x86 processor and compare it with a Duo Core x86 processor, it makes a whole lot of difference. You now have double the power.

If you take a x86_64 and compare it with one x86 processor, you'll get a set of different performance. The 64 bit will be faster and can crunch more numbers because of the threads it has available to it.

If you take a PowerPC based processor and match it up against a x86, you'll find that the PowerPC will beat the living daylights out of the x86 because of architectural designs. The PowerPC (PPC) is built on top of the RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer), which means that it's built on the most current instruction set and requires less clock speed for more power. However, a x86 runs on a CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computer) design, which is less powerful compared to the PowerPC.


The clockspeed, as I've said doesn't necessarily mean the speed and power of the processor.

x86 = AMD/Intel
x86_64 = AMD/Intel
PPC = IBM

Oh ya, here's my specs for my rig if you're interested:

ASUSTek P4B533-VM mobo
Intel Pentium 4 2533 MHz
120 GB 7200 RPM w/ 8MB Cache UATA-133 (Maxtor)
80 GB 7200 RPM w/ 8MB Cache ATA-100 (WD)
2x 256 RAM PC 2100 (233 MHz)
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 w/ 128MB memory
AC'97 Codec based soundchip
Creative SoundBlaster
6 USB 1.0 ports
2 USB 2.0 ports
Windows XP
SUSE 10.1
MacOS X 10.4.5

For my full computer specifications: Click Here! (Generated by SuSE Linux 10.1)

xboxrulz

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One last thing I'd like to say.
It's also the combination of hardware that makes or breaks the system.
An SLI 7900GT in combination with a Sempron AM2 is useless, because the CPU can't deliver enough data for the VGA, so it can't work full speed.

Other example: replacing the HDD in an Alienware game computer with an old 3GB hdd, all those superfast and superexpensive hardware has to wait for the ol' and slow hdd (transfer speed ~ 5MB/s).

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My input on the HDD section:

ATA/IDE - ok here is the OLD standard for the normal end user, comes in multiple "standards" and has 2 main rotation speeds 7200 and 10000 RPM. The RPM has a lot to do with the Data Transfer Speed as well as seek time, also the onboard Cach of the drive has a lot to do with Transfer Rate as well. The lower the seek time the faster you can get the data you want off the drive.

SATA - the new standard that is taking over the normal end user market. This new style of drive uses a serial data transfer mode rather then the old parrellel delivery method. There are currently 2 versions of this standard SATA 1 and SATA 2. With these drives you still have the 7200 RPM and 10000 RPM speeds. Also, the lower the seek time and the larger on drive cache will also help with faster data transfers.

SCSI - Mainly used for Servers, though some people do use it for their home systems. Although with the advent of SATA we might see SCSI die off. Fast, but old Tech.

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Very interesting, I have a dell with windows xp for both my desktop & my laptop, only differance is that my laptop has NVIDIA GeForce when my desktop doesnt.

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Just wanna ask question, is it ok to use different brand of HDD (example: Seagate Maxtor) in implementing RAID 1(disk Mirroring)?

Thanks to all who will reply.

-Mhelski73

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