Questions, and Help..New computer

[Lord Kalthorn]

Hmmm... its not worth preaching for you to get a proper Intel Processor is it? Cause I mean you said you specifically wanted to try and do some Programming (if you are, you should order a Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 DVD before you have to pay for them, even if you don't eventually use it), Website designing, Multitasking, and that would be like photoshop and graphic making, movie making, creating type thing while doing other things. All of which an Intel would be well suited for You said more gaming, but you don't neccersarily need an AMD to do more gaming. Just though I should float the possibility that for almost $100 less than the X2 3800 you said there ($296), you could get at 650 at 3.4Ghz. Not Dual Core, but I wouldn't recommend a Dual Core Pentium at the moment... and with HT that is just as good with just as much Cache and is faster, which helps. Or you could get a 830 at 3.0Ghz for $360. For less than the 3500 you could get a 640 at 3.2Ghz ($241). And for the same as the 3200 you could get a 630 at 3.0Ghz. All with the highly advantageous 2Meg Cache, HT so they're all practically Dual Core except the 830 which doesn't have HT but actually is Dual Core, and they're all 64-bit. Doing what you want to do with it, I would say you would get more out of those for as a rule the same money, once there its cheaper.

Nobody else was going to point out the possibility - thought I might as well float it by you

Nah, I suppose for what you're planning on doing what you listed there still sounds good None of those Processors are particularly bad, although I've had a 3200 for almost two years now... I really wouldn't recommend it. Asus Motherboard sounds pretty good, I wouldn't think you would need something faster, Asus do a good range. 6800GT is a great card it will certainly allow you to do more gaming. 1Gig is a perfect amount of RAM at the moment, great for upgrading to Vista if you ever plan to without getting another computer, or just great for Programming Applications like Visual Studio which want a lot of RAM.

 

[Kage]

"Venice 64bit Athlon 64's whats the diffrence?"

All Athlons are 64 bit now... at least past the XP range.
Venice is the new core, so it basically runs cooler and allows more overclocking potential. Comparable to my Winchester core which came out before that, though that used a new process to making the chip, which the core before that, Clawhammer, did not.
So basically, dont threat too much about that, and get the latest Venice is the same price anyway as the Winchester, but offers more potential, Go figure.

Its also up to you though if you want to turn to Pentium. I know I probably will on my next build, simply because I do more multitasking and video/music related stuff these days. Games also run very well on these systems though, and so can't be sniffed at to be honest. These charts you see only give an idea, not a real-world analysis.
This would mean that I'd probably get a Pentium Extreme Edition which has HT which means "Hyper Threading" that acts as a virtual core for processing tasks when programs support it (Puts empty cycles to good use by making it process data).

I'm not saying now though to go with Intel...though I'm not saying to go with AMD either. Its basically up to you, like alot of these computer decisions. Both will run anything fine to tell the truth.

If you want a cooler running system though, which will effectively be quieter (unless you use water cooling) it has to be AMD which always run cool really, no matter what you throw at them. So thats one thing to keep in mind. Intel's are very power guzzling...

"Asus mobo or anything faster?"

Its not really a case of whos faster. More a case of, whos motherboards do you prefer. None these days are bad, but some of course offer more overclocking potential, supporting higher speed RAM modules (which also cost more) and so on.
I can't really help with makes, but ABIT have been a solid performer with me, and with the UGuru clock you can get on some models, overlcoking becomes rather easy Plus it monitors temperatures, fan speeds, room temp, etc.

"6800GT for about $280"

Thats entirely up to you, and I'm not too sure on the price, but it'll be round about that. I advise you hunt around for the best card you can afford. It is what will be powering your games after all Think of them as large processors and you get the idea. They process alot more than CPU's could ever do with ever increasing Pixel Pipelines, etc.

"What about the Radeon or just go with the 6800GT?"

Thats also up to you. Its more a case of personal preference. I have a Radeon at the moment, and even though I'm not dissapointed with it...I find that Nvidia's cards offer more, and seem to last a long time too.
The 6800GT or even ULTRA would not dissapoint you.

For gaming though, make sure your video card has 256mb onboard (most do) at least now. I think thats becoming the standard as more and more games are needing extra video memory for textures at High settings to increase quality.

"Speakers"

Well the Logitech set are very powerful indeed, though are probably more than you would need. They'd definietly blow you away with clarity and bass though on all ranges of sound. But also, they'll blow a hole in your purse... There pretty expensive, but not overly so...really...

There are two versions I know of. A 2.1 system (good for music) and a 5.1 system (good for games and movies) but most sound cards have settings to push music on all speakers and give an almost Live effect.

"Sound card"

The sound card will have to be a Creative (not onboard but in a PCI slot!!!). The best one available I think is the Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2, which I think is 7.1 surround sound.
I still think a good 5.1 system though is adequate, but these sound cards can switch between settings anyway, and if you decided later to add more speakers, you could do so

Creative anyway is very well known, and are the BEST for sound (In terms of sound cards), no questions asked.

"RAM 1GB, Not 512 because of bottle necks, But why does that happen?"

Bottlenecks occur when too much memory is being used to run programs/games efficently
(slows it down basically, sometimes to grinding halt, and thats when you get the tell tale signs of "Increasing Virtual Memory" which is when the hard drive ends up being used, which is pretty stupid)

These days, alot of programs run in the background, and also in games, alot of things are loaded, so its basically best to have as much as you need, so you don't have to suffer having to close programs down when its getting too much for the system.
1GB will make sure that won't happen.

For example on mine, I end up with a bit less than half of my RAM left un-used. Which leaves about 512mb for extra loading of programs, games, music, etc. So thats alot of memory to have spare.

If though you only got 512MB, you'd find you'd only have about 256MB free, and if you think about it, it seems rather mad considering a video card would have as much memory as your system...

So yes, memory is very important my friend

...Wow...long post or what?...

 

[Lord Kalthorn]

Haha, that was a long post! Yeah, if you mean the 840 Extreme Edition rather than the Prescott or Gallatin, that in my opinion is the only worthwhile Dual Core Intel does. If they had highest clock speeds they would be more worth it, if they had HT they would be fantastic, but they have less than the 6xxs generally, are a little more expensive, and you get more from an 6xx because it has HT and might as well be Dual Core. The 2Meg Cache is the primary reason I recommended so many 6xxs rather than recommending a higher clock speed 5xx, beacuse they both have 64 bit and HT anyway.

Although if your brother has an AMD you might already have a favourite.