Topic Title

Thanks to Mssrs Huggins, Blanchard and Stepp for your responses to my post - I did check the "rules" of the waranty -(thanks Josh)and did talk to JNCS and felt good about them - and have/am considering building it myself ... which brings me to this question .....
it is very easy to get caught up into the "bigger is better" thing especially with cpus and video cards to the point of exhausting yourself - and it seems to me the difference is measured in "nano-seconds" ... at my age a nanosecond ... well, would I notice but in all the measuring, which is speed and which is strength ? ... if you can follow my thought here

Tia again

Tigere

Hello,

Any dual core is going to be very fast, and most any 256MB video card is fine -- though if you use SketchUp, this is where you want to add some speed. All else being equal, the CPU to get is the Intel Core 2 Duo.

I think the key thing with a new computer is to get enough RAM, and to have some room for upgrading the RAM: I'd get at least 1GB, but ideally 2GB now, and have the room to go up to 4GB (or more) in the future. The threshold for 32bit Windows (that it can use) is 3.25GB, with 2GB for each app, or for the OS. So if you go up to 4GB, you'll need a 64bit version of Windows -- there is a 64bit WinXP Pro, and there will be 64bit version of Vista.

I wish I could be here before...

Not "ANY" is good, because if you want a good one, you can get any from Intel E6600 and above or at least Pentim D 940 and above. The best of all is now the X6800 or the QX6700, but you need extra money for them.

The motherboard in use is a matter to take care too, an Intel D945 it's the minumum I recomend and the better one is the D975XBX. You can use also any ASUS with D975X chipset in it too.

The memory... use 2 memory modules of 512MB at least or 2 modules of 1GB any of them at DDR2 667MHz or DDR2 800MHz (better). You will get a better performance in those equipment using them in DUAL-Channel operation.

The harddisk, any Serial-Ata/300 is good with 8MB of buffer. The size; well you can start with 160GB or more, the best deal now is in 320GB HD.

The videocard... N-Vidia 7600GT with 256MB of DDR3 is a very good one. If you got a good Videocard, renders are going to be displayed better and also any video you could play in there.

The display... Well in there I find Viewsonic a very good and fast monitors too. VX or VP series are the best for this job.

I hope this could help to any who want's a powerful PC to run fastest as it can.

Good Luck!

Greetings,

Any Core 2 Duo, or any Athlon 64 X2 -- but I would avoid all Pentium D models, as they are slower than the Athlon 64 X2, and they produce about twice the heat. The Core 2 Duo is excellent, the Athlon 64 X2 is very good, and the Pentium D is poor, in my opinion.

BTW, you mentioned on another thread, that the Athlon 64 is still has a 32bit core -- this is not the case. They extended the number of registers from 8 to 16, and they have support for large amounts of memory, as well. The Intel implementation supports the extended memory, but not as many internal changes were made, as I understand it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athlon_64
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD64

The unfortunate thing is the Core 2 Duo processors are "only" 32bit -- they have no 64bit support at all, but they are the current best for 32bit code.

The Core 2 Duo (Conroe) do support 64bit. The original Core (Yonah) chips were only 32bit.

In fact the best in AMD world will be the FX2 processor, even if you consider poor the Pentium D Processor AS a processor, you are right. But the whole PC is more than that. AMD use to has a very good overall performance, but when AMD Athlon 64 still use DDR 400MHz memory, intel use DDR2 at 533 MHz and even 800MHz. this even with their single bus was more fast. The wrong thing about that old Pentium D was the energy need to work. AMD was better, but now it's the opposite.

Also when you go for a Core 2 Duo chip processor you must go for E6600 or more, because those Processors has twice the cache memory (4MB) than the E6300 or E6400 processor. The performance is much better.

But again, if you have a DDR2 800MHz with those processors, you will get a better performance. If you also buy an ASUS or an Intel D975X motherboard you can also use DDR2 1066 MHz memory modules overclocking them in the motherboard.

Not to mention that X6800 or QX6700 processors have not their chip clocks locked and some have been use these monsters at 4.0 GHz and running at more than 1066MHz in their Front Side Bus.

Even working with 16 registers you need a clock pulse to process this data, but that base clock is at 200MHz and is more slower even using their hypertransport technology than the 1066MHz FSB and the changes have to be made or you cannot address 64 bit execution. But talking now about Core 2 technology, I think will help us to understand a little better why is better...

http://www.intel.com/technology/archite ... o/demo.htm

Hello,

I stand corrected on the Core 2 Duo 64bit support -- I was thinking of Core Duo...

The AM2 Socket of Athlon 64 do use up to DDR2-800 RAM, and with the memory controller on the CPU, the latency is very low with AMD CPU's. With Core 2 Duo, DDR2-533 only performs 1-2% lower than with DDR2-800 in the real world, because the FSB bandwidth limits it, and at 266mHz/DDR2-533, it is synchronous with the FSB. On synthetic benchmarks, the DDR2-800 looks much better, and you can over clock with it much better.

Without a doubt, the Core 2 Duo (Conroe) CPU's outperform the AMD X2 CPU's, which is the reverse of the way it was before. The Pentium 4 was slower and much hotter, and the Pentium D even more so. The Core 2 Duo offers the highest performance and the highest performance per watt.

The only advantages that AMD still have in real terms, are the power they use at idle is much lower (Cool 'N Quiet works better than EIST: 6-7watts vs 15-17watt) http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=33425 and there may be advantages when running 64bit code, too. Oh, and they are a bit less expensive, too: http://forum.datacad.com/viewtopic.php?p=17938&highlight=#17938

Also when you go for a Core 2 Duo chip processor you must go for E6600 or more, because those Processors has twice the cache memory (4MB) than the E6300 or E6400 processor. The performance is much better.

To follow up Neil's more price conscience points I recently was surprised at the price vs. horsepower difference between the 6600 and the 6300/6400 chips. I recently compared the 6300($180), & 6600($350) in my new system. While using 3DMark my scores went up about 150 points with the 6600 in XP, I was quite disappointed with the encoding DV & DVD's to MP4 and winrar compression speeds. I ran both the MP4 and winrar compares on both Window XP & Vista. I couldn't get 3D Mark to run on Vista RC2. The 6400 was not available from my supplier when I was building my system, but I wish it was from what I have found in some online test results. I think the 6400 was another $40 and probably worth the little extra. The 6600 was not worth nearly double the cost of the 6300. I usually use Tom's Hardware for quick comparisons. They are pretty reliable as best I can tell and mostly unbiased. Also make sure your board and ram are certified for Core 2 Duo if you go that route, as the processor has some specific requirements for voltages and ram timings. You can see the board I went with below in my signature. I've been very happy with Gigabyte and have been using them exclusively with no RMA's vs. many using Asus & MSI over the last 6 years or so as a custom supplier. All using Intel processors & chipsets. FWIW.

Hello Josh,

As an aside, WinRAR is very dependent of RAM speed -- it scales with more RAM speed like nothing else.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/memory/display/core2duo-memory-guide_7.html

However, most of the time, the speed of the RAM improves AM2 Athlon 64 X2 performance more than it does for Core 2 Duo.

http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=2800&p=7

Personally, I have found Tom's Hardware to be very biased -- they seemed to have been "bought out" when Netburst Pentium 4 came out, and maybe they have improved since then, but I stopped reading their site. During the (at least three?) years that Athlon 64 was faster, cooler and cheaper, they seemed to want to help Intel sell their slower, (much) hotter, and more expensive CPU's...

Hello Josh,

As an aside, WinRAR is very dependent of RAM speed -- it scales with more RAM speed like nothing else.

That's a good thing to know.

However, most of the time, the speed of the RAM improves AM2 Athlon 64 X2 performance more than it does for Core 2 Duo.

Interesting, probably because of the onboard memory controller / northbridge I would guess for the AMD's right? That is one thing I wish Intel would try, but think they like selling chipsets too much .

Personally, I have found Tom's Hardware to be very biased -- they seemed to have been "bought out" when Netburst Pentium 4 came out, and maybe they have improved since then, but I stopped reading their site. During the (at least three?) years that Athlon 64 was faster, cooler and cheaper, they seemed to want to help Intel sell their slower, (much) hotter, and more expensive CPU's...

Hmm, I don't read the articles too much but it always seemed to me that they favored AMD at least since the Athlon 64 series. Maybe they always try too hard and give some favor to the other team when reviewing. I will say they do seem to put a high emphasis on encoding which the PIV's would sometimes pull ahead in the early AMD64 days which is usually what sold me on staying with Intel as I do a lot of that. But AMD quickly closed that gap too. I usually only read up on the Intel side of things and the benchmarks as that's what I'm usually shopping for. But I must say this new Core 2 is kind of nice with my case fan running slower now. I usually have my headphones on anyway, but the Mrs. seems to appreciates it sitting behind me. Not ready to join SPCR or anything just yet though

Hello Josh,

I think you are correct on the AMD onboard memory controller -- it lowers the latency by a lot, and if Intel also had this, they would be even further ahead. OTOH, AMD will not be sitting still: they will probably add the larger caches, and make changes to their pipelines, and do things like the prefetch that Intel does.

The AMD HyperTransport -- their interlinking BUS is another excellent thing, because it allows their dual and quad core CPU's to be on the same piece of silicon, and they can "communicate" between the cores without taking bus bandwidth from the RAM or from the rest of the I/O. HT is a third bus; while Intel puts everything through their one bus (as I understand it, anyway).

The Intel dual cores are two pieces of silicon mounted together on the CPU, and their quad cores are two dual core CPU's. AMD will do quad cores on a single piece of silicon, on a single CPU package. The HT helps them scale better to multi-cores, partly because they have less "overhead" to keep track of what the other cores are doing, and because there is separate bandwidth used for different jobs.

The bottom line is, competition is a good thing: if AMD had not succeeded, and had not raised the bar, with their Athlon (K7) and Athlon 64 (K8) CPU's, we would not have seen Intel pull back from the Pentium 4 (Netburst) architecture. The Core Duo is based to a much greater extent on the Pentium 3, and the same Intel design team saved Intel's bacon when they made all the improvements that we now have in the Core 2 Duo.

AMD showed that a "wide" processor (with 9 pipelines) is better than an narrow one(4 piplines, IIANM), no matter what the clockspeed. Intel hit the clockspeed ceiling before they could outperform the K8 -- and the move to multiple cores confirmed AMD's approach. Intel has now regrouped and moved ahead to retake the performance lead, that they had essentially lost when the K7 came out. Back then clockspeed was king, (though the chip architecture did matter, too), and when the Athlon debut had them at 650mHz (and 600 and 550), when the fastest Pentium !!! was at 550mHz -- Intel got the first wake up call, and now 8 years later (or so), we have Core 2 Duo.

Holy Smokes - what a surprise !!! (Y bien venido a nuestros amigo de Mexico ...) And a great discussion at that ...and timely as well
I have after much thought really concluded if I want a power machine I will do it in a work station environment - since I anticipate medium to heavy graphics - 3d, flim editing and rendered material - primarily for training purposes ... but not excluding a plan or two ... because of the cost
and research ( I knew nothing about workstations and server set up - render farms and such and am still studying ...) I am asembling a low cost ASUS AM2 barebone system for the interim ... which brings me to this question - in W/XP PRO the option is Fat 32 or NT ... will Datacad work in the NT environment ....
TIA
Roger Pingree
tigere

NT for sure with XP.

Hello Roger,

DataCAD works fine in NTFS, and WinXP works much better with NTFS, too. Good luck with the build!