I am building a absolute mofo of a computer, and I would like to have your suggestions of what the ultimate specs for this PC should be. Keep it within reason and current available retail goods, like no "Cray Supercomputer with 5000 CPUs" etc.

Should I get AMD or P4?
What it the best burner?
What is the most reliable straight CDROM?
SoundCard?
Case?
Etc..

Does anyone know where I can purchase a GeForce3 ASAP?
Is it for retail sale anywhere in Australia yet?
Would it be viable purchasing it overseas with our current exchange rate?

I want it now.

i've said it b4 and i'll say it again
the only chance you have of getting that is if you get 100 virgins to suck your cock

You want the highest AMD Thunderbird possible on the new ABIT DRR Board. A Triple Schmoo Fan in an AOPEN HX08 300watt Fulltower. Definately Go with a high quality SCSI card and buy all your accesories SCSI!

u said that to me....
and hey it is possible!
*goes out and starts looking ofr desprate virgins :)*
has it eva been done WART?

So Cezar, you are definately advising I go AMD over Intel?

I have always been a Pentium boy, and I prolly would rather stay with them and get a 1.4Ghz P4.

I need info on where to get a GeForce3 - Any Ideas?

Yeh, definitely my dream machine would be as follows:

AMD 1.3GHz T-bird
Asus a7m266 mobo with DDR support
256Mb DDR SDRAM
ATA-100 30GB HDD (maybe two of these)
SBLive X-Gamer 5.1
Some sort of high-end graphics card - personally, I may even go for a Hercules Kyro II, despite the fact that they're not the fastest cards on the market, they're definitely best price/performance.

You can pick the rest for yourself (monitor, DVD, CD-RW, etc - they're all much of a muchness)

Are you spending all your dad's winnings or something? :)

1.2Ghz Thunderbirds generally (for almost everything other than quake3, that is) outperform the 1.4GHz P4, so a 1.3Ghz Tbird should flog. Plus, you may even be able to o/c it a bit. :)

yeah its not a problem get a P4 if you want a P4 its not a big deal
just a fairly large price difference
GF3 i dunno if you can get em in aus
you might have to order or put in a temp card

well a couple ofd weeks ago some1 mention sometihng about ordring 20 geforces cheaper then usual and a bit beofr ehte release dae but u had to but in packs of 20!
i tihnk they were 850 each!
and they got like 7 ppl wanting to buy it i dont know now...
AMD ruez i have not seen 1 magazine that is not owned/paid by intel or amd that say intel is betta then AMD!
intel pentiam 4 1.5 ghz runs the same speed as a amd athlon 1ghz
athlon's are faster and cheaper!
screw intel the bloody ripoff basterds!
amd will take over!
intel will soon be knocked out of the market!
ok enough with the!

dont worry about sstraight cdrom drive a cdrom drive is a cdrom frive i have owned about 10 cdrom drives in the pas and theyh have never stuffed up apart this new no-brand 44x i got! it will only read cd's sometimes..... it used to work properly

Cpu = P4 1.4
Mainboard = i850 board
Ram = 128meg stick of PC800 RDRAM
Sound = Sblive 5.1
Speakers = FPS3000 Digital or Theatre setup
Case = hehe any that fits the p4 :D
Graphics = Geforce 3 (duh:P)

now thats a dream machine :)
as for geforce 3's there not out in au yet, if ya want
one gona have to order it from the states :(

as far as i know unless u have a mac , u cant buy a GF3 yet cause they dont exist for PC yet.
i'd reccomend a Athlon 1200, Asus or Abit board, Adaptec SCSI UW80 (160 if u can afford it) card on IBM or segate drives
pc150 ram, 64mb DDR GF2, SB Live Platnium.

The only good thing about the p4 is the blue guys they use on the adds, they rock!

Yes Strex I'm The same , I'm a pentium boy thru & thru!
Although you can't go past the recent emergence of the Thunderbird performance! I'm running a 900mhz pIII and i know i'd hate to see a 900mhz AMD whoomping my ass!

There hasn't been any major (or minor) issues with the newer AMD CPU's so why not i suppose!

DVD Ya Can't Go past the Sony Front Loader , looks great and performs great! Same as the SONY Burners, Although i'd buy SCSI stuff , Sony only manufacture IDE from what i have seen!

even though scsi is nice there is not a huge difference in speed between ide and scsi now unless you have a 15000 rpms scsi hdd

Yeah Wart , Although Strex Did say 'Dream Machine'. 15000rpms would f***ing 0wn! SCSI all the way!
You know u want it :P
Plus SCSI burners are proven less buffer underuns (if any) and better reliablitity aswell laser wise.
Also Strex if your going to go DVD-ROM Definately buy a Decoder card, The Difference is amazing!

i would support the decoder card theory too

Well, this looks to be the best option so far. What do you reckon?

CPU: AMD Thunderbird 1300MHz (FSB 266MHz)
$ 599.00

Video Card: 64MB ASUS7700 Ultra GF2 GTS DDR
$ 1,029.00
Until Release of GeForce3

HDD: IBM 60GB 7200rpm ATA100
$ 529.00

RAM: 2 x 256MB PC133 SDRAM 168pin
$ 358.00

Monitor: SONY 19' G400 FD Trinitron
$ 1,249.00

MotherBoard: Asus A7M266 (AMD/ATA100/DDR SDRAM)
$ 399.00

CDRW: SONY 160S 8x12x32x SCSI Drive
$ 529.00

CDROM: Sony 48X IDE
$ 69.00

SoundCard: Creative Live! Platinum 5.1 optical w/Live Bay & remote control
$ 419.00

Keyboard: Logitech iTouch
$ 100.00

Case: Aopen HX08/HC08 Full ATX 300W
$ 199.00

Total
----------

$ 5419.00

After alot of research, these prices were taken from Sunlit (yeah they are f***wits but cheap :) but I will prolly add alot of cooling and other accessories too.

So will all this be good enough to run Medal of Honour and Project IGI in 32x1600x1200 with +30fps?

u could get cheaper prices from www.gamedude.com.au
and u gott have ddram!

why you'd want to run in 1600 x 1200 x 32bit colour is beyond me, considering you never really need to run higher then 640 x 480 x 32.

i am telling u these details so thati can steal the puter off u when it is finished!

u only need a soundblaster LIVE! value!
thats all and u have not metnion which type of wpeakers u are gettting yet??

Yeah I just used Sunlit to get a rough idea as to how much it will all cost.

I would rather give my money to GameDude cos I feel sorry for the short little bastard :Þ

I just run all my audio through my Philips HiFi system (works great!).

Cyph: I will only run it in that high resolution cos I can :)

s*** if ya got that much cash to spend , ya get some
DDR sdram :)

ok heres the "beast machine" as described in pcpp

Note: The prices are as of March 2001

AMD Athlon 1.2GHz - $649
ASUS A7M266 Mobo - $350
Creative Blaster CD-RW 121032 - $599
Pioneer 16x DVD-ROM Drive - $549
Kingmax 256Mb DDR RAM - $749
Seagate Cheetah X15 18GB SCSI - $1191
Hercules 3D Prophet II Ultra - $999
SoundBlaster Live! Platinum - $499
Sony G500 21" FD Trinitron Monitor - $2050
Keyboard, mouse, case etc

All up it says about $9040

btw strex - 32bit color and 1600x1200 res are gay
don't be suprised if it lags on your uber machine

Hmmm...so would 256Mb DDR RAM really out-perform 512Mb SDRAM?

Can some genius please explain WTF is so fantastic about this KingMax DDR shiznit?

of course 256mb ddr is faster than 512mb sdr
first of all, it would be hard to notice the difference between 128mb and 256mb+ if your just playing games

DDR = Dual data rate, meaning it runs twice as fast as sdr no matter how much you have

Personally Strex I Would Buy The Hurculese 65MB DDR Ram GeForce 2 Ulstra Behemoth , @ EB you can buy it for $999 And It is by Far The Best Videocard On The Market! Good Choice of Case , I'm Using The Same! As Far As The Ram Goes, DDR is faster, Holds heaps, And FFS it IS the future of DRAM! Oh btw 256 of DDR would quite suffice , 512MB SD is over the top, unless ure running linux with 6 quake 3 arena's playing in deatched mode while your compliling :) You get the idea

sif u would pay $999 for a video card

I'm going to repeat myself here and recommend the SBLive X-Gamer 5.1. Main reason - I can remember reading somewhere it has A3D 2.0 support. Wish I could remember where I read that.

That'd rawk - EAX AND A3D. :) Plus 5.1 output. Don't know what it costs, though.

omg wart i'm sorry but SCSI still leaves IDE for dead, scsi has everything over IDE cept cost.
1. speed
2. number of devices on the bus
3. faster bus
4. scsi doesnt take CPU time - all processing is done on the scsi controller.

the speed of most IDE drives while they SAY they can achieve higher speeds than scsi, it just doesnt work in reality, someone show me a reliable benchmark of a IDE coming close to SCSI and i'll be supprised (not a h4x0rd pic either)

sorry but ide is still no comparison to SCSI

you only have 2 points squarky
points 1 3 and 4 are basically the same thing - speed

with the Tbirb and Via setup your front side buss speed is 266mhz now with pc 133 ram in ya system you
get a bottleneck , with DDR sdram theres no bottleneck
and Kingmax just makes a better silicon :)

hey strex you forgot operation flash point dude if you play that youll never play anything else i recon :)

1600x1200 x32 rox, i run it in Rune and q3 and it absolutely ownz. I get about 70fps all round with it there. and also cyph, the days of 640x480 are well and truely gone, maybe if you hada voodoo rush or voodoo 2 you w2ould run that but with a 64 meg geforce 2 and especially ultra you wouldn't even consider 640x480.

I havea 19" sony at home and 640x480 looks crap on it, there are crappy black lines inbetween the pixels, it is really good at 1280x1024 and 1600x1200. Games are sweet in 1600x1200 if you can run them there. I don't suffer from any extra lag when running at 1600x1200 then at 1024x768. I prob get aobtu 10-30 fps less but that is all and every thing looks smooth.
My specs r p3 750 (in which sprinkles isthe only person that loads fater than me)
512 meg kingmax 133
64 meg asus g2 pure
46g ibm
19" g400
8x panasonic burner (don't buy one they r crap)
32x mits***a/panasonic (tis awesome)


Strex i would advie going:
T'Bird 1.3
ASUS266 mobo
256- 512 meg DDR
2 x 60 gig ibm ATA 100 put into raid striping
Kenwood DVD
creative burner
64meg Hercules G2 ultra
300W power
the big arse $400 case, can't find it's name but will tell u at qgl
19" sony g400
dunno abotu sound, not my area but maybe sb live platinum

think hat is all

bout for all that u r looking at about $6000

ne way speak to you at qgl

creepingdeath, i don't no ifu r talknig about ddr ram or sd ram when u say that you can't notice between 128 and 256 but when i upgraded from 128 - 256 i notcied about a 70% increase in speed. It was a huge difference when playing games. i don't no wether it was coz of my video card but with 128 it would take about 60 seconds for it to precache all fo the textures and sonds coz there wasn't enoug hmemory there for them all to be stored. once i upgraded to 256 it ran smoothly straight away.

When i went up to 512 i dodn't notice much of a performance increase if any but i do alot of photoshop and dreamweaver work and now i can have 50 3.6 meg bmp's open and still have 100 meg of ram left. that is the only difference between 512 and 236 but definately never have less than 256 meg of ram these days. 128 is no where near enough for modern video cards.

Why would you buy a burner and a cdrom drive when your burner can read cds already?

What about going Duel 1ghz on an Abit VP6 board??
I just did that and it runs very well, especailly since Q3, Alice and Tribes run SMP.
I think Tribes2 also will run SMP.
If you don't like the VIA chipset, i am sure Intel make a duel board as well. I have had no trouble...yet :-)

Jase is that u?????

Strex: if you're going to get the A7M266 or whatever it is motherboard you should make sure that it does actually support SDRAM as I'm not sure if it does or not. It might support *only* DDRAM. I've read a few reviews of these sorts of boards and I'm sure that at least one of them didn't support SDRAM.
Also there's no way in hell I'd pay over $1000 for a GF2U when GF3's are selling in the USA (or will be very, very soon)

Rukh's dream system: whatever plays doom 3, high res, full detail.

See, thats much easier than listing each component!

if ya get an amd get some really good fans or cooling s***
they heat up like f***

70degrees will f*** it up a bit(that's without a fan)

my bro's nearly cooked the other day plus his mobo was DOA!
fark :)

BTW, it aint a uber machine untill its got a spankin Case Mod! more fans the better!, oh, and must have watercooling, and lots of lights that give you siesures.

get a lian-li case, they are filth, and aluminium so heaps light :)

Strex, if you have the money to spend, the two biggest things you can do the make your computing experience totally schmoove is dual CPUs and SCSI.

Unfortunately AMD aren't coming out with dual boards for a while yet, so I would recommend a dual Intel (ABIT VP6) and then a SCSi add on card with 2 SCSI HDD, a Plextor SCSi burner and a SCSI Cdrom (Plextor too), or a SCSI DVD0rom.

Slap in a monster IDE drive for mp3's atc and you're set.

Oh and 512mb RAM too.

And check this out:

Ars Technica box recommendations

Oh well

AD - Have you seen the full tower lian li's? shweet
but i think they are like $500 :)

cerb, you must be thinking of these

Why would you buy a burner and a cdrom drive when your burner can read cds already?

khel - because the time it takes to burn decreases by about 70%

Strex..if you are considering spending anywhere between 5-6 k then go to the Dell site and configure a system to your needs. I am a very happy Dell owner.

I just slapped one together to give you an idea...

P4 1.5gzh
256 Meg PC800 Rdram
19inch smoke grey Sony Monitor
64 Meg GTS 2 Ultra
altec lansing speakers (A340)
SB LIve Values
Burner
DVD
all the other peripherals/software ect..

$5,600 approx

just as an example , as I say you can mix and match to suit your needs and budget. And as for after sales server Dell are supurb.

Thats if your REALLY want something now, but i reckon your better off waiting as the Gforce 3 are not going to do much for you game wise immediately, except for HRAA, but if you can hold off for like 6 months.

Then you can buy a nice shiny new 2 gzh system with a new release Geforce(4).... AND SOME GAMES WILL BE OUT BY THEN THAT USE THE BLOODY THING!

that's what Im doing anyways...

:)

Psy

scuzzy, i was thinking about getting a lian-li until **shock** i saw the price!!
haha ludicrous.
If you want a good computer - get a dell
i have had this my xps r400 for about 2 years now, and i havent had any problems, put in a geforce, more ram and it is fine. just i dont like dells allegence to intel, get an athlon!! they are so cheap and so very fast. move over intel :P

one thing you have all been overlooking is RAM

Sgt.Strex; it is v. important to look into getting good ram. ive seen too many uber machines been bottleneck'd cause of s*** ram that cant get clocked too high cause its just s***.

dont get "PC133 512 SDRAM" - cause chances are they are going to give you some noname s*** that will perform at about the speed of 128 mb samsung or kingmax ram.

if you dont want to research it then get Samsung (preferablly) or Kingmax (2nd choice) they are about the best brand ram you will get at this point in time.

(btw for reference sake the ram that comes with the intel boards for the p4 are 800mhz samsung RD ram) not f***ing

Ram = 128meg stick of PC1200 RDRAM

I cannot emphasise the importance of good brand RAM either. In australia you are probably best with KingMax PC133, v 1.2 if you can.

Oh, and cases, none of this AOpen s***e, and generic power supplys.

You need either a Macase if you are feeling cheap (100+ for the case alone), or a Lian Li if you are for real (400+ for the case alone).

Power supply's for Athlons (which you should get), get a Leadman 400W from EYO, or even an Evermax 450W or 550W, also from EYO. That should serve you well :) They'll be $100 to $200 i think...

hehe i havent bothered reading all the posts...BUT

i garentee that my forthcoming PC (very soon) will kick its arse :P

and no i'm not giving any details away just yet ;)

Hey Strex..

I only read the first few posts etc but about a month and half or so ago I went out and did the exact same thing you did, Had heaps of cash to blow, and went out and brought the top of everything I could...

Your more than welcome to come and see how good it runs the things u want ur PC to do, to see if its up to standard with what your looking for etc....

My comp is a AMD Thunderbird 1.2Ghz, 384mb Ram, 19" Sony G400 Sony Trinitron, two 45 GB IBM 7200 RPM harddrives (Raided together), a 64mb Ge-force 2 GTS (i play in lower res's so i decided against the Ultra),a fop 38, and I also have the identical Case and Motherboard(i think they are identical, i will double check on the motherboard for you), that you stated you wanted.....

So yeh it might be a help to you to see how it goes?? if not dont worry... Just a suggestion :)

sif u'd buy a P4

godfrey:
"Unfortunately AMD aren't coming out with dual boards for a while yet"

if you take a look at this article here you will realize there is such as dual amd mobo's

DDR Ram is meant to be a bit of an overstament

i hear it only runs at 22 percent farster than normal ram

it was posted at tomes hardware and i cant be f***ed linking

Hey Strex..

I only read the first few posts etc but about a month and half or so ago I went out and did the exact same thing you did, Had heaps of cash to blow, and went out and brought the top of everything I could...

Your more than welcome to come and see how good it runs the things u want ur PC to do, to see if its up to standard with what your looking for etc....

My comp is a AMD Thunderbird 1.2Ghz, 384mb Ram, 19" Sony G400 Sony Trinitron, two 45 GB IBM 7200 RPM harddrives (Raided together), a 64mb Ge-force 2 GTS (i play in lower res's so i decided against the Ultra),a fop 38, and I also have the identical Case and Motherboard(i think they are identical, i will double check on the motherboard for you), that you stated you wanted.....

So yeh it might be a help to you to see how it goes?? if not dont worry... Just a suggestion :)

Also forgot to mention that I also have the SB Platnium Live 5.1 thingo also... Set up on surround sound Cambridge speaker thingo's...

Sorry about the double post above.. no idea how that hapnned... my apologies...

Strex: dont get the ASUS board
i have an asus board na i love it(i also have an ABIT) but the ABIT kt7a-RAID is better..its like $30 more an has exactly the same specs as the ASUS board but comes with RAID

however if u do get u need two harddrives..but its worth it cause they r meant to run even faster in RAID config

also AMD s***s all over intel
i have 1 processor from each an i love my Duron over my P3

khel reason why you would get a burner plus a dvd/cdrom, so u can burn cd to cd, it is a bitch havingth change cd's half way through and make the burn twice as long, and also 2 cdrom's is good whn copying stuff to the hd fro mlots of cd's, ie leeching.

i saw this really cool calculator at the newsagent!

get that!!!

creepingdeath

if you take a look at this article here you will realize there is such as dual amd mobo's

maybe you should realise a few things about that board

1. Price US$950+ I believe - equates to AU$2000+

2. Availability - not being out yet and also it being a server board I would figure availabilty to be extremely low.


Oh well

Hey Fork Whats up your arse?...oh a For.... :D
btw that was a typo.
Happy now?

Extremist Tbird @1550-1650- Abit KT7A- 128 Megs OCZ enhanced $600 us

plus rest of s***

from here
http://ocz.safeshopper.com/index.htm?578

strex is not worth all theis posts i whant them!

Yeh my mistake, my motherboard is the ABIT kt7a-RAID also, becuase i have my two IBM 45gb drives raided togeher...

Quote: DDR Ram is meant to be a bit of an overstament
i hear it only runs at 22 percent farster than normal ram


But at least it's faster than a P4...

Sunlit are not the cheapest, you can do a lot better, but it will give you a pretty good estimate.

Ok, so the qgl network is acting totally gh3y, and decides to add backslashes to a whole bunch of things. So after a few hours here is my post in a somewhat not f***ed-up manner.

Just found this but haven`t read it yet.

Firingsquads Tbird Project


Oh well

Godfrey:

Just because it costs alot and there isnt many available, doesnt mean it doesnt exist.

I was simply pointing out that there is such a thing

creepingdeath

I don't think it has been released yet though.


Oh well

God this is a long thread.

I would not go Intel at this stage. Or I would, but just so I could get dual Processers.. the Tyan Dual Athlon mobo has just gone on pre-order in japan.. at ~$995USD. I think ill give that a miss.

Another reason not to go intel atm, is Rambus. You want 256MB of rambus for the p4, you buy 2 128MB sticks. want 512? 2 x 256mb sticks. You must install it in pairs.

My sound card of choice: Hercules Game Theater XP. Its external box thingy and the buttload of connectors on it are awsome.

HDD: IBM 75GXP or 60GXP based.. but not the 45GB Model of the 75GXP. I would probably go for the 60GB model of either, if I had the cash.

Case: AOpen h*08 series, or a lian li mid tower.. Having a full tower gets annoying after a while. they are damn heavy (but Strex is huge.. so that should worry him :D)

RAM: I like Corsair. Mostly cause thats what I have, but also cause its rated as the best there is, with Mushkin and Crucial. Get your corsair from here. I would get 512.. its damn cheap. Unless you are getting DDR.. that is still expensive atm.

For your Mobo.. Get DDR if you really want. I wouldn't, personally, atm.. just cause I have the ram for an SDR mobo now.. and I paid quite a bit for it. But seeing you are doing a total upgrade.. It might be a decent option. The Via Kt266 chipset, which supports DDR ram and athlons is coming out shortly. It should be faster than the 761 North Bridge.. Not to mention easier to get a hold of. Asus are discontinuing the A7M266 as it is.

Processer.. the Fastest Athlon you get get your hands on! They are cheap (compared to their intel equivelants..)

Heatsink/Fan.. probably the GlobalWin WBK38 with a less powerful fan.. or if you don't mind the noise stick to the delta. Or a thermoengine.. they seem to be doing well.

Intellimouse explorer.. mousepad of choice.. the New Sony 19" Monitor - The CPG420.. VooDoo has one. He says they rock.. it'll all be awsome!

CD-Rom/Burner.. No idea. get what you want. I like Pioneer DVDs, and Sony Burners. But thats cause I have them. So its probably Biased.

Yeah.

Thanks for all your advide guys, I am picking up my new ÜBERCOMPUTER tomorrow (friday) afternoon.

It is practically the same as what I have mentioned above, except a few upgrades.

I am now getting a 21' Samsung Monitor, 75GIG IBM 7200rpm ATA100, Asus mobo A7MA (AMD/ATA100/DDR SDRAM) and GeForce3 when it is released in early April.

Hopefully it will be fully up and running by QGL Lan this weekend. Then no longer will I have to put up with 12fps constant in CS :)

whats wrong with the 45gig IBM's????

strex what video card will u b using in the meantime?

o yeah i see now dont worry :P

RhOmEL: I have been talking with Jab, owner of Realtime Systems and VooDoo, from MOS and they both said that they have had a lot of returns on the 45GB Drive. Also, there were pictures posted on the front page of Overclockers Australia a while back.. 2 45GB IBMs, turned them on and they fried themselves. A chip on the bottem of them was physically burnt.. you could see the char marks.

That kinda led me to believe there was a problem with them.

I've had to take back my IBM 45's twice - they just keep breaking... :/ Well, actually they break one at a time, but since they're raided it just screws everything up!! uu!!