Pc Parts Suggestion Need more Power !

[davsachz]

Now that I'm using an S2 in the Studio I need more Processing Power. Your Suggestions please. AMD Athlon XP or Pentium 4 ?
Windows Xp pro or Win 2000 ? If P4 is Rambus or DDRam Necessary or will Sdram suffice ? I'm looking for balance between power and cost, So I won't be buying the lastest and greatest processor but one or 2 levels down. I'm currently @ P3 450 Mhz so I can only go up ! Thanks, Dave

BTW While learning some Photoshop from a friend I was very impressed by the speed of hisolder Mac which was only a 350Mhz G3 with 464MB of Ram. He told me that having the scratch disk be a seperate disk from the OS or PS made all the difference.

[Wichita Wayne]

I am using a 733 P3 with 512 MB of RAM and a fast hard drive, and they work great. Check to see if you can load your motherboard with a faster processor, more RAM, and a fast hard disk before you convert the whole thing. After you pass 500 mH the key to more speed seems to be total RAM rather than a more speedy processor. A fast video boards and hard disks are is also important to speed. A lot of manufacturers use parts that cause the less expensive machines to run slow even when they have a fast processor. They put lousey video and a slow hard disk (5200 RPM rather than 7200 RPM) in a 1.7 gH machine and sucker a lot of customers into thinking they are buying top of the line. Another trick is to put a fast processor on a slow bus (100 mH rather than 133 mH). I build my own computers so I tend to put the hot rod parts in the things and they run really great. I would also go with Win 2000 because it is the most stable OS that Microsoft has made.

[Karrphoto]

I put together a screaming system for about $800 with a P4/1.8GHz processor and 764Mb of PC2700 memory. For the most part I would say that DDR is going to be just fine and don't worry about spending the extra $$$ on a RAMBus system. SDRam won't cut it with the higher speeds from what I recall, most systems with a P4 are going to be DDR or RamBus.

Now, lets throw a couple of curves into the mix. THe new P4 3.06GHz is a Hyperthread processor, which means it looks like a DUAL processor system but in reality is only one chip. Folks are reporting killer processing speeds, but the chip itself is $650.

Second, I use Windows 2000 and think that is definately the way to go. Then again, I'm an ex-software developer and constantly crashed XP, 98, ME machines when testing code, which is MUCH harder to do on 2000 (read: I can't do it!)

Third, Drive striping is the way to go if you want killer performance from your drives. In Windows 2K you can with 2 drives, you'd stick one HD on one of your IDE Channels, the other on the 2nd channel and stripe them in W2k. This will give you the ability to FLOOD the IDE bus at the full 166MB/s!! I've got all my photos on a pair of striped drives and an full 200MB scan loads almost instantly (and I keep it defragged as well.)

Fourth, a seperate drive is definately a good thing for the swap. Unfortunately the best solution would be a 4GB drive, but you aren't going to find one (at least one you would want to use since it owould probably be a 33MB/s IDE drive.) Then again, you could always pay big $$$$ and get a 1-2GB Solid state IDE Drive for your swap. :D

[Swampy]

I would have to suggest a P4 as fast as you can afford. Sure the AMD is faster than a lot of the P4's, but stabilty goes to the P4. Not to mention I've never ever seen a P4 catch a motherboard on fire, where the AMD, I have. :) The new P4 with Hyperthreading is kicking butt on speed, but, the price is still unattractive.

Striping two or more drives is a good idea, at a minimum with the Operating system, but better with an inexpensive IDE raid controller. Remember, the more drives you have in the stripe, the greater the chance of data loss, exponentially. You lose one drive, you lose them all. Using an aftermarket raid controller will give you another 2 IDE slots as well, so now, you can have your hard drives on one subsystem and your burner and dvd drive on another and even throw a swap drive on the same subsystem as the burner/dvd. With the IDE Raid controllers, you could mirror 4 drives, so if you lose one, you still have a spare set, but that brings the price up. Reading will still be fast, writing will be slightly slower with this method though. I like my raid system. It's fast, even with 7200rpm ATA100's, not ATA160's. You'll be hard pressed, even with raid, to fill up the pipe on ATA160's unless you're defragged and have 4 killer WD 7200rpm ATA 160 drives with the 8meg cache. Any way you cut it, back up! I keep one copy on my hard drives, one on my raid5 server, one on CD and one on a server at work. My house could burn down after my machine and server catch fire and I'll still have my data. Two backup's are the minimal I'd suggest.

Rambus is nice, but, DDR memory is half the price and not that far off in speed, I'd recommend the DDR. LOTS of it either way.

Don't skimp on a power supply either. I wouldn't go with a 20 dollar Yuk Foo power supply. I'd check out Enermax. Even thier lowest end power supply is 10 times more reliable than the standard.

Stay away from no-name motherboards as well. If you're building this yourself, make sure you use good name brand parts. Asus, Abit are two of my favorites for motherboards. Never ever had a problem with them. My mom is using an 8 year old Abit motherboard now that has been transplanted 6 or 7 times and even sat on a shelf for 2 years. Western Digital is top on the list for hard drives these days. Kingston has great memory, lifetime warranty and is always reliable as well.

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