What would you do? (new pc hardware options)

I am in the middle of having a new computer quoted. I am fortunate to be
able to spec. my own system as long as I keep it within budget from my boss.
I really didn't have time to go through all of the details of hardware
specifications and benchmarks. So, I gave my computer builder some basic
guidelines, as well as the budgeted amount, and told him to cram as much
power into the box as possible.

The guidelines that I gave him were:
Intel P4 processor (one or two steps back from the fastest available, for
cost savings)
Intel MoBo
2 Gig of good fast RAM
nVidia Quadro FX 700 or better

He came up with this:
MoBo - Intel D915PCYL (915P LGA775 MAX-4GB DDR2 ATX PCIE16 2PCIE 4PCI SND
SATA 800MHZ)
Processor - P4 540 - LGA775 800MHZ 3.2GHZ 1MB CACHE HT SOC-T
Memory - (4X) Kinsington 512MB PC266 64MX64 CL2.5 DIMM (2 Gig Total)
Graphics - PNY NVIDIA QUADRO FX3400 PCIE 256MB DDR3 DUAL DVI

With all of the other misc. stuff (OS, Burner, HD, Case) this came in right
at my budget limit. The graphics card is obviously a much higher-end card
than I anticipated. But it should be a kick-butt card according to the
specs. (and it is a PCIE card).

He also gave me an option of a "PNY NVIDIA QUADRO FX1300 PCIE 128MB DDR DUAL
DVI" card (PCIE card as well). This card is about half the price of the
FX3400 which would bring the total well below the budget limit.

Like I said, I haven't had time to really research the other hardware
options on my own. I know that a lot of you out there are diehard AMD fans
but my boss wants to stay Intel (his money). I personally thought that the
memory he quoted should be at least DDR2-400 or even DDR2-533. And the
processor should maybe be an Extreme Edition. Plus, the latest chipset from
Intel on the MoBo is 925 instead of 915. But what do I know. If I choose
the FX1300 graphics card I may be able to upgrade some of these items and
still be within budget.

Here is the questions. Would you stick with the original configuration with
the higher end FX3400 card? Or, would you bump it down to the FX1300 and
spend the saved money on boosting the other hardware? And why?

TIA

 

what type of projects do you intend to do with it?

 

I design molds. Some fairly complex. Some not too complex. Assemblies and
in-context rebuilds are what is the bottleneck now with my current machine:
P4-2.4 GHz
1 Gig Rimm memory
Quadro4 750XGL

 

If you are doing mold work go with the fastest CPU and knock down the
graphics card a few notches. You will need fast rebuild times as a priority.
You say you want a couple steps back from the fastest available which is the
AMD FX53 or FX55. What he is giving you is quite a few steps back. I would
go with Corsair or Mushkin memory. I have had trouble with Kingston though
the price is right.

Is he putting in a SATA HDD?

 

yes imo go for a fast AMD processor expect to halve the rebuild times of
your 2.4
actually you could keep the 750xgl... I have one and find SW2005 is
considerably better at handling realview graphics over SW2004 and will
rotate views without stuttering.

 

Have you read about those new PCI Express cards? Some the recent benchmarks
I seen on them ran circles around the Quadro FX AGP series that are out now.
If I hadn't had my boss recently purchase me my Quadro 1100 FX, I would
consider looking into these PCI Express cards.

Regards,
Scott

 

I have always been an Intel fan. However, I was going to look at AMD very
seriously this time around. But, my boss told me to stick with Intel. He
has got it in his head and I can't convince him otherwise. It's his money,
so....

Therefore, I am trying to get as much Intel power and speed as I can for the
money. I know that some AMD systems would be faster. For those that are up
to date on Intel stuff, my questions are basically:
Should I stay with the high end FX3400 (PCI Express) and leave the rest of
the Intel configurations that he quoted me alone? It does fit the budget.
Or, should I downgrade to the mid-range FX1300 (also PCI Express) and boost
the Intel stuff a little?

If I'm not mistaken, there is higher end Intel hardware than what he has
quoted me. But it would take days of reading and re-quotes to determine the
best bang-for-the-buck Intel configuration since I have not kept up with it
over the last couple of years.

 

I can't tell you anything about the cards (we're running the same card you
are now) or the processor and board details, but I would consider getting 2
1GB sticks. With 4 512MB sticks, if you decide you need some more memory,
you have to throw out some of the old RAM. (If you can hand it down to
someone else, you might want to stay with the smaller sticks.) SW seems to
want more and more RAM, as well as more and more disk space.

Thinking about disks, I'm beginning to think that a RAID setup might not be
a bad idea. I spend a lot of time watching my disk light flash since we went
to SW04.


Jerry Steiger
Tripod Data Systems
"take the garbage out, dear"

 

Jerry,

Turns out, my computer builder just come back with a stronger system for a
lot less money. He saved in several areas.

Part of that savings was that he could actually put in one 2Gig stick of
memory cheaper than two 1Gigs or four 512Mb sticks.

As far as the hard drive, he has come back with a WD 74GB 10000RPM SATA with
8MB cache. Supposedly this drive matches SCSI performance and reliability
while providing simplified connectivity and at a significant cost savings.
I am not familiar with RAID at all, other than it KILLS BUGS DEAD. What is
it and what are the advantages/disadvantages?

 

Wow! That is really surprising. Just a few weeks ago we couldn't even get
2GB sticks. I could imagine that the sweetspot for RAM had moved to 1GB
sticks, but I find it very hard to imagine that it has moved to 2GB sticks
already. Make sure it is good quality RAM from someone you can trust.

I haven't heard anything bad about the SATA drives. The one system we have
with one seems to work just fine.

RAID stands for something like Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. You run
multiple disks to get faster performance, data redundancy (safety) or both.
Google turned up the following explanation:
http://www.uni-mainz.de/~neuffer/scsi/what_is_raid.html

I was thinking of running RAID-0, but I'm a bit nervous about the fact that
if you lose one disk you lose everything. Our system administrator put a
RAID-1 setup on our new FEA system and says that it is actually faster, as
well as safer. It seems to be pretty fast, but it is the new SATA drive, so
I can't really compare.


Jerry Steiger
Tripod Data Systems
"take the garbage out, dear"

 

To bad about the bosses preconceptions. Does he still drive a Model T
to work?

The WD 74GB is pretty fast. I have one. It is quiet, fast and runs
cool.

I've never seen RAID help much. You want the fastest possible CPU. SW
spends a lot of time crunching. Neither a fast graphics card nor a fast
hard drive help much there.

On the memory front make sure that the 2GB stick is from a reputable
source that tests their memory. Corsair and Mushkin come to mind.

 

personally I would go for the 1300 if you want a new card should be quite
adequate imo
I have raid-0 7200 disks and have had no problem after 2 yrs however I don't
think I would bother with this again it really doesn't help that much for
practical SW use...although it really does move data along...cad as you are
aware is mostly about calcs...AMD is noticeably better at this ..spend your
extra cash on the fastest processor you dare pay for.
cheers.