Some points....
corvettedudeman said:
I want to get the most bad ass computer i can what do you think as far as:
sound card
video card
processor
hard drive
how much RAM
You're going to hit two BIG problems....
1. How much $$$ you want to spend.
2. What do you want the system to do.
I'll share some points as I just did a major system update for about $400.
SOUND CARD -- This is a variable. Creative Labs (maker of the Sound Blaster) is the tops in my book. HOWEVER, thier top card (the Audiology [sp?]) is the most expensive, but can do it all. If you don't do your own music composition, there are other cards that can do home theater and games without all the extra bells and whistles. I currently have the Sound Blaster Live! with Live! Drive (an interface port on the front of the computer). In hindsight, I could have just bought the gamer's version (minus Live! Drive) because I really never use it. So, you could go with a lower level of of the Audiology card (the value version) and save some bucks.
VIDEO CARD -- This is also variable. If you want your computer to do it all, ATI's Radeon All-In-Wonder is your only option (TV, Cable, DVD, video editing, etc.). If you just want a kick ass gaming system, there are other cards that perform better than ATI's cards, but they can't do much more than video out. The top-of-the-line ATI card comes with 128MB. However, this is list priced at a whopping $449. Where video memory is concerned, I don't know what to say. I'm now using a basic ATI 32MB AGP card until another one comes by FedEx. Games rock and are hardly showing any flicker. Do you really need more than 64MB video ram? I'd say not unless you're going to do hard-core video editing (and you'd pay $149 in comparison). Read on this and decide how much you'll really need. Less video memory is much, much cheaper.
PROCESSOR -- You have two choices. AMD's Athlon XP or Intel's Pentium 4. The Celeron is a cheaper version of the P4, and worth considering, but here's the skinny on why I made my choices....
Athlon XP of equal clock speed consistently met or exceeded the P4 in benchmark testing (faster chip), AND IT CAN BE OVERCLOCKED MUCH EASIER! I opted for the Athlon XP 2400+ (2.0 Ghz).
You may not want faster than 2.0 Ghz clock speed for the following reasons. (1) Computer components really can't keep up so at some point, with serious number crunching, you exceed the CPU's onboard cache memory and slow to the speed of your RAM. (3) The fastest P4 (4.0 Ghz) is unreal in speed, but their claims of a high speed system bus requires a special motherboard, and special memory, and you are limited to a max amount of RAM in the first slot only. Go past this and that magic speed just goes away. Who want's limits on their system? That, and we're talking about a $500 cpu here.
MAINBOARD -- You don't list this, but here I'll go. I got (for my Athlon) an ABIT KD7-E using the VIA KT333 chipset. It's not junk, but it's not the fanciest either. So far, it rocks. Easy to set up, and no performance problems. I'm quite impressed. Supports up to DDR333 memory and has an IDE interface supporting 133ATA (reverse compatable too). Whatever you do, ask around for the best bank for the buck. Your processor choice will dictate what board you should get, but you can get great quality without going to the poorhouse. Regarding overclocking, you want a mainboard designed for it. The one I bought has a software interface so you can do tuning within Windows rather that do it from the BIOS. No jumpers on the board to mess with for this purpose.
RAM -- This is the big bugaboo. RAM is very deceptive. You neither want to spend a lot of money, but you don't want to skimp here.
I have DDR333 with 2.0 cycle latency (this is important). Memory about 3-4 years ago ran a cycle latency of 3. Most affordable memory runs 2.5 latency. The fastest (just out) runs 1.5 latency. What does this mean? Latency is the number of clock cycles it takes for the RAM to do it's job (very, very basic description). Hence, less is better. 1.5 latency is so new that it's outrageously expensive. 2.0 is pricey, but affordable enough to go for.
The difference? If you had DDR266 at 2.0 vs. DDR333 at 2.5, the DDR333 would have to struggle to keep up with the DDR 266.
Also, high-speed memory that is worth the price should come with a heat spreader (a metal clip of copper, silver, etc) that goes over the chips to help radiate heat away from the memory chips.
DO NOT MIX LATENCY TIMES ON MEMORY! You'll drag your system down to the slowest latency time of all your memory.
Regarding capacity, I'm only using one 512MB memory DIMM right now. I see little reason to start out with more. Nothing (for the most part) requires anything near that much memory to run.
HARD DRIVE -- You left this off, but it comes down to this. Get a 7,200 RPM drive (faster is better) and get the fastest IDE/ATA interface your board will support (I went with ATA133). Your system performance will be directly linked to if you are wasting bandwith on your internal interfaces. Putting a ATA100 HD into a mainboard supporting ATA133 is just foolish. Spend the few extra bucks and shop around....you'll appreciate it.
RESOURCES -- Here are places to check for information and priceshopping....
www.tomshardware.com -- great place to get real info on computer stuff. Be warned, you might have to read a lot to figure some of it out.
www.newegg.com -- great place to see some of the best prices on stuff. Good for seeing what things will likely cost.
www.pricewatch.com -- best place to hunt down the best price for stuff....see if you can best newegg's price on what you want.
FINAL COMMENT -- How fast is my 2.0 Ghz system? Running Windows98SE, it goes from full off to fully booted within 20 seconds.
Game transitions load so fast it's not funny (Voyager: Elite Force running on the Quake III engine).
Hope all this helps.
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