opinions for 2 builds

[Wavguy]

I am assuming I posted in the wrong section first time around after 60+ views and no opinions. Let me try this again...pasting below from original post...sorry if this is against rules

new member and first time poster. Became a member due to the apparent brilliance of most of the people on this forum. I like to consider myself pretty versed but certainly not to the lengths of most here.

Ok, here is my situation, I have been reading different forums for about the past three months at least, trying to get back updated on the technology. Currently I'm on an athlon XP3k+, giga-byte 7N400 pro2, geil ram, etc. Goes to show how long I've been out of the game. Anyway, I'm in the process of building two systems. First will be a home gaming/video machine. Second I am building as a business machine. I want to utilize the Q6600 for both. Here's where I am like everyone else, and ask about the ram and mb. ABit P35 Pro and 6400 ballistix seems to be the favorite here, but as I'm not much of an overclocker at the moment, and especially for the business machine, is there a better suited combo for me? I really just want it to be stable, no hassle cool running system. The home system I may tinker and figured to go with the P35 pro and ballistix so I can overclock to 3.2 which seems to be a very easy overclock just bumping fsb to 400. Any varying recommendations for the business machine? Here's my systems so far.

business
Q6600 G0(own) stock cooler
P35 Pro?? (own for here or the home system)
6400 ballistix???
74g raptor(own)
Antec TP3-550(own)
some pci-e vid


home
Q6600 G0 cooler pending... ultra 120 extreme seems overkill for me
P35 Pro
6400 ballistix
74g raptor (own), 2x500g RE2 WD(1x own second is replacement of IDE dual boot drive)
BFX 8800GTSOC2 320mb(own)
still pending PS, PC&P 610 perhaps?

I added in what I already own, but certainly open to other suggestions. I've been building systems for about 17 yrs so I know my fair share, been through A+/networking, and somewhat of a security consultant. Definitely, again not as versed as most here, but hope I have the aptitude to be a quick learner. Hopefully I've given the right info for you all to help. I know it's just opinion in the end, but I wish to learn as much as I can and make the right choices. Not on a budget or anything, I'm just sensible about my spending need the extra money for snowmobiles, boat, and hopefully more PC's(although I have 6 now). I might have some serious fun with this quad and as I read someone else say, get addicted to overclocking and cooling. Will certainly experiment with lapping my athlon and see what I can do with it.

Thanks All

-Wav

[zanzabar]

why not get an x38 chipset for your hom box so that u get pci-e2

[Wavguy]

I believe the pci-e2 would be referencing a second gen PCI-e slot doubling speed? If so I assume to double speed in a gaming system. I'm honestly not a huge gamer, and I already own a BFX 8800GTSOC2. I don't plan to run SLI, so just wanted a fast stable P35 chipset. Figured on the abit mobo as it's talked about all over the place and also people here say it's a stable over clock. I figured on a Q6600 and P35 chipset. Just need to figure out ram for both systems and have been reading up on technology for about 3 months now. Obviously if there is something else about the x38 and x48 besides the pci-e2 slot let me know. From what I have read, it didn't have much speed or stablity improvement over the p35. I'm open to assistance for sure.

Thanks

[perkam]

I don't quite get where this Business machine will be used.

Best bet for Business machine is just to get a nice 15.4" Dell lappy with C2D + 8600M GT + 2GB DDR2...should be under $900.

Perkam

[Wavguy]

business machine is to be used at my office. I've received the liberty to build my own machine as my office machine. I am currently on a toshiba tecra M3-s336 laptop that I just had to buy an additional 1 gig of ocz because it only had 512 mbs the way their IT support configured my laptop. They paid over $2000 for this laptop a few years back and in my opinion it's painfully slow for what I do in my office. In my opinon they paid way too much and I need multitasking performance and seems the quad core will suit my needs perfectly and has come down in price...etc etc. Basically I can build whatever I want, and still be saving them more than $1,500. I'm certainly open to advise on what to buy, but from all my research the past 3 months or so, I've come up with the list from my original post.

[Max0r]

What do you do with the business machine?

[Wavguy]

standard office stuff.

Word
excel
outlook
cad
acrobat
photo shop
other business type apps including java based, FTP, thankfully no html work

typical day I could have acrobat running, several java based apps, excel, work, access and outlook with 10 emails and 4 email drafts all at the same time. To say the least I multitask because of my work load so I need something to assist in getting things done so I don't have to put in 70 hours a week and get paid for 40. Yah, I'm one of those guys, I suspect there is about 50 more of us here. Anyway,hopefully this gives a better idea and do appreciate any insight I can get for sure. Now I as I figure to end this, I look at my screen and I'm obviously typing this post, but I realize, I have 21 other open tabs right in my firefox. Trying to learn about all this new technology is so time consuming. I've been doing this since I got home 4 hours ago and likely will do it for another 4 :) we having fun yet?

[Max0r]

Yes. Lots of fun :D

I take it CAD takes advantage of 4 cores? Quadcore won't do anything for your non-CAD multitasking (just so you know), unless perhaps Photoshop can utilize multiple cores for large batch runs (this I'm not sure of)... unless you've got some crazy stuff running in those browser windows and documents ^_^

I don't know how large your CAD projects are, but it sounds like 2 gigabytes of RAM is your minimum, especially considering all you got running. Again I don't know much about CAD but depending on the project and stuff, the video card may make a difference. Aren't there special video cards just for those types of applications? :banana::banana::banana::banana: aren't there some cad projects that eat up like 4 gigs of RAM easy? Again I don't know about CAD so you gotta fill me in on it!

Either way, a quad will help if you're doing all that. Just making sure you know that non-CPU-demanding multitasking is not helped by more cores. Perhaps you already know that.

Pretty much can't go wrong with a PCP&P ;) But you're paying 3 times more than you need to most likely.

Just so you know I haven't messed with the new intels myself, but my socket 939 Opteron system I OCed a 1.8 GHz 165 to 2.7 GHz (nothing special among OCers) 24/7 rock solid, 2x1gigs of OCZ PC3200 from 200 MHz to 225 MHz (nothing special) all day and all night. I cut the IHS off of the Opteron (mounting bracket required modification for heatsink to make proper contact after that) & lapped the XP120 for a gigantic temp reduction (not done by most overclockers, but still pretty common). Didn't increase my overclock one bit. In fact I lost 50 MHz on the CPU (before it was 2.75 GHz) (big deal) because I slightly damaged it with some ungraceful razor work when cutting the cover off. Either way she's rock solid, overclocked heavily, and very reliable. This isn't to mention my secondary and previous systems. This is my main rig :D

By the way my main system WinXP never runs a page file ;)

That being said I may not know anymore about the new intels than you. I've been doing lots of browser jumping myself looking up info for a gaming build my friend wants to do.

Are you familiar with stability testing procedures and concepts?

By the way, I have no idea how those bananas got there....

[zanzabar]

for cad and other 2d/3d rendering apps u should pick up an x19x0 xt (and flash to a fire gl if ur hard core cading), if u go nvidia for rendering stuff outside of dx/10 with special nvidia tuning the performance and picture quality suffers

[icon57]

for your business solution, i would think intel (975) bad axe 2 mobo, some corsair ram, and the vid card of your choice. that would/should be a very stable setup for your business...imho

[ExodusC]

For the business system, you could even buy a cheaper dual core if you're on a budget.

You really don't need to get an X38 board unless you intend to upgrade your 8800GTX, and even then you don't need PCI-E 2.0, though it is nice.

P35 boards are nice budget choice.

All in all, the builds look solid. Just throw a 7600 or 8600 in that business build.

[Wavguy]

apparently last time I logged in my reply didn't post. I'll work through it again...

@ MaxOr, I wish I could say I did realize the quad would be beneficial for my day to day stuff. I thought you could assign tasks(programs) to certain cores. I must have misunderstood some reading or maybe the article was wrong? Not sure but I guess I will use the Q6600 I got today for my home build and maybe get a dual core E6850 for the business system. Hopefully my ram needs will not exceed 2gb but if they do, I can always add more. As for the video, as zanzabar referenced in a later post, from what I know the firegl's are known for strength with business apps, just very expensive.

and speaking of, zanzabar, I couldn't identify the card you referenced but did find a x1900 and x1950. Did you just reference "x" to just reflect different series models? If so, I did find that but was more expensive than I thought I needed. I figured a sub 100 would certainly suffice. Been used to a 128mb 6600te onboard with the laptop, granted laptop is slow but not 100% fault of video. Not to mention with prior desktops, I was lucky if they had 32mb of video. People at my office just don't make smart decisions on the PCs they purchase. I'm of course trying to change that.

@icon57, I did look at the 975 originally but thought after all the various reviews synopsis was the p35 was superior. Anything specific about that bad axe board that would pull me away from the p35?

@ ExodusC, yah I might go with the dual core as mentioned earlier, but wouldn't necessarily be cheaper with the E6850. I suspect at that point to get the 1333 bus for speed. It seemed to surpass the quad, hands down, in most tests I saw but was figuring on the quad for added cores. If that's not going to be beneficial maybe I will go back to the the dual. I was hoping to find a decent 7600gt relatively cheap as it seemed like a middle road card.

Basically in a way I feel more confused now, but I appreciate all the opinions and it's got me thinking more. I think I just need to continue to read, continue to bounce ideas of smarter people than I(hence most of the people here) and hopefully I'll eventually end up with a system that will last me and not cause issues. Last thing I want is to finally have the freedom to get what I want, then have that be a hassle. Won't be able to blame anyone but myself.

Anyway, happy to be a part of the community, and hopefully I'll be able to repay the favor and help others. I've read some posts before I had access to posting, that I wanted chime in on. Can't recall what they were now.

Have a Great Night all

-Wav

[Max0r]

@ MaxOr, I wish I could say I did realize the quad would be beneficial for my day to day stuff. I thought you could assign tasks(programs) to certain cores. I must have misunderstood some reading or maybe the article was wrong?

What I said is that I don't think quadcore helps with surfing and documents, unless they some DAMN CPU INTENSIVE websites and documents, which statistically is not likely. In other words, I was able to do the same thing, have 25-30 things like that open at once with a Duron 750 MHz and not suffer any sort of slowdown as long as my RAM wasn't used up, because that :banana::banana::banana::banana: is just not cpu intensive. Now if you got some CPU intensive stuff going on, which is either multithreaded, or you got multiple CPU intensive operations going on, then quadcore is definately where its at. But if you have only 1 CPU intensive single threaded operation going on, and 50 webpages/documents, most likely a SINGLE CORE would still be fine. Do you see what I mean? This is a performance concept.

Right now my CPU usage is bouncing between 0 and 1% because I have nothing but browser windows, folders, e-mail client, and a bunch of background programs open. My dual cores are doing nothing for me now. A single core would yield the exact same performance in this scenario. No CPU intensive stuff! This is computing ABC's here. I'm not talking about specific technologies.

Now if I start an mp3 batch encode, then with dual core, everything else will be smoother while that goes on. If I ran 2 or more encodes at once (mp3 encodes are single threaded), then a quadcore would run things smoother (and be able to double the rate of output with 4 encodes at once).

Yes you can assign a process to whatever cores you want. This can be very useful at times :)

[Wavguy]

well I guess in a way it does make sense the way you put it but I guess what it comes right down to, I still don't understand a multithread application is it would seem. I thought multiple instances of a single program, i.e. multiple browser windows, would be technically multiple threads, no? I'll just have to read about the technology more. At this point I feel so helpless on making the right purchase as I don't understand what differences in the varying intel processors would benefit my day to day life. From what you are saying, I figure I'd be fine with a single core pentium. or maybe a xeon? I guess I'm just being slapped into reality that I don't know enough about the programming side to understand this thoroughly. I'll just google "multithread" and read more about the technology and what would make a program utilize it. That way I'll have better understanding of what my office needs are and I'll be able to make a wiser decision on what I buy and likely recommend to my entire office as I foresee that in my not so distant future. Of course I'm happy to get assistance here also. People seem nice enough to be helpful to novices so I think I'm in the right place.

-Wav

[Wavguy]

ok, now I'm even more confused. This website http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/multithread/excerpt/ch01.html leads me to believe what I originally thought was correct, regarding the programs benefiting from a multi core CPU. Basically the section " What Is Multithreaded Programming?" & "Why Write a Multithreaded Program (Why Use Threads?)" are right along what I originally thought. Is all of the info on this page not correct or am I just missing something obvious? Hopefully others will feel the same as I normally do what I say, "there's no stupid question when you don't know the answer". However, I feel like this was a stupid question as I thought I understood "multithreading" unless that page I just sent is wrong, then I would be wrong.

-Wav