P4 or A64 for work machine

[[-Stash-]]

Hi, I'm a complete AMD user atm as I haven't been able to justify the price of an Intel setup thus far. However, I'm doing more and more WORK on my computer and feel it's time to get a separate work machine that I setup nice and fast (and OC'd ofc) and then forget about and don't tinker with.

Now then, I've heard some pretty good things regarding HyperThreading and multitasking. I multitask with around 10-15 open windows on average while I work. These consist of jEdit (java text editor), IE5.0, IE5.5, IE6.0, Opera7, FireFox (usualy with about 10+ tabs), Photoshop & Illustrator CS, couple of Explorer windows, Trillian Pro, LeechFTP and maybe SecureCRT. I basically want a work system that is going to remain snappy while chucking all that lot around as fast as possible, but still doing it as cheap as possible :D

I'm willing to spend a little extra to get this right the first time and then not upgrade it for 12-24 months.

Graphics card is not important. In fact I'll put as slow a card in there as possible so I *don't* game on it! Needs to be Dual Monitor though.

It's got to be quiet. *REALLY* quiet. I find the HSF on the NF7-Sv2 to be way too loud. I don't mind water cooling it, but I'm not going to cool it any more extremely than that.

I do not want to hardware mod the CPU or motherboard.

SATA disks is *probably* essential so I can run large case fans slower and still have airflow.

Please suggest a case and PSU. Remember, quiet is essential. Space is not much of a factor, but I'd rather not go bigger than a full tower.

SOOOOOO...

Baring in mind I will overclock to the limits of all the above, do I go for a P4 w/HT or an A64? And what can I expect to get from either? Which is the fastest if you spend the same amount of money AFTER you've overclocked them? Lots of multitasking...

Look forward to your ideas guys!

Thanks (from an Intel n00b)

[WesM63]

As much as I hate to say it , you'd benifit more with an Intel system. 3.0Ghz "C", At least 1gb of ram, 36 or 74gb Western Digital Raptors (fast seek times), Asus P4C800-E...


//sorry for the quick short reply, lunch time here.

[[-Stash-]]

Does HT really make that much difference when you're heavily loading your system with work apps?

Also, just how quiet are the new Raptors? I love the idea of all that speed, but I found even my WD1200JB too noisy to work with, hence the SATA Maxtor Diamond Max +9s now.

[Wrench]

HT is Ok if your using Small dinky programs anything that uses tons of CPU power and access large chunks of data your better off with HT disabled. I am an AMD user and I had 2.4c at 3.2 with HT and I wasn't impressed at all I use a Opteron 146 Workstation atm and it does laps around the intel.

Oh I just got 4 74 gb raptors in raid 5 and yes they are loud scsi equivalent. When you use the HD hard its noisy. I found samsung and seagate make the quietest drives. You could always get HD silencer

[Kanavit]

Stash, if you haven't tried hyperthreading. u should. it is extremely beneficial and really improves multi-tasking performance. a very useful feature in P4 processors. Hyperthreading improves work effeciency by making a single physical cpu core act like two. there fore , you can run mutliple applications simultaneously without performance penalty. Play video and run audio encoding at the same time without a glitch or slow down. Hyperthreading technology makes it possible.

[[-Stash-]]

Thanks for the feedback guys, keep it coming!

Wrench: When you say the raptors are loud, are you talking idle noise (like they are loud when they're just sitting there spinning) or are you talking about seek noise (when they're reading/writing data)? I'm not oo bothered about seek noise, that can pretty much be as noisy as it likes, I'm more concerned with not having annoying constant noise or a whine.

Kanavit: While it sounds great to be able to play video and encode audio doing a bunch of other stuff without it glitching, that's not really what I'm interested in using this system for.

I'm more interested in the "snappiness" or responsiveness of the system underheavy load with thosse applicationa mentioned above.

Also, anyone any feedback at all with the "which is faster when you overclock the CPUs" question? I'm thinking £150-£200 for the CPU now that I've had a little more time to think about it.

Thanks ;)

[Lemina]

WD raptors are NOT noisy. They are fairly silent from my experience. Although having muliple Raptors would increase the noise level, it is very tolerable imo.

Edit: The above comment was concerning seek noise. When it's idle, you won't even know it's there.:D

[[-Stash-]]

Heh, looks like I'm just going to have to get one and see huh? ;) If the idle noise is low I'm one happy camper!

Wrench: What RAID card are you using for RAID5 on those Raptors?

[Wrench]

I got a Promise FastTrack 150 SX4 with 256 mb SDRAM module. (You need to put your own memory on it for it to work) its running Raid 5 3+1 setup. Its fast.. I find that the raptors are fairly high pitch annoyance when the spin up and they are definetly loud when you start using the HD's hard. The noise increases overtime as well. First they are pretty silent and after about 1 1/2 months of good use they get to get louder. Its ok with me cause you can't beat HD write speed. They also Get very HOT, can Expect Hot to touch, about 40 c +.

[[-Stash-]]

Maybe I could get an external hard drive enclosure for a couple of raptors and get a few long SATA leads :D

Still, what's faster using reasonable water cooling (not chilled)? An overclocked £200 A64 or an overclocked £200 P4 w/ HT?

[Wrench]

SATA cables don't do well outside cases.. Some Ijit who invented SATA never shielded the cables I was having problems with signa loss when sata drive was close to my monitor.