A couple of things

I just updated my motherboard to a Asus M4A88TD-M Evo ( why do they give them such long names?) with 4GB of 1600 corsair memory. Now I am going to update the CPU, I got a AMD dual core Athlon II 3Ghz CPU at the moment.

I am looking at the AMD Phenom II quad core 3.4Ghz at £124 or the slower clock speed 6 core Phenom II 3Ghz at £158.

I think I will be better off going with the quad core, as not much software takes advantage of quad never mind 6 core, been chatting to a mate of mine and he seems to think the quad is a better choice, what do you lot think?
I am also going to get another 4 Gigs of that memory, it is at a good price, so may as well get it. £37 is a good price


Second thing is hard drive, i was not going to bother, but Seagate got a Hybrid 500Gb drive out, a 7200RPM 2.5 inch drive with 4Gb of flash memory. Seen reviews about it and it seems like a good buy if a bit on the pricey side for 500GB, The only problem I have with it is that it is a Seagate, always had bad luck with Seagates, but saying that the 128 seatgate I got in a external caddy seems to be ok.

Again what do you lot think?

Not going to update the video card at the moment, the built in one is a ATI HD 4250, which seems to ok, I have a got a Geforce 9400Gt which I could slot in, but the internal one seems to play HD videos better.


I also need a new case, going for a Cooler master Haf I think, one of the Midi ones, they looks good for the money,

Then that is it, the computer will be updated for another few years, the only other thing I will get at some point is a Blu-ray writer, but not in a hurry at the moment. i just hope my 430watt corsair power supply will cope, it should do., I only got it a few weeks back.

zyborg47

Interesting what you said about the hybrid Seagate: guess the "adaptive memory technology" is similar to "readyboost" ?

I formatted a 8GB usb pen drive as NTFS and used it for ReadyBoost on a Win7, 32bit, 4GB RAM desktop machine but didn't gain any noticable improvement in performance. But that was over usb rather than SATA...

4M2.

Edited by 4M2 (Mon 24-Jan-11 11:46:53)

In reply to a post by 4M2:

zyborg47

Interesting what you said about the hybrid Seagate: guess the "adaptive memory technology" is similar to "readyboost" ?

I don't think it is as readyboost uses Windows, where the Seagate drive is all onboard so it is the drive that decides what needs to be stored in the onboard ram

A SSD unit are far too expesnive for the amount of data they hold, I did look at a 80Gb for £80, that would hold the Os and a couple of bits of software, like Vegas and that is about it. The hybrid looks a good idea, i know one came on the market a few years back but it was not that good.

I got until the end of the week to make up my mind what to do. 500Gb is large enough I think, I already got a 250GB drive that I can also use. I know it wiull not be as fast as a SSD unit, but It should still be pretty good.

Just the problem of it being Seagate.

I formatted a 8GB usb pen drive as NTFS and used it for ReadyBoost on a Win7, 32bit, 4GB RAM desktop machine but didn't gain any noticable improvement in performance. But that was over usb rather than SATA...

4M2.

Never tried that myself, never had a usb pen drive fast enough, a mate of mine done it and said he found no difference. as I said I got 4Gb of ram in here now, stick another 4 GB in that will do, I got windows 7 64 bits so that will be nice with 8GB of rast ramm,

The Asus motherboard I got done a auto tune on my system, it put my chip up from 3Ghz to 3.4 and knocked the memory up to 1600 as that is what the memory can handle

Not sure if it made much of a difference but I have not done anything with it at the moment, got to go to work in a bit, so I may try and render a video tonight or tomorrow


I pretty sure I will go for the faster quad core instead of the slower 6 core, clock speed I mean.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/NEW-SEAGATE-500GB-PIPELINE-HD-... ????

A solid state "scratch" drive would be nice for video files when editing HD 1080i/p with Vegas though

As you say no need to mess with graphics cards - Vegas doesn't need much graphics memory...however a fast multi core processor certainly would be very handy...

i built a pc a few weeks ago using an x2 quad 645 (not as fast as the 2 you picked, granted) but i thought i remeber reading it could only handle 1333 memory - even tho the board i got could do 1600 (and i think the one up from this as well) so just double check the chips can handle the faster memory as you might be wasting your cash on the fast stuff?

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

Again what do you lot think?

Opinions will vary, as peoples' needs vary.

My E8400 does all the office stuff, all the videos, all the games and any amount of tasks I want. Here's my thinking.

My slowest moments are files searches and AV scans, or waiting for heavy duty downloads to complete. The only game I have put off getting is FSX, due to it's heavy demand for CPU power. I figure once I have a quad and assuming I can tweak the system to run as it ought to for FSX, then fine.

My priority right now would be a faster HDD. I'm holding off on SSDs due to their own quirks and cost, and by the time I take the plunge their technology will be more matured. Hopefully by then I'll have ADSL2+ / Fibre too, so that bottleneck will be opened bit.

Focus on the bottlenecks, and forget the Mhz.

I've had the X4 955 for some 18 months and can't fault it.

Converting 45 minute divx to watch on the PSP takes about 3 or 4 mins and the machine doesn't seem to even break into a sweat. My old machine would take 15 minutes and be unusable during the conversion, now I can carry on while the coversion is done in the background.

If I were you, I would go for the quad and the maybe uprgrade to six cores at some point in the future. One other thing - the AMD coolers are not the best, they work OK but for £20 to £30 you can get those temps right down!

Hope this helps

Grim

In reply to a post by 4M2:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/NEW-SEAGATE-500GB-PIPELINE-HD-... ????

I can't see any difference in that drive than a normal hard drive/

A solid state "scratch" drive would be nice for video files when editing HD 1080i/p with Vegas though

Not sure if a SSd drive would make that much of a difference , I suppose it should as the access times would be better, but the price is so high for them.

As you say no need to mess with graphics cards - Vegas doesn't need much graphics memory...however a fast multi core processor certainly would be very handy...

I am not a games player, so as long as the graphics chips can play video and do a good job with vegas, that is all I need. I will have a muck around Tuesday after work to see what ti can do.

At the end of the day if I find I do need a better video card I can get one at another time. The internal graphics can do Hybrid cross fire, but I have no idea what card would work and if it is worth bothering with.

In reply to a post by The_Jimster:

i built a pc a few weeks ago using an x2 quad 645 (not as fast as the 2 you picked, granted) but i thought i remeber reading it could only handle 1333 memory - even tho the board i got could do 1600 (and i think the one up from this as well) so just double check the chips can handle the faster memory as you might be wasting your cash on the fast stuff?

My board is over clocked at the moment and seems to be using the full speed of the memory, even so the price of the 1600 memory is so low it be madness not to go for it.

Decided to go for the quad, just waiting for a cheque to clear.

In reply to a post by camieabz:

Opinions will vary, as peoples' needs vary.

My E8400 does all the office stuff, all the videos, all the games and any amount of tasks I want. Here's my thinking.

I did think about a Intel, apart from my laptop it would be the first Intel I owned, but decided against it, I prefer AMD, I suppose that apart from t he first PC i had, which had a cyrix 166Mhz chip in i have always had AMD.

Intel seems to have confused things now, so many sockets and I would be worried about getting sa board with one socket and finding out I can't update.
With AMD it is not so complex, also the price is better.

My slowest moments are files searches and AV scans, or waiting for heavy duty downloads to complete. The only game I have put off getting is FSX, due to it's heavy demand for CPU power. I figure once I have a quad and assuming I can tweak the system to run as it ought to for FSX, then fine.

i don't really play games, I play quake 3 now and again, but that works on my laptop never mind my desktop.

Video editing is my thing, so rendering is where i need the power and yes I know six cores would help and yes I also know that a Intel chip would do that a bit faster, but at almost twice the price.

My priority right now would be a faster HDD. I'm holding off on SSDs due to their own quirks and cost, and by the time I take the plunge their technology will be more matured. Hopefully by then I'll have ADSL2+ / Fibre too, so that bottleneck will be opened bit.

Focus on the bottlenecks, and forget the Mhz.

That is why I am looking at the hybrid seagate drive. i still need more Mhz as well. another 4Gb of memory will also help.