Could you guys advise me regarding mobo & cpu choice?

[champagnemojo]

Here's the deal. I want to upgrade my system, but don't want to spend a great deal of money. I can get either a P4 2.2GHz or a AMD Athlon XP 2600+ with motherboard for about the same price. I feel like I'd get a better mobo if I go with the AMD.

But in terms of speed, are these two roughly equal, or does either have an advantage over the other? I'd mostly use it for office apps and web-browsing. However, I do use SPSS under that other OS on occasion. I also do some audio recording, which also entails a fair amount of audio processing, encoding and such.

I read somewhere in rickenbachers mobo thread that you should avoid the nVidia chipset with Linux unless you're skilled enough to mess with stuff. I'm still rather new to Linux, so I'm thinking of going with a Via. I'm actually looking at these two: P4 Combo (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=33555&Sku=MBM-P4I-2200&CatId=191) versus AMD Combo (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=35543&sku=MBM-A7V8XX-2600). Which one would you recommend more? There's also an AMD combo with a mobo based on the nVidia chip for about the same price. Just as an aside, I don't have the time right now to devote to learning how to safely overclock my system so I don't intend to do so anytime soon. So please base any opinions on the stock settings...although I wouldn't mind hearing which would be the easiest to work with should I choose to overclock later.

I'm sorry this is such a long post, but I'm interested in hearing what you guys would recommend. I've searched all over Google, but most people reviewing the processors and boards seem to be using Windows. I'd like a more Linux-centered perspective since I use Linux most of the time now. Thanks guys.

[arkaine23]

2600+ vs P4 2.2 = 2600+ is the winner!

If you overclock these CPU's the differences become less clear, but good overclocking usually requires more money spent on a cooling device, high-end ram, and beefy power supply.

Nvidia nforce2 chipset- pretty darm good. get epox or abit and you'll be happy. For linux you need the nvnet NIC driver. I had no trouble installing this from source in my remaster of Knoppix 3.2. if you download it in advance and keep it on cd, on your network, or on a neutral partition, you should have no trouble. the sound driver dfor linux does not have all of the features implemented but is pretty good. You should have a decent soundcard and speakers anyway, or else the shortcomings of the current linux driver hardly matter.

[rickenbacherus]

AMD all the way! And actually I prefer the nforce-it was quite easy to set up. Also it looks like the combo you selected compares quite well in price with what I've seen.

One thing you may want to take note of is that there is no line-level out on these boards. :( Dunno about you but for me that was a real letdown as I connect my pc to an f.m. transmiter. I don't have anything to connect to the S/PDIF.

There is now the gpl'd forcedeth driver for onboard nforce network. Kano made installing the graphics driver very nice and easy too. I have never had a VIA chipset so I can't honestly say one way or the other. Some friends swear by them.

The second pair of USB ports doesn't work. Maybe an IRQ conflict. I haven't really put any effort into resolving it as I have only 1 USB device.

I haven't done anything in the way of oc'ing yet but here's where I'm at:
Temp.= 27.0, 28.0, 0.0; Rot.= 4440, 0, 0
Vcore = 1.70, 1.70; Volt. = 3.39, 4.95, 11.55, -16.19, -6.12

That's using the Gnome desktop, running a web & mail servers, XMMS, 3 browsers, irc, the GIMP, and 6 or 8 Konsoles. The CPU is twidling it's transistors waiting for something to do. Of course a G of RAM doesn't hurt either! On that note...not sure how familiar you are w/ pc's but make sure you know what you're getting before you buy any RAM.

I have 2 fans in the power supply, 1 case fan and a coolermaster hsf combo on the cpu itself. Nothing fancy or expensive there at all. OG has some good advice in the post you mentioned about oc'ing. I think the silver paint is a good idea- and would recommend just doing it from the start and having it done. Don't skimp on the power supply. That's often a common cause of premature death for many things electronic.

All in all I am thrilled w/ this box and the only thing that didn't work immediately was the onboard video but as I mentioned installing those drivers is a snap. It was a totally painless experience. It also runs windows in vmware rather well. gluck

[champagnemojo]

First of all, thanks to both of you for the cpu opinions. I was leaning towards the AMD due to the better combos available in my price range anyways. I just didn't want to find out that the P4 would be more stable or something later on. It's also interesting that both of you prefer the nVidia chipset, because that seemed to be the consensus based on my searches too. I was just thinking of compatibility really, because I have a VIA chipset currently and it loads Knoppix without any trouble or need for cheatchodes and such.

As far as the nVidia drivers go. To be honest, I'm beginning to think it might be something I could work with easily. I already use Kano's script to install the nVidia drivers for my video card. I've also had to compile and install, myself, the driver for my stupid HPNA card to get my dsl working at home. And I always use hdd-installs anyways...on both my desktop and my laptop.

It sounds really stupid, but I'm kind of taken with the boards that have 4 USB ports on the rear I/O of the board. I only have 2 currently, and I'm constantly switching around. But I realize I can always buy some extra ports and just use one of the available headers. The lack of S/PDIF doesn't bother me. I plan to use an external card for sound. And I just plug into the back of my shelf system anyways. As you can see, I'm no audiophile. :lol:

I'm assuming the power supply I'm using on my P3 is going to be insufficient eh? Oh well, that's not a big investment anyways I suppose. I don't know how many fans I have...I assume it's just one. I'll check and probably get another one or two. Also, any suggestions on a place to get that silver paint you mentioned cheaply?

Sorry again for all the questions. :D

[champagnemojo]

One little aside...since I'm going to need some new memory anyways, I decided to jump on the deal at Best Buy for 2 sticks of Kingston 256MB PC3200 DDR ($65 after rebate). I shouldn't jump the gun, because I had to choose store pickup to find it in stock and there's still not a certainty of it being there. But in case I do get it, I just wanted to double-check that Kingston *is* a decent memory manufacturer right?

[rusty]

I recently bought and installed Knoppix on two Asus mobos:

A7VN266 w/ AMD Athlon 1800. 512 k Used Arkaines's Overclockix to HD install and get the nVidia drivers therein. Apt-getted updates to many packages. Thiis thng screams but I'm having trouble with USB. Probably not a big deal just no time to fiddle with it.

P4P8X w/ Celeron 2.2 256k for now. (o.k. I ran out of $) This is going to be used as a server someday, and I wanted speed - gigabit lan, SATA, RAID . Used Knoppix 3.3 for HD install , downloaded lan drivers from ASUS website and installed (Arkaines' new Overclockix Technomancer has the drivers already built in but I have to invoke them manually). Using a Matrox Millenium II PCI video card - not great but the price was right.

I really like the A7VN266 - it went together pretty easily and both M$ and linux are pretty happy with it. Good luck!

http://www.ajump.com/ajump/product.asp?dept%5Fid=5120&pf%5Fid=1340149&sku=99%2D99%2D99%2D99%2D99%2D1340149

[rickenbacherus]

silverpaint (http://www.highspeedpc.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=HSPC&Product_Code=SilverPaint&Category_Code=OC)

I almost nevr buy anything at the retail stores locally as they're usually more expensive. Check out ms4me.com for your RAM needs. My own personal experience with them has been a good one. Kingston is great too.

[rickenbacherus]

rusty: Maybe you'd like to start a thread for your mobo. I have the same board and USB works.

[gowator]

Unless you simply must get it now Id say wait till the AMD64 drops a bit further....

Either way, you don't need paired chips so why get 2x256 instead of a single 512.... knoppix supports 4GB out of the box (or off the cd to be accurate) and this leaves you a further slot....

Overall AMD AMD AMD ....
If your on a budget.....

The AMD64 are becoming way more competitive and I guess knoppix will have a native 64 bit pretty much a day after Herr Knopper gets his first AMD64 board :D

Or you can just do it yourself :D at least the kernel can be quickly recompiled and then the debs replaced one by one....

I wanna new PC too but Im waiting till the 64 bit is mainstream....

[arkaine23]

Since the subject of a new powersupply came up, let me recommend a 300w or 350w Fortran/Sparkle brand. They're pretty cheap and pack a whole lot of amps.

I always suggest getting a nice $20-30 copper heatsink with an 80mm fan so you can overclock a little but still run at a tolerable noise level. Thermalright is my favorite brand, though I got an Aero 7 recently that also works well.

I'd suggest Arctic Silver 3 or 5 for thermal goop. It's nearly pure micronized silver and way better than most thermal pastes and pads.

Kingston and buffalo are usually decent ram if you're on a bidget, though not always capable of running the rated speed at fast timings.

[champagnemojo]

Gowater, you made a good point about the memory. It doesn't make sense to go with 256 sticks, since I'm probably going to be limited to 2 or 3 banks of 3200 by the motherboard. So I cancelled that order...no sense in jumping the gun. As far as the AMD64 goes, I'm a poor grad student...I'm not even buying at the high end of the 32-bit cpu's, so I don't wanna wait until these are in my price range. :lol:


Rickenbacherus, thanks for the paint and ms4me links. I like the looks of the 2 sticks of Samsung 512MB deal they have. I think a Gig of memory will be plenty for me, and I've seen some sites that recommend you use multiple pieces of RAM instead of going for one big stick in case one of them goes bad. I don't know how true that is...sounds logical though.

Arkaine, thanks for the powersupply recommendation. And I'll definitely boost my cooling some...what's the cheapest I can safely go on that? I assume I could add more cooling mechanisms later if I decided to overclock my board right? At this point I'm just going to stick with the stock settings I think...though I'm sure I'll change my mind at some point. I did notice one review that showed that the Samsung memory couldn't function at anything under 3 CAS, which they implied was bad for overclocking I believe...but I don't really understand exactly what this means or if it's a major concern. :?

I appreciate all the pointers and suggestions.

[arkaine23]

nforce2 chipsets do get a small benefit from running two sticks of ram (dual channel), but its not nearly as much as they'd like to claim... something along the lines of +5% memory bandwidth. Not a big concern really.

Cheapest is to use the stock heatsink that comes with the retail 2600+. It'll work fine if your case is not stuffy and you are not upping the clock speed or cpu voltage. You could always upgrade the cooling later.

The memory cas rating is a factor of timing, or rather delay between certain memory operations. Running at cas 2.5 is pretty standard, running at cas 2 is even better. Make sure to get PC3200 so if you ever do want to overclock, you can take that CPU up to 3200+ speed by upping the FSB to close to 200.

[arkaine23]

knoppix supports 4GB out of the box (or off the cd to be accurate) and this leaves you a further slot....


When did they add Himem in the knoppix kernel? I've been playing with 3.2 all this time which only support up to 1GB, unless you recompile it... Is himem built into the kernel used in 3.3?

[gowator]

Yep, HIMEM support was added in 3.3

However I question whether its really worth it for 1GB since you gain 1024-868 MB which adds the extra overhead for the paging...

Still I paid for a GIG ill use it :D

So far as I know the HIMEM is EITHER 4GB or 16GB ....
Running with a GIG implies implicitly the 4GB HIMEM support was compiled in....

champagnemojo: The price is dropping fast and the AMD64-FX is pushing down the price of the non-FX stuff. The mobo's are still a bit more but the lower end 64 bit ones are not much more than their 32 bit cousins.

Give it a month or so and they 'should' be less than your paying right NOW....

The perfomance hit on not threading the mem is prety minimal and IMHO well worth leaving yourself an option later.... my appt is littered with redundant small chips!!!

[champagnemojo]

Thanks alot gowater...thanks to your post I did a little searching on Athlon 64 cpu's and now I'm beginning to think I should just wait a little and go with the 3000 version of that. It's double what i was gonna pay for the 32-bit processor...but I guess it would be nice to be a little ahead of the technology game for once. :lol:

I'm guessing that the motherboards that are new enough to support 64-bit are not going to be likely to support my ancient 4x AGP nVidia TNT2 video card though. So I'll probably have to upgrade that too. :roll:

[gowator]

Shouldn't be a problem ??
They will probably support PCI-X but also support AGP....

I's give it another month, the prices are dropping real fast...
This way will at least give you a bit more future proofing...

My thoughts are why buy now andkick myself in 6 months when everone but me (OK not everyone) is using 64 bit.

Im actually thinking of getitng an Operteron 2m way... possibly the cheapest, or next to cheapest available so I can add a second when the prices start to drop further....

The 64 bit is a prety big quantum leap so its not like changing from a 2000 to a 3000 .... its going to be like 486-pentium ....
If you remember (or are old enough) this was also when vesa bus gave way to PCI bus. Although PCI-X has been available on servers for a while its likely to be more common place.... and it will be like buying old RAM, you end up paying more for a obsolete RAM than you do for the latest and greatest.... (try buying 72 pin RAM now and youll see what I mean :D)

[desire]

Champagnemojo- One thing I'd to mention is I checked your two choices and I noticed one of them has a mail-in rebate, personally I'd avoid those like a bad disease, or if you do buy something with a mail-in rebate assume the price without the rebate. I used to work for a large chain and they pushed mail-ins like crazy. Also watched a program and the bottom line is that only 40% of rebate customers do actually get their money. All it is is a legal scam IMHO. As far as CPU choices ....AMD, AMD, AMD. Right now I'm building a Celeron 2.4 system, just to try out. Then it's Athlon64 here I come!!! Right now the Athlon64 3000+ is looking pretty good and in a month it'll look even better!!!! :D .

[champagnemojo]

gowater, though I'm pretty young I remember back before the 486 actually, but I've never looked into hardware. I've always just bought pre-built systems from a local shop and such. So I have a lot to learn in that department...and appreciate any recommendations. As far as my old video card, it seems like some mobos support older AGP cards and some don't. I didn't see any notices about it on the 2 Athlon64 motherboards I've looked at so far. So maybe I'm ok.

desire, getting back rebates depends on what center they go to and how persistent you are at making sure you get them. I've had good luck, but you do have to get on them if they try to suddenly "lose" your entry. :roll: There have been cases where I've forgotten to send them in though. :x

Yeah, the 3000+ does look good...do you guys really think it'll go down in price significantly in a month or two?