Budget Upgrade Advice

[orrelljet]

My current VMC setup (below) is just about to disappear - managed to sell it on while it was still worth something ;-)

Pentium D 945 2 x 3.4GHz
Gigabyte GA8I865G775 etc. etc. etc - ATX board with 5 x PCi
2GB Corsair TwinX CAS2 RAM (my son will get this)
Leadtek 7600GT AGP (for son too)
2 x Leadtek DTV1000T (bloody hard to find now so hanging on to them)

There was/is nothing at all wrong with the system but I'd like to add more tuners, in the form of another PCI card (or two) or possibly go the 2 x dual pcie tuners, especially as I've heard the channel changing speed is improved in pcie, and really thought it was time for a change.

So far, I've worked out roughly what I'd like for most of the spec (comments welcome) but the board is posing a problem. It's been a while since I had to buy one and the technology has left me behind, somewhat. As I said, I'm on a budget (around $400) that needs to accommodate cpu, board, memory (preferably 4GB) and a HDCP vga card.

I'm thinking of something along the lines of this:

Intel E7200
ASRock P43Twins1600 or Asus P5QL-E or ???
4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2 800
Nvidia 8500GT 512MB (HDCP capable?)

That lot comes to just under or over $400, depending on the board. I picked the 2 boards above mainly as they both offer eSata; my backup drive supports it so I thought it might be useful, especially as it also doubles as my temporary space for ripping/encoding. The cpu was chosen as it seems to represent, to me at least, the best "bang for buck" in the current Intel lineup.

I rarely have the time for gaming these days but, when I do, the 2 x 360 extenders provide more than enough to keep me happy so the vga card isn't a top priority - it just needs to be quiet (or better still, silent) and support hdcp.

On a completely different subject...would the Intel boxed fan that comes with the E7200 be man enough to cool the Pentium I'm replacing? Is it the same h/s fan combo that comes with a Pentium D??

Cheers!

Justin.

[Fazz1977]

I actually run the 8500GT 512 in my Vista workstation. The Asus variation on this chipset that I own is completely silent, no fans whatsoever, just a lot of heatsinks.

It's a fantastic card for the money (mine was around $80 6 months ago), and is fully HDCP compliant. I run it at outrageous resolutions running vista full aero playing HD content on my workstation and never misses a beat.

Go for it.

Plus I like that you're running intel stuff. The AMD stuff has always been frought with fail whenever I've used it myself. All of my machines run intel and they never miss a beat.

[orrelljet]

Would you believe that the last time I ran AMD was an overclocked Duron 600 (@850) - the VIA chip was so much trouble that I vowed never again to stray from Intel - a blinkered approached maybe but I've a lot more hair than I would have had ;-)

In the end I went for the exact spec. I was suggesting, with the Asus board. Only differences were the graphics card - I opted for a cheaper 8400GS 256MB @29 - and the memory - 4GB Kingston HyperX.

Any thoughts on the 8400GS? It's the Extreme version, with 30% more grunt apparently; although 30% more than bugger all is still bugger all, in my book. It does HDCP and supports PurevideoHD so seemed to tick all the right boxes. It will be running at 1440x900 but should cope with 1680x1050, should I upgrade the monitor. Only issue I see coming my way is that it's got a fan. It is a Leadtek card though and they normally make pretty quiet cards. Would a 512MB 8500GT (aka 9400GT) be worth the extra $20 (MSI fanless card from MSY @ $49), for my purposes?

Justin.

[Fazz1977]

I've owned one AMD ever, back in the athlon 350mhz days. Wasn't a bad machine but yeah, VIA and amd are a poor mix of components.

Well the nVidia cards are win almost no matter what. The 8400 seems like a decent enough card, but 256mb might be a little light on memory. But you said you don't game much so that isn't too much of an issue. If you're running vista, turn off all the aero stuff and animated windows rubbish, which everyone should do anyway because it just hogs GPU juice.

In the end the extra $20 is up to you.

[orrelljet]

Fair enough.

A 350 athlon? Wasn't that a Slot A?? Haven't seen one of those in a very long time ;-)

Will find out if MSY have the fanless version of the 8500GT for $49 - if they do, then I may swap anyway - $20 for guaranteed silence is a small price to pay.

Cheers big ears.

J.

[bobafett_h]

The E7200 CPUs come with one of the very small low profile heat sink fans that are the current standard on all 45nm Core 2s. It is unlikely that it will be good enough to keep a Pentium D cool...

[orrelljet]

Originally Posted by bobafett_h

The E7200 CPUs come with one of the very small low profile heat sink fans that are the current standard on all 45nm Core 2s. It is unlikely that it will be good enough to keep a Pentium D cool...

Thanks. I had a look at it - all aluminium (no copper) so the Pentium D would have most likely exploded ;-)

I ended up having to give away my trusty Golden Orb II with the sale.

[orrelljet]

Originally Posted by orrelljet

Fair enough.

A 350 athlon? Wasn't that a Slot A?? Haven't seen one of those in a very long time ;-)

Will find out if MSY have the fanless version of the 8500GT for $49 - if they do, then I may swap anyway - $20 for guaranteed silence is a small price to pay.

Cheers big ears.

J.

Well, I decided to swap the 8400GS (Extreme) 256MB for the fanless MSI 8500GT 512MB. BUT, the MSI card has Turbocache, whereas this "feature" isn't advertised on the Leadtek 8400GS at all. I seem to remember Turbocache wasn't a good thing but could do with a definitive answer on this one as I need to return the 8400GS tomorrow.

Bear in mind that this card will NOT be used for gaming.

Seems like a lot of hassle just for a bit of peace and quite to me ;-)

J.

[Fazz1977]

Originally Posted by bobafett_h

The E7200 CPUs come with one of the very small low profile heat sink fans that are the current standard on all 45nm Core 2s. It is unlikely that it will be good enough to keep a Pentium D cool...

My core 2 duo runs with the tiny heatsink, and never gets over 36 degrees at the moment. It's always been cool as a cucumber even getting thrashed when it was in my workstation (which is now sporting a shiny new core 2 quad). The AMDs are always fail IMHO so they're out of the question. A good cooler could come into play down the track.

[bobafett_h]

Those fans are fine with the current Core 2s cause they are 45nm so generate a lot less heat than other processors on larger manufacturing processes such as the Pentium Ds which were only ever either 90nm or 65nm. I have seen a E7200 CPU idling at about 24 degrees on a hot day, and that is very impressive for such a good performing chip.

I have always been a fan of AMD and the last Intel CPU I had in a system was a 600MHz Celeron back in about 1999. My understanding is that AMDs have usually had better heat resistance than Intels (ie, they can tolerate a higher heat before freezing the computer), but this has not always been the case. During the Pentium 4 and Pentium D era, there is no way that I would have touched an Intel CPU. They were just little heaters and the price/performance of the Athlons at the time were brilliant.

The current Intel Core 2s with the 45nm process are brilliant though and I would recommend them over an AMD system unless it was for a HTPC as the current AMD integrated boards are just great and the 4850e processors have no problems with heat. If only AMD would hurry up and switch to 45nm so I can upgrade my system, otherwise I will be going Intel if they don't get them out by the end of the year...