New Board and Chip Suggestions

MUTTLEY wrote on 1/29/2004, 3:01 PM
Okay, this has been gone over before, but as technology changes I figured I would ask for an update.

Have a customer who is willing to do trade out, computer store. Right now I have dual AMD Athlon 2400's, an Asus MB, and a gig of ram. Not sure what I should get that's better. My render times aren't usually to bad but would love to be able to preview at higher quality ( Draft Auto blows, and this is the only setting I can use with heavy transitions or effects ).

If you had what I have and were looking to get a new chip(s), MB, and Ram, as an upgrade, what would you get ?

- Ray

www.undergroundplanet.com

Comments

MUTTLEY wrote on 1/29/2004, 5:44 PM
Hate ta do the *bump* but I'm meeting with said client tommorow, and would love to know what I want. =)

- Ray

www.undergroundplanet.com

TheHappyFriar wrote on 1/29/2004, 6:17 PM
Well, I just priced out an AMD Optron at alienware.com for my new boss. He wanted the fastest available, and noone has that yeat (everyone is behind a couple day. :) ).

I'd recomend the AMD 64 3400. it give you just a very very very small smidge of power under the latest p4 which costs twice as much. I'd also recomend the Asus MB that is for the AMD 64 line.
MUTTLEY wrote on 1/29/2004, 6:50 PM
Alright, I get confused, I have no idea what I'm talking about, but let me ask:

If I have two AMD Athlon 2400's, they're equivalent to two 2.0 Mhz, right ? So if the new AMD 64 3400's are 2.2 Mhz, won't I be actually loosing something ? And will I also take a loss from not having the dual processors ?

Would appreciate any explanation in laymen's terms, cuz I'm in over my head here.

- Ray

www.undergroundplanet.com


rextilleon wrote on 1/29/2004, 7:17 PM
I would recommend the new Pentium 4 Extreme--its the fastest thing out there and since the abovementioned Opteron isn't going to make Vegas run any faster and is really awaiting the emergence of 64 bit optimized programs--the Extreme is the way to go---It aint cheap---For a board---Well I like Asus---the 4800Deluxe is very nice---get yourself some Corsair DDR Ram a bunch of 7200 rpm Sata drives and you are good to go.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 1/30/2004, 8:27 AM
The mhz doesn't matter in chips anymore. Take rextilleon's p4 extream recomendation. It isn't faster, it's more efficient. That's what AMD has been doing since the AMD XP series. The AMD 64-3400 performs around as good as the p4-extream (http://www.motherboards.org/articlesd/hardware-reviews/1285_1.html). I say around because, just like video cards, the p4 does a little better in a few areas and the amd does a little better in others. (on the video cards- ati normaly does better in directX apps while nvidia does better in opengl. the differences aren't much though).

When you compare the AMD 64-3400 and the p4 extream, you're talking seconds of differences here, not hours. The big difference is that the extream (as rex said) it much more expensive then the AMD. You probley wouldn't notice a difference between them when working with them (Vegas doesn't support 64-bit, hyperthreading [much], or duel processors, so technicaly neigher processor will be used to their full potential).

If it makes you feel better, i'm building an AMD Opteron system because i'm making a gamble that 64-bit will take off this year (2004). It would be less of a gamble that hyperthreading would take off just as much (because it's already 32-bit), but 64-bit would yield better performance (which matters, not mhz).