Legit Reviews

Hi Everyone,

This is my first day here at Legit. So if I'm posting in the wrong forum, or am asking a question which
has been asked a million times, please bear with me.

Last December, I made a complete moron out of myself by coupling an XFX 7900GS with a Pentium 4
3.2 GHz, and even more ridiculous components. This year, I'm planning to fix it all, and make myself
a little smarter......lol. Presently, there are a lot of problems with my system, so I won't bore you with
their descriptions.

Here's my system:

CPU: Pentium 4 3.2 GHz (The plain vanilla edition, not the Extreme Edition)
Mainboard: ASUS P5RD2-VM
Ram: Transcend 1GB DDR2 667 MHz (single stick)
Graphics: XFX 7900GS 256MB GDDR3 480M Extreme
Power Supply: A pathetic 450W power supply
Cooling: Just the stock CPU fan, and my 7900GS has a fan too. My room temperature is H.O.T
Harddisk 1: Primary - 80GB Seagate PATA 7200 rpm
Harddisk 2: Secondary - 40GB Seagate PATA 5400 rpm
Optical Drive 1: Sony DVD Writer (black, and not the DRU range) which fails to write correctly 80% of the times.
Optical Drive 2: Asus CD Writer (My best component, perfect performance till date and NO TROUBLE EVER)

Also, I don't have a power backup unit (i.e. UPS), so I plug in directly into the switchboard, which provides all
sorts of notorious fluctuations!

So, from all that, can someone suggest me what are the FIRST few things I need to take care of? A friend suggested
the following, but I want your inputs as well:

1. He asked me to forget everything and first get an UPS and a good power supply, above 600 Watts. Is this necessary?
2. How much can some voltage fluctuations and lack of power affect my system?
3. He also asked me to get some additional cooling. Is that necessary?
4. Which is the best DVD writer (in terms of reliability, NOT speed!)
5. Which is a good (NOT decent) motherboard + CPU combination for heavy multitasking, one which won't hurt my pocket?
6. What are the changes you recommend to that piece of junk up there?

I guess I've posted longer than a first timer legally should.......ha ha. Waiting for your answers!

Thanks.

- Godling

Don't feel bad about you CPU, I run a P4 3.6 560J. Upside is that you can upgrade your board and other stuff and save up for the kick arse CPU, it what I'm doing.

First, your buddy was right on the PSU. Something like the Corsair 620HX should cover you for your upgrades. A good UPS will help smooth our power drops like brown outs.

Wall power changes or drops low enough will cause the PSU to work to hard either killing itself or your system. If you have cruddy wiring in your house then a UPS should be in the budget.

After market cooling can help, I run a Zalman 9700 on my intel chip and under load hit ~47c under stock cooling it was ~58c, now for case fans and such depends on the case. What case are you running? There is also water cooling too.

I use a Sony DRU170C at work have yet to make a coaster, at home I have an OLD Sony DRU-510A 4x DVD burner that is still kicking.

As for board that wont brake the bank, take a look at Asrock Conroe 1333 boards, I'm currently using a Asrock 945G-DVI, both support P4 through Core2 chips.

Another gig of ram would hurt either if your contemplating the jump to vista. If your worried about the heat in your room now, a jump up in vid card isn't going to help there, take a look at this http://www.legitreviews.com/article/506/1/

Welcome to the forums, you sure came to the right place if you want to wise up

1. He asked me to forget everything and first get an UPS and a good power supply, above 600 Watts. Is this necessary?
2. How much can some voltage fluctuations and lack of power affect my system?
3. He also asked me to get some additional cooling. Is that necessary?
4. Which is the best DVD writer (in terms of reliability, NOT speed!)
5. Which is a good (NOT decent) motherboard + CPU combination for heavy multitasking, one which won't hurt my pocket?
6. What are the changes you recommend to that piece of junk up there?

1. Ok, at least use a surge protector with your PC (you can get a UPS if you really want but it might be overkill, I'm intrigued to know how many people use UPSs now, so am going to start a poll somewhere!)

Definitely get a decent PSU. It doesn't have to be above 600w if you get an efficient one. Bigger doesn't always mean better, so go for quality over quantity.
2. PC's rely on stable power to work properly, if your AC line is really that bad then it could be causing some of your problems in your PC, also cheap/rubbish powersupplies will not help this at all.
3. A case fan is a must, especially if you have a hot room. Fit as many as your system will allow ^_^
4. No idea
5. Core 2 Duo is a very attractive range regarding performance to price right now, and they have ones from ~$130 that will out perform your current P4 3.2Ghz!
The Intel P965 based motherboards are a good combo to pair these processors with both for features/price (they also have good overclocking potential as well)
You could even go for the new P35 based chipset, as they are also great.
6. Depends on how much you are willing to spend.
Ideally everything but your video card could do with changing to bring it up to a nice system, in total it would probably cost around $300-400 to do so. You'd be able to really tell the performance improvement after when using it though, so well worth it.

A question; would you be confident with overclocking the core 2 rig, its really easy, and you'd be able to be walked through it by someone on here. If you do it would give you so much more performance for your money.

Dan

Bubba and Dan, thanks so much for the inputs. Really appreciate it.

As far as overclocking is concerned, I think I'll manage it. I was going through that mega guide in the
Intel CPU forums, and it seemed pretty straightfoward.
(http://forums.legitreviews.com/about10789.html)

Also, I've often fiddled in the BIOS to change my boot device, or the VGA adapter to be used. So the
BIOS is not all alien to me.

I'm willing to spend quite a bit on upgrades (till $800). I've heard that the Core 2 Duo E6750 is a great
candidate for overclocking. Not sure though.

Can you tell me what is this nForce 680i chipset thing? I've heard it costs a bomb, but I'm also sure
that the performance must be great. If not that, what's the next best thing that won't burn a hole in
the pocket?

Finally, how about the 6400+? Will it be able to game NFS Carbon and NBA Live '08 with all sliders
pushed to max, SIMULTANEOUSLY? A lot of my friends use that test for benchmarking their rigs, and
some of their rigs handle that decently. (One guy alt-tabs between them like a show-off.....lol)

Thanks.

Yeah, the guide is sound ^_^

[urlhttp://legitreviews.com/article/463/1/]6400+ review[/url].

If you want to run those games to the max (including anti aliasing and antiscopic filtering) then you will need to factor in a videocard upgrade to the list of things to change (or cheat and run them maxxed out at a lower resolution ). Wait, that practically makes it a whole new computer, d'oh.

But yeah, although your graphic card is being limited by your P4, changing the processor alone won't un-limit it enough to get a crazy frame rate boost
What sort of fps are you currently getting on those games? (And running both games at once won't be a problem as when you swap out of the game it will cache it and load the other one).

$800 would get you a pretty decent rig.

Dan

If you are having trouble with your DVD burner have you ever updated the firmware? What type of blank media are you using? What program are you using to burn? Are you multitasking while burning a disc?
http://sony.storagesupport.com/dvdrw/firmware.htm

Major_A wrote:If you are having trouble with your DVD burner have you ever updated the firmware? What type of blank media are you using? What program are you using to burn? Are you multitasking while burning a disc?
http://sony.storagesupport.com/dvdrw/firmware.htm

Major_A, I owe you one. I'm not too familiar with these things, and that page was a complete surprise to me. I've
upgraded my firmware (for which I first had to figure out my model number, and it was a tedious exercise...lol),
and now the drive is writing correctly!

I've written 6 DVDs after the upgrade, and not a single failure so far. Haven't been this content with DVD writing
in a long time! (touchwood).

Thanks for the help.

Now, I have another nifty little question to ask. I'm correcting bad decisions alright, but is this the right time to
upgrade? I mean, I can step up to an E6750 right now and change my rig all within the budget of $800, or I can
wait for something which is around the corner and make a better purchase.

In other words, is this a good time to upgrade, or is there something coming soon which I'm unaware of? I've heard
AMD will release something called Barcelona.......and it's supposed to be really good.

Some information regarding this would be very helpful. Last year, the so called "upgrade" I did, turned out to be
a nightmare.

welcome to the forum...
looks like you have been getting good answers thereso in reply to the last question;

Barcelona is a Quad core chip (Opteron) and its purchase alone would kill your budget.

As for the Intel, i think it would be a good choice, but the overclockers here can give you the best advice on the price/performance for which chip would be the best deal.

good luck!

Any time you update/upgrade your computer there is always something better around the corner. If you never update for fear that something may come out soon you'll never buy anything. If you don't plan on overclocking and want a fast setup look for Fry's ads and pick up one of their cheap C2D and ECS motherboard combos. ECS boards aren't worth a damn but with the Fry's combo deal you are basically getting it for free.
http://www.frys-electronics-ads.com/