Need a jump start! just the basics

These are basically newbie questions, although I have always built my own PC’s, the hardware has changed sufficiently over the last 2 years (and I have been severely out of touch) that I find myself at an impasse in trying to assemble an upgrade strategy. I have tried to research backwards, but how useful is an article that is 6 months old?
As this is an enthusiast forum, who better then to ask and get me directed down the right path?
Following are some statements I believe to be true along with some questions. My hope is that there simple yes/no, true/false type answers. Links to relevant, up to date articles are welcome.
Thanks in advance.

OS = WinXP Pro. All hardware ‘as required’.

Video Cards:
For SLI or Crossfire solutions using 2 video cards, 2 ‘16X’ PCI-E slots are required. (True/False)
Is the use of 2 video cards (SLI or Crossfire) widely supported? (Yes/No)
Does SLI or Crossfire have any use for general applications, or is it mainly a gaming solution?
Does it have any ‘downsides’ I should be aware of?
Does ‘SLI’ or ‘Crossfire’ require environment changes to enable or is it self configuring?

CPU:
I have noted the wide availability of 2 processor cores from Intel and AMD.
Is it my belief that WinXP Pro will automatically distribute the computing chores amongst the available cores.
If true, how well does this work? ( Good/So-So/Poor ).
I have also heard that recent Intel chipsets (965 and 975 I think) omitted a ‘legacy’ IDE port in favor of an all SATA interface solution for mass storage. And that attempts to reintroduce IDE support by the motherboard manufacturers has created some problems. Have these issues been addressed or are they ongoing?

With the die shrinks and new cores being introduced by Intel and AMD, is water cooling still a recommended method to keep processor heat and system noise under control?
Small Note: Due to the cajoling of HardOCP to load and run ‘FoldingAtHome’ (Which I did many months ago), my CPU load is 100% for ~24 hours of the day. Plug >>I would also report that it has presented no ill effects and that it truly is a worthwhile and painless utility.

Motherboards:
I value stability over speed (job requirement). Hence, I do not overclock as past experience was rather painful. Has overclocking matured now to the point where, if done properly, system stability is not compromised? Please note from above that the system is running at 100% almost all the time.
Problems experienced prior were graphics errors, disk corruption (big ouch!).

What is used in the 1x, 4x (if equipped) PCI-E slots?

With the above considerations, do you have any recommendations for motherboards and video card manufacturers? (They should be known to work well together) Please give the Make/Model number.

Again! Thanks in advance. You will save me an enormous amount of effort trying to find relevant, timely information.

Well I can answer some of the GPU questions:

JustKidding said:

For SLI or Crossfire solutions using 2 video cards, 2 ‘16X’ PCI-E slots are required.

Click to expand...

AFAIK You don't have to have 16X slots, but they offer the highest performance. You can alternatively use 8X slots but with the consequence of performance reduction.

JustKidding said:

Is the use of 2 video cards (SLI or Crossfire) widely supported?

Click to expand...

SLi and Crossfire are both supported by most (if not all) games.

JustKidding said:

Does SLI or Crossfire have any use for general applications, or is it mainly a gaming solution?

Click to expand...

It is mainly a gaming solution, but can also be used in other fields such as Medical Imaging or if your work requires alot of rendering power.

JustKidding said:

Does it have any ‘downsides’ I should be aware of?

Click to expand...

AFAIK SLi does not currently work in Vista because of driver problems. Also, SLi and Crossfire are expensive.

Disclaimer I'm not an expert on these forums but I have been around a while and do read alot so I'll add my two cents and people with greater knowledge can expand if my description does not work for you.

Unless you have some serious cash to spend there is no performance gain from SLI they say not to do it unless you are going to buy whatever is the top of the line. Right now it is the 8800GTS and GTX so unless you have 700-1000 to spend on video cards and another 130 on a power supply and at least 160 on a mother board I'd stay away. DX10 compatibility(with video cards and O.S.) is a hot item now with Vista and the 8800 series cards but because of crappy drivers and no games it can't be taken advantage of.

Dual core is distributed by the apps that you run and not so much by your operating system but, with 32bit and 64bit it does matter which OS you have, however 64bit Windows XP is not a popular choice because its not as support by MS as the 32bit Windows XP Pro. No matter what program it is or what O.S. it is on Dual Core(in most cases) will preform better then its single core counter part.

The Intel Core 2 Duo's is the way to go and seems like it will be for a while, they are highly overclockable and run very cool. The quad cores are out now and are expected to drop in price in the near future, but they have not been proven to be as useful for gaming as the dual cores however future games will be written to take advantage of 2,4, or 8 cores so if you got the cash and don't like to upgrade that often that'd be a good place to put it.

Water cooling is not considered to be a requirement now for the exact reason you listed with die shrinking and all. A good heatsink will provide enough room for a nice overclock and still keep your system cool.

For mother boards it really depends on quite a few things like your budget and what you plan to do with it, there are many other places that you have't touched on like hard drives, power supplies, cases, ram and so on but all of that depends on your use for the items and when you plan to build this.

Overclocking has become much easier and in most cases there are step by step guides out for the exact model of motherboard that you choose. It is a crying shame to not overclock those CPU's and in most cases a 75% overclock is easily obtainable. All of the Intel Chips will easily get into the 3GHZ range even on the stock heatsinks.

Lets see... what didnt shmitty answer (nor alt.pured)...

SLI is only needed for pushing tons of pixels... think 24" LCD or larger at native res/high settings (or 20/22" for some picky people). Its usually a bad "upgrade" path unless you plan on getting a large LCD. Its a bad upgrade path because your card will either be still high priced in a year or two, or out of stock everywhere (replaced by newer cards); forcing you to go with a used card. There will always be a faster single card solution, and you could always sell your old card to help offset the cost instead of buying another old card, that won't perform as good as that new single card GPU.

Legacy IDE, or a 3rd party IDE controller, has been used quite frequently throughout the years. I don't believe there are any more problems with them than there used to be. The main reason behind Intel leaving out support for IDE was to help give the industry a little push in that department. While SATA HDDs have been around for quite some time, most optical devices were still IDE. Now we're seeing more and more affordable SATA optical devices. Another concern for some people are their old HDDs, and a good solution is an external enclosure if the single onboard IDE controller isn't enough.

These Core2Duos have so much headroom that there is no sacrifice of stability with these chips when overclocking. While it is time consuming, it isnt as hard as it used to be. The new tower heatsinks are good, and keep a CPU VERY cool. They're also VERY quiet (see scythe ninja plus rev.b, tuniq tower, ultra 120, zalman 9500/9700, arctic cooling freezer 7 pro, etc).

1x and 4x pci-express slots will be used for things like NIC cards, modems, sound cards, raid controllers, ide controllers, usb/firewire cards, etc. However, these aren't as mainstream as most people would like them to be, just yet. Soon, though, they will be... it just takes time.

as for brands, I like dfi, gigabyte, asus, abit, msi, foxconn, biostar, and Intel (for non overclocking systems, mostly). For NVIDIA graphics cards, XFX has double lifetime warranty on some cards, but eVGA has a better warranty policy. They will warrant your card even if you change the HSF of the GPU. BFG has nice factory overclocked cards, also with lifetime warranty. As for ATI, I dont know of any equivalent brands to those. I'll let someone else take care of that, hehe.

With all that said... what do you need the system for, and how much are you willing to spend? also, what parts are included in that budget.

Hmmmm. Your responses are interesting and informative.

As regards SLI or Crossfire. I recall claims that it would allow us to ‘scale’ our video as budget allows. But your responses suggest it’s a non-starter in that category (I never did understand the economics other than Nvidia wanting to create a vertical market).
So 1 ‘16x’ PCI-E slot is all that is probably required for good video response to a standard monitor.
As far as Vista and DX10 is concerned, I don’t think it’s going to be a necessity for many years. So it’s not in my budgeting plans at all.

shmitty wrote:
“Dual core is distributed by the apps that you run and not so much by your operating system”
I must admit I do not understand this statement. Is it backwards to my way of thinking? Would it be true if I rewrote it to say:
‘Apps are distributed by the Dual core processor and not so much by your operating system’ (Yes/No)

I agree that from the 2 reviews I read last night that Intel seems to have a very good CPU in the Dual Core. But I am woefully ignorant of which chipset is preferred, so some clues there would be most appreciated (Also include any AMD cpu chipsets as well plz if known as it is my understanding that AMD is going to release a new CPU fairly soon).

As regards 1x and 4x PCI-E slots.
They still do not have cards to utilize these slots? That means I am still tied to the old PCI slots for NIC cards and such! Yuck!

Water-cooling:
I had to remember why I went with water-cooling in a non-over clocked system. It was to get rid of the CPU fan, and hence the dirt clogging the CPU heat sink. But am I correct in thinking that a majority of the heat load in a newer PC has transferred to the video card?

Over clocking:
I will do some research. To that end, do I need to be concerned about the memory heat load? I have noted some memory dimms (do we still call them that?) that incorporate heat sinks (heat spreaders?) and heat pipes. Is this just marketing or are they getting that hot now?

Enginurd wrote:
“With all that said... what do you need the system for, and how much are you willing to spend? also, what parts are included in that budget.”

The system is in every sense a general-purpose machine. Games, Communications (dial-up support for legacy systems included), Social and Business Event reminder, email (of course!), Photo editor, Archival storage, music jukebox etc. With most of them running concurrently (I do shut down ‘FoldingAtHome’ if I am going to play a ‘big’ game).

I am willing to spend what is required. In that sense I do not have a budget per se. My starting figure is $1500 to include a motherboard, CPU and memory; Video card prices are wildly variable as they depreciate so quickly. Power supply requirement is determined once I have a reasonable estimate of the total system load. So (wild guess here!), $2-2.5K for a complete rebuild (That’s everything. Might include a new case, hard drives etc).

Thank you very much for you input. I now have some idea where to focus my attention.
I have to ask for one more piece of information however. And I am somewhat embarrassed.
Memory timing! I cannot recall which of the clockings was most important (CAS,RAS,Refresh etc). I need a somewhat basic explanation I guess (The memory manufactures web-sites do not break it down sufficiently for me). If you know of a good article on-line please post it.

Thanks again!

I have to ask for one more piece of information however. And I am somewhat embarrassed.
Memory timing! I cannot recall which of the clockings was most important (CAS,RAS,Refresh etc). I need a somewhat basic explanation I guess (The memory manufactures web-sites do not break it down sufficiently for me). If you know of a good article on-line please post it.

Thanks again!

Click to expand...

The first number CAS is most important.

Our own forums memory FAQ has great information all the detail you need

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=760374

Basically what I'm saying is it doesn't matter what O.S. that you have it is up to the applications that you run as to how they handle the requests for the CPU from the looks of things Intel is going to be the leader for most of this year and maybe next year we don't know anything for sure but Intel is looking at going to 45nm by the end of 07 and AMD can't get 65nm right. For a motherboard you want to be looking at Socket T or 775 you also want to look for Core 2 compatibility. 1500 is a very good budget and should buy you a very nice computer, here are my recommendations on that budget.
Proc E-6600
MB NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI The Brand is up to you but you will be able to go SLI later it is better the buy say a 8800GTS(X) now and add another later to extend the preformance of your system when they are cheaper.
RAM CORSAIR XMS2 DOMINATOR 2GB
VC 8800GTS
HDD Seagate or Western Digital make sure its http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpendicular_recording
Case Look around and decide what you want I love my Antec 900 but its a bit much for some people if I had the money to spend I'd get a http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1080113&highlight=TJ09
PSU Corsair 620
Optical Personal preferance I love my song 16x DVD Burner but with the ability to use SATA instead of IDE for your optical I'd rather do that.
My two favorite places to purchase from are www.newegg.com and www.zipzoomfly.com but cruise around the [H]ot Deals section for better prices if you want and the RAM is more a personal choice as well but with the recent price drop in RAM that's now an afforable solution and allows you to Over Clock to your hearts desire. The 680 chipset from NVidia has problems but a drivers update should fix it when the become avaiable. DX10 is now, games and programs are being writen to utalize it but many people are waiting for Vista SP2 before they purchase, I'm not sure what would be the better choice for you though since its not an upgrade but and new install.

Sorry Shmitty, but that's just hard to read.

@JK: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-core#Software_impact

In addition to operating system (OS) support, adjustments to existing software are required to maximize utilization of the computing resources provided by multi-core processors. Also, the ability of multi-core processors to increase application performance depends on the use of multiple threads within applications. For example, most current (2006) video games will run faster on a 3 GHz single-core processor than on a 2GHz dual-core processor (of the same core architecture), despite the dual-core theoretically having more processing power, because they are incapable of efficiently using more than one core at a time

Click to expand...

With that said, most newer games and applications are beginning to take advantage of dual core CPUs, so if you're building a new system, a dual core CPU would be best. They are now the same price as good single core CPUs were when they were the best thing, hehe.

The popular single GPU chipset is the Intel P965 Express (The nForce 650i Ultra isn't out yet; nor do I know if it will ever be, lol). For Crossfire, you have the Intel 975X or ATI Xpress 3200 IE. For SLI, theres the NVIDIA 650i/680i SLI chipsets. For AMD AM2 platforms, its pretty much just ATI and NVIDIA... nForce 500/600a series and ATI Xpress 3200. I'll give board suggestions when you figure out which chipset you need.

PCI-E cards aren't very abundant just yet, as its new technology. It takes time. However, most things are found onboard these days anyhow: HD Audio, Gigabit NIC (LAN), RAID support, Firewire400, USB2.0, etc. Though they are "lower end" compared to a dedicated add-on card, they should suffice most end users. Therefore, most newer systems' only add-on card is their graphics card, hehe. Audiophiles will find themselves using a soundcard, and unfortunately, yes, those are still PCI, since PCI isn't quite dead yet. Some things have started to migrate... modems, usb controllers, firewire cards, parallel port I/O card (since alot of boards don't come with parallel ports anymore).

Heat has been significantly lowered in CPUs, mainly due to the die size being used these days. Since GPUs are usually a gen behind on die size, not to mention the demand or gpu processing power, they are the main source of heat in a newer system. This leads manufacturers to use loud coolers on single slot cards, or take up two slots and hopefully have a silent cooler. This leads me to this recommendation: eVGA is good (if you want NVIDIA) because they warrant their product even if you swap out the stock cooler. As for CPU cooling, check out the Tuniq Tower, Scythe Ninja/Infinity, Ultra 120, Zalman 9500/9700, and Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro. Those are good, quiet CPU HSFs.

Again, SLI/Crossfire as an upgrade path is not worth it. Its only worth it if you need the highest end cards to push the highest end resolution LCD. Otherwise, there will always be a single card solution that would outperform an older dual card setup. Also, the life cycle of these GPUs is so short, that it simply isn't worth it. I bought my 7800GT 1.5yrs ago, and now can't even find one new for a lower price than what I paid ($250 - great deal at the time, since they were goin for around $350).

From my understanding, the heatspreaders on dimms only cool them a few degrees. Which actually helps when OC'ing. However, if you're pumping in 2.2+ volts into your ram, I'd imagine they'd get hot. But good case airflow should take care of this... I really don't see any need for heatpipe dimm heatspreaders, or dimms with fans, etc. The regular heatspreader is good enough for MOST setups.

$2.5k is a great budget. What size monitor do you plan on running?

This is all great info and advice.
As regards single vs. dual core cpu. Lets revisit the original question with the original wording reworked.
Question Restated: "Is it my belief that 'something' will automatically distribute the computing chores amongst the available cores.
If true, how well does this work? ( Good/So-So/Poor )."

Enginurd >> the wikipedia quote is good, but it does not address my specific question.

In order for a dual cpu to be useful, some form of load balancing has to be in effect. I think shmitty is saying that the least busy core would (by idle time) grab the next application. So let's explore a typical situation (and for this discussion we will exclude 'foldingathome' so as to not skew the story). My new dual core PC boots up. It typically will load 10 'startup' applications; I then would load my email client and my browser program. I am waiting for a very important email, but it may not arrive for a while, so (bored) I start a game (doom3), and lets say it starts up on core 2. Assuming that when the PC booted and after I loaded my other applications, we have a ~50/50 split in CPU utilization across the cores. With the game now running, core 2 is (probably) at 100%. Is there any mechanism for load balancing at this juncture? Or would the applications be 'stuck' on their original startup core? Therefore, It may work (depending on the circumstance) good, so-so , or poorly. I.E. what should my expectations be? I think this may be one of those Zen kinda things. If not predictable just say so and let it go!

enginurd >> imho: A motherboard is its chipset! Which chipset would you prefer? then find the best made, best engineered solution.

shmitty wrote, "The 680 chipset from NVidia has problems"
Was not aware of that. Thanks!

As far as memory cooling goes. I guess what caught my eye is the 'disclaimer' on every motherboard website I have visited (under memory) that basically states that the performance claims are contingent on the user not adhering to JEDEC standards for voltage to the memory. But I guess then that is a memory manufacturer issue. If they say 'crank it up' and are willing to stand behind their product then it's not an issue.

enginurd >> Price did not include a monitor. Which means I also am out of touch on prices. Not surprising I guess!

So, how do you feel about raid? I must admit that disk load times tend to get on my nerves. So I was thinking about sticking my toe in again. As all the motherboards support it now, how do you feel about a 4 disk raid 0? My backup solution is a drive stack that is only powered up for backups. I keep 2 copies on separate disks of all data (no OS, no applications). Good idea or Suicidal?

Thanks again very much.

The quote was an additive, the link explained a bit more on how the OS/applicatoin/CPU handle things. But in short, how it works is dependent on the applications being run rather than the OS/CPU (while they still play a role), assuming your going with XP. In your particular scenario, a single core CPU would be choked, while a dual core would be great, since you're basically running multiple threads simultaneously.

Since you have a backup solution, RAID0 would be nice. The thing everyone will tell you is that you increase the risk of data loss. So, if you can afford that loss (if you have a good backup solution), then go for it. Should definately give you a nice boost in performance.

As for the motherboard, it basically is, but there are feature sets that distinguish them. The best P965 Express board would be the P5B Deluxe, but most people don't need such an overpriced board; A GA-965P-DS3 or P5B-E would suffice, most of the time. For SLI, you've got the P5N-E SLI, P5N32-E SLI Plus, and the P5N-E SLI or eVGA 680i -AR. For Crossfire, you've got the Intel BadAxe (nice overclocker), the P5W DH, or the DFI Xpress 3200 IE.

Decide on a monitor, first. A 24" will run you about ~$800, a 22" around $300, and a 20" around $200, while a 19" is around $150. This will determine your graphics card/mobo.

The CPU is almost a given, with the E6600. If you're going to wait for the Intel price cuts (4/22 - rumor), then the choice is a bit harder. Case is peronal preference. If you have local stores, you could stop by and check out which ones they have, to get a feel for your choices and compare prices (online shipping for cases gets expensive).

The motherboards you listed with the Nvidia 680i and the Intel P965 are the ones I have been reading about that have issues. The data corruption with the 680i is a non-starter for me. So I would probably be looking at a 975X board, and will try to find more info on this RD600 I keep hearing about.
Intel is planning price cuts? Oooooh!
And > I already have a lovely monitor. A Samsung 19" 'somethingorother'. The LCD's just don't trip my trigger (There is something wrong with them). So I am 'saving myself' for the lazer displays. I was also planning to use my old case. It is a server 'cube', where the motherboard is sectioned off from the peripherals. Provides excellent heat management and collects dirt like a magnet. I rarely have to dust the computer room! And I think I may try raid again. Last time I used it was many years ago using a 3rd party add-in card. Card bit the dust in less than a year and data went poof. Have not been back to the party since.

Data corruption on a p965 express board? which? where? Theres supposedly a cold boot issue with the DS3, but I've built at least 5 systems with that board and none have this issue (I think its 2x rev1.0's and 3x rev2.0's). I havent heard anythying about data corruption on a P965 Express board. My own Core2 system uses the DS3, and its great. I'm running an E6400 @ 3.2Ghz with only a slight +0.05 voltage bump, and its idling at 32° and reaching 51° on load with a scythe ninja.

The data corruption issues with the eVGA680i should have been fixed with the BIOS update. I know a few people who have that board/problem, and have confirmed that it solved their issues. The eVGA and Asus are the "oldest" 680i boards, and are therefore the most mature, I believe. Unfortunately, Asus is your only choice for 650i, too. Its only now that other manufacturers are coming out with their own flavors of the nForce 600i series, so I'm guessing those will have minor issues as well. As with all new chipsets, there will be BIOS updates to correct these issues.

The Intel BadAxe2 and P5W DH are great overclockers for the E6600 or higher, since they can't reach high FSB speeds (neither can the 680i SLI boards). If you go with a lower multiplier CPU, the P965 Express chipset would be best for overclocking, since they have high fsb limits. There's an AT article on the DFI ATI Xpress 3200 IE: http://anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2891 Also keep in mind that these are new chipsets, so there will be issues with them at first. The Intel chipsets are the most stable, since they've been out the longest.

For your budget, the E6600 would be best, so any of the intel based boards I listed would be good. Since you have a 19" CRT, then theres really no need for SLI/Crossfire. Stick to the P5B Deluxe or P5B-E. The DS3 is also good, but you seem hesitant, so I won't keep pushing it. Although, it is a great board that I've used several times. I've also used the P5B-E, and it also is a great board. I havent used the deluxe, because of its price, but its everyone else's favorite.

An add-in card still gives the best raid performance, btw.

Guess I am just lucky that the 1st things I read are items like >>

Date: October 11th, 2006
Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3
“To be fair, the vast majority of P965 motherboards on launch day had several issues and some still do two months later.”
And >>
Date: December 22nd, 2006
ASUS P5N-E SLI Motherboard
“These issues revolved around audio issues when using SLI and data corruption or performance loss when utilizing SATA drives on the reference boards.”
And >>
“A revised BIOS was introduced this past week that has apparently cured the majority of data corruption”.

The 965 and 680i did not have an auspicious beginning you must admit. J

Intel BadAxe: is a BTX form factor motherboard? BTX is no longer supported by Intel (it’s maker and sole supporter). Or is there an ATX flavor?

My initial thoughts were then is to seek a more mature chipset. The 975X still supports DDR-800 (although not officially), and has support for IDE (something I still need for now).

The P5W64 WS Professional looks interesting, as does the MSI 975X Platinum V.2.
(these are the 2 that pop’d up 1st on search, so not endorsing)

BUT! I need to inform you that I am suffering ‘data overload’. ;-p

I need to read about this stuff. I noted that the Gigabyte board you suggested supports Native Command Queuing. I don’t know yet if the 975X boards do or not.

And don’t get to worked up over the ‘issues’ I read. Note the dates. I obviously need to find info a bit more up to date. It’s just somewhat disconcerting when the 1st links you click on have (imo) major issues. Please recall that was my initial problem, separating old from new data. Speaking of new (possibly bleeding edge). I read ‘somewhere’ about a new ‘chipset’? that can use large memory sizes (>1GB) without taking the Command rate to 2T. Do you have any knowledge of this? I would really like to go to 4GB if it does not trash the timings.

Regarding Raid >>
You wrote >>“An add-in card still gives the best raid performance, btw.”
I am very curious about the ‘on board’ solutions. Are they merely software implementations? I good hardware based raid card is tops, but the price has been prohibitive in the past (thousands of dollars). The majority of the affordable 3rd party cards are no better than the on-board solutions (software based). But that was from about 2 years ago I think.

And >> Yes. Think the E6600 is a very good CPU. It’s on the list that doesn’t exist just yet.
As regards my monitor. For now it works. I would not ‘tie’ the system to it however.