Help w/ building a new computer

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Vette5885

Gawd
Joined
Apr 12, 2005
Messages
629
I have come across some $$ (almost $3K) and am looking to spend a good portion of it on a solid workstation/decent gaming rig. I am in need of an upgrade, as I currently have:



  • MSI Neo2 MS-6278 (socket 478 P4)
  • P4 2.8 533 512L2, cooled by ThermalrightSLK-948U
  • 2x512 Corsair select PC3200
  • 300Gb Maxtor Diamondmax10
  • 320Gb WD
  • Radeon 9800 Pro
  • Thermaltake Purepower 420
  • Cheap Case w/ 1 80mm, 3 92mm, 1 120mm fan
  • 16x DVD Burner
  • 52/24/52 CD Burner
So far, I'm looking to get:

  • Coolermaster Stacker (either the 810 or the 830) or Thermaltake Armor Series
  • 1 WD Raptor WD1500ADFD
  • AMD socket M2 (I'm waiting for M2 because of upgradability and for DDR2. Also, I'd rather go with AMD, as they seem to be faster/cheaper than Intel and use better architecture.)
  • 500W+ Power Supply (maybe PC Power & Cooling HP)
  • 1 7800 gt/gtx or Newer
  • 4gb+ DDR2-800+
  • Vista 64 (will run XP Pro 32 till then)
  • TV Tuner (maybe HD)
The questions I have:

  • Do I go with DC 4800+/5000+ and keep it simple, or is there a benefit to a DC Opteron, or even Two SC Opterons with NUMA? The dual CPU option is nice, as I can upgrade to dual DC and play with 4 cores.
  • Are there any sub $500 boards that support NUMA?
  • Will AMD bring NUMA to DC single chip Opterons/Athlons?
  • Is NUMA all that it's cracked up to be?
  • Will the next generation of video cards be Vista WDDM capable?
System Usage:

  • Moderate Gaming - one high end video card will do, I see only small benefits with SLI/Crossfire, and I'd rather sink that money into memory or processor(s)
  • Heavy multitasking - I'll run VS2005, Enterprise Manager, Microsoft Books, SQL Server BI Studio, and Visio Pro 2002 all at once, or Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash, and Acrobat Pro all at the same time. I'm in college for IT, so my assignments require me to leverege massive amounts of technology (and as you can see above, my current system can't handle it).
  • I don't want to give up gaming in the name of multitasking - sure, four cores is cool, but how much will it help with gaming?
  • Moderate video editing/converting - I have many many many tapes of home videos that I want to digitize and put on DVD (or in my server), which will require a good amount of encoding time (uncompressed video can be a bitch)
I know this is a long post with a lot of info (and a lot of questions), but any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you
 
It's hard to give advice about building a computer that revolves around M2--no one knows what's going to be good and who'll make it--because it's just not out there yet.

However, 939 is strong, mature and familiar. It's not like M2 is going to kill it off, not for maybe years to come. I really recommend 939, especially if you have a known budget, not to mention some parts that will certainly be compatible with it. It won't be until November that you'll get the answers you're looking for that people can freely give currently about 939. Which rocks your face, Mr. Socket 478 ;).
 
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