how do i spend £6000?? dream machine- - will b really built

[PHILIP1193]

ok i have a budget of £6000 to spend on a pc what i spend it on???
if you would post me a full system spec up to the value of £6000. basically this machine has to get me top the 10 (in the world) in pcmark04/3dmark01/3dmark01. thats how good it has to be :attn: .

now with £6000 :eek: :eek: it is a dream machine i guess, if this manages to come together i will do a project on the build etc!!!

so go on spend £6000 thats about $11,000 this system will b really built so i need help. :attn: :D

whole system specs would b good not just certain parts.

Phil

p.s. remember nventiv is no longer in existance so... i can't get one of those anymore :confused:

[aNTiChRisT]

Getting in the top 10 for an everyday machine isnt likely... its all No2 cooled.

Apart from that why not space it out over afew years and get an amazing rig every year? :)

~t0m

[kpiciulo]

$11,000!!!! That said you should give me $5,000 and then we could both have amazing machines. :burn:

You'll probably want to do dual processors, if for no other reason than you can. And, if it's possible get that video array technology alienware has, and set yourself up with dual ATI X800XT PE (or NVIDIA 6800 Ultras whichever your preference)

There's a start, that's an obscene amount of money, i'm not even sure how to spend it.

[CircuitBreaker8]

Dual FX53
4GB ECC ram
Dual 6800 ultras
lots of 15,000 rpm hdd's
mach 2 coolin

[KOXC2003]

Yea I'm not sure how you could spend $11,000 smartly. If its a gaming rig go with a FX-53. If your doing a lot of encoding/ editing get a Opteron dually.. whatever the top model of opterons is these days. I forgot if Opterons had motherboards out that could be overclocked yet, not sure on that one. If you get the FX-53, try and make your Vaporchill Cascade setup, there are some guides around. Really for 11,000 you could get someone to make it for you, I'm sure some people on these boards would make one for you.

Those are todays CPU/ cooling options, but I would wait a month or so, Intels working on the 775 socket setups, and some bugs are being worked out now. DDR2 looks VERY promising also.

I agree with antichrist, spread it out, upgrading more frequently will give you a better system over the next few years, not just buying a kick-a** system now and have it be mid stream in 4 months. Well it would probably still be over average then, but not amazing as it would be now.

Remember to save some of that money for games!

Also if it is for games, a dually will be slower then one processor, assuming your only running the game. If your running the game/ encoding at the same time then thats a different story.

[PHILIP1193]

is it possible to run dual fx-53????

so what you saying what a month or and get the new socket?? with new memory and new pci express graphics etc???

phil

[ajrettke]

well if you want top of the line gaming, dualies are out. Goto the SMP and read stickies for those who think a dualy is better for gaming.

Basicly if you want top top of the line stuff, your gonna want to run 2x256 of the best RAM available, and from the 3dmark charts it looks like a p4EE is posting the top scores, PCI-E video card (toss up, the highest is a nvidia, but there are the rest are ATI's....so that much just be one really special 6800 or else they're just hard to come by), then your gonna want 2 phase change cooling systems, one for your proc and one for your video card....and possibly a third on the northbridge (I'm not sure how hot these get or if it even heats up at all really).

This could be done for far less than 6000lbs, but if your going for that high of a record you better know what your doing because cash is 10%, knowhow is 70% and luck is 20%.

[rsjrv99]

Get an Alienware Area-51 with all the really cool features. IF you do it right it tops out at around $10,700.

[hUMANbEATbOX]

about the alienware..

he is doing it as a project somewhat i beleive, if it happens. buying a one piece unit from a store with no ocing will get him nowhere.

if you got that much money, then you could get a huge lcd hdtv monitor and complete racing car seat/pedals + insane shifter and wheel.

and with that much cash, you could get a few EE's, keep the best clocker and ditch the rest.

in fact i would do that with all the components. buy at least 2 of everything, save maybe your mobo/case/psu, keep just the best set of ram, the highest clocking card, and the fastest EE.

[Sjaak]

For gaming, get the new dual 6800 nvidia's, and probably a 2 way opteron or Xeon thing with 4 GB of RAM. dual prommie should be no problem, 2.5Ghz for the opterons and 3.5Ghz for the Xeons should be possible. Get 4 raptors 73G in RAID 10 for windows and games, and another 2x200gbyte for storage.

Looks to good to be true...id go creative if i were you.

[CircuitBreaker8]

I would buy a 5,000$ computer and get a 30" LCD moniter and spend the rest on surround sound

[SimGuy]

Dual Opteron 250's.
Tyan Thunder K8W
16 GB PC3200 DDR SDRAM (Registered ECC)
LSI MegaRaid U320 Caching SCSI Controller (128 MB ECC SDRAM onboard)
2x Seagate Cheetah 15K.3's RAID-0 For OS & Apps
6x Seagate Cheetah 15K.3's RAID-5 for Data
One of those MegaCube Cases.
2x VapoChill LS
Audigy 2 ZS Platinum
Intel 1000 Dual-Port NIC PCI-66
X800 XT PE
Dual Dell 2100FP's (those massive LCD's)

Spend the rest on a kick-ass surround sound setup. Minimum 5.1 and none of that pre-boxed **** :)

[hkh]

Wait until the socket 939 FX55 comes out that will be clocked at 2.6GHZ.

[hUMANbEATbOX]

Dual Opteron 250's.
Tyan Thunder K8W
16 GB PC3200 DDR SDRAM (Registered ECC)
LSI MegaRaid U320 Caching SCSI Controller (128 MB ECC SDRAM onboard)
2x Seagate Cheetah 15K.3's RAID-0 For OS & Apps
6x Seagate Cheetah 15K.3's RAID-5 for Data
One of those MegaCube Cases.
2x VapoChill LS
Audigy 2 ZS Platinum
Intel 1000 Dual-Port NIC PCI-66
X800 XT PE
Dual Dell 2100FP's (those massive LCD's)

Spend the rest on a kick-ass surround sound setup. Minimum 5.1 and none of that pre-boxed **** :)

can you overclock on that tyan? dual vapo's at stock speeds would be pretty funny. :p

[fiji]

why not buy some moderately priced computer like every year?


since this "top 10" will be obsolete in 6 months anyway

[CPL.Luke]

the alienwares are overclockable

They are coming out with a new system that can have dual graphics cards (cant get that anywhere else)

Then for the project part of it I would get a mach II or some sort of phase change cooling setup and spend a long time trying to figure out how to mod the alienware to use it

p.s. that new line of alienwares is gonna come pre-overclocked with dual xeons, and I would bet they cut some kind of deal with intel to get the best clocking cores so if you hooked it up to a mach II or whatever you could probably get one of the highest clocked xeons around

edit
link for the video array stuff
http://alienware.com/alx_pages/main_content.aspx

[hrhrhrFOOT]

Why bother doing that? As other people said, buy an fx53 socket 939 system right now with a vapochill LS(nventiv is outta business :() and some nice memory. If i were you, i would get some kingston valueram, btd43 hynix ones; it'll be fine for what you are doing. Get an x800xt, and most importantly:


SAVE THE REST OF THE MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You can upgrade your computer often so you will always have top of the line!

[rsjrv99]

the alienwares are overclockable

They are coming out with a new system that can have dual graphics cards (cant get that anywhere else)

Then for the project part of it I would get a mach II or some sort of phase change cooling setup and spend a long time trying to figure out how to mod the alienware to use it

p.s. that new line of alienwares is gonna come pre-overclocked with dual xeons, and I would bet they cut some kind of deal with intel to get the best clocking cores so if you hooked it up to a mach II or whatever you could probably get one of the highest clocked xeons around

edit
link for the video array stuff
http://alienware.com/alx_pages/main_content.aspx


Yea, and that new ALX comes with all-ready liquid cooling.

[Busty St. Clair]

personally i think its crazy to spend 11k on a dream system. i couldn't even spend half that going all out with dual flat panel monitors and dual opteron 250's. but since ur aiming for the top i would get a 939 fx51 vapochill cascade and another vapochill for a x800xt when it comes out. oh yeah and some of that new corsair memory with samsung chips that do 2-2-2-5.

[Drec]

DUDE! buy me a decent video card so i can play sum games! :cry:

[Flashfx2]

If you wanted the fastest benchable system wouldn't dual cpu's be bad? I imagine the best overclocking motherboards only have one cpu since dualies are most likely built for stability.

[ajrettke]

Did anyone read my post?
If you want to be top 10 in the world for 3dmark and the like you don't wanna go dual. 3dmark is not an SMP application so the second processor just keeps the one bogged down from a great OC, the dual mobo's aren't designed for crazy OC's, and lastly, ECC memory is terrible for performance.

If your goal is truly be in the 10 top, then completly forget about dual setups...and why wait for the next best thing? Your gonna be waiting till the end of the world for the "next best thing"

If your goal is to spend 6000lbs and have a solid computer for a long time, then I would say go dual with a ton of RAM no doubt, but if you want to be top 10, you gotta go for one thing, speed.

[CircuitBreaker8]

why not buy some moderately priced computer like every year?


since this "top 10" will be obsolete in 6 months anyway

Best idea i've heard, in a year, whatever you get is gonna be "dated"

[CPFitz14]

It definitely won't be dated in six months.

If it were me, I wait for PCIe and newer dual motherboards. I'd go with 2 Dual Core AMD processors, whatever the fastest available were. The maximum amount of RAM. Dual video cards. Dual 23" Apple HD Cinema Displays. I'd wait till after Christmas to start configuring this system. Too many new things are coming out.

[Fast420A]

The New Apple Cinema Displays are out. $3299.99 for the new 30 inch! 23 inch is down to $1999 and 20 inch is down to $1299. According to Apple the 30 inch display requires NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL Card.

Anyways, get ready to learn how to extreme cool, volt mod, buy a few of each component to find the best of the bunch and many other tricks of the trade because that's what it takes.

[CPFitz14]

I just checked Apple's site a minute ago, and was coming back to post about the new 30", but it looks like you beat me to it.:D I'd take one of those for sure; and if I had 11k to spend, maybe even two.:D:D

-CPFitz-

[SK8]

Best idea i've heard, in a year, whatever you get is gonna be "dated"

thing is that everything you get is outdated so its up to you in deciding when you should buy, waiting seems silly in my opinion get what you can atm, the nex gen wont be 4234 x better :P

[PCGUY112887]

You know how many PSU's your going to need... not to mention the huge server case it will be in :P

[SK8]

just make a farm! im serious make a cluster so your main cpu is never loaded :P

[Chowdy]

Open up a LAN center!

[Sjaak]

Support those in need! (like me..i could use a new VGA)

[Dark Spot]

Go buy a nice Dell Dimension 4600.. I heard those baby's fly! And with any extra cash you have left over. Feel Free to send it through Pay Pal to username KevinPfingston..

[Mr.Guvernment]

dam and i thought my $4k buget was enough and i am going dual opteron!!


$10k is a ridiculous amount and you could build 2 wicked top of the line ssytems for that much!!

[Sjaak]

Actually, that guy only started the thread and has responded only once, so i'd say its a hoax.

[PCGUY112887]

Remember England has a totally different time ;)
I dunno if he's really going to spend all of that on a comp... but even is he was BSing why would he just abandon the thread?

[Sjaak]

Remember England has a totally different time ;)
I dunno if he's really going to spend all of that on a comp... but even is he was BSing why would he just abandon the thread?

Im in NL..almost the same :p

Whatever, lets just see what he makes of all the 'advice' he is getting.

[PHILIP1193]

i didn't abandon this thread!!! yes england is far behind people in america most of your posts are in the mid hours 1am to 6/7am and im asleep then - so sorry for not replying - like my computer but not that much

as for all the advice i have been getting i have read all your posts and listened and pondered them. and i have though about what to spend it on

i have slept on the idea and £6000 or $11,000 dollars is a lot so i decided to spend £3000 on a computer which is about $5,500 so with this i will get a 3.4Ghz p4ee with a vapochill phase changer with 4Gb of memory with the top of the range 6800 ultra GT (the nvidia as it is future proof i.e. pixel shader 3 support) with a nice water cooling for NB etc. i will with any money i have left build a second system!!! As people have said build a good computer or maybe one good and another second and save the rest and then update the computer when new hardware comes out?
also i will get a 7.1 surround sound set up with a 30" tft

have i done the right thing??

Phil

[Drec]

have i done the rigth thing??

i dont see anything in there about the part..where you buy me a 6800 ultra..so i guess not
:eh?: :cry:

you better be good at Ocing the card and the chip for top 10.

[Sjaak]

The P4EE is a good choise for gaming, but theyre only socket 478.

Get the Abit IC7Max3, or the P4C800 DLX then, and 4 sticks of the fastest 1 GB DDR memory you can find.

The Max3 has 2 RAID chips onboard, so you wont need any extra cards. The raptors (2x or 4x the 74GB one) are very good at it.

[PHILIP1193]

well i know a couple of people running there 3.4ee at 4.5Ghz so im sure they will help me get it that high and as for the 6800 ultra i aint sure on how the o/c. the abit ic7 max 3 sounds good but which is better out of them two boards for things i know a lot of people have the abit board. The raptors are good but i was thinking the x4 chetea's in a raid 0 that should be quick with yea 4Gb of ram and that should b one high flying computer.

Any more opinions on that?

Phil

p.s. Drec ill get u a card if i do have enough money left lol although u ahve to put a good case forward (im j/king) ut u can still tell me y u want one. :oP

[Sjaak]

the cheetahs sound fast :)

The max3 is good, stabile. has standard mosfet cooling, and the mobo looks cool (black pcb) you will also enjoy the onboard Gbit CSA lan (= much faster then normal PCI gbit lan)

[aNTiChRisT]

The max-3 is a great board, and with afew volts mods its the definative s478 board.

I think 4gb seems like overkill, save yourself £500 and go for 2gb, thats plenty.

Graphicscards up to you, but for AGP the x800's are prooving better. I'm still torn between the performance of the x800's and the PS3.0 of the 6800's

Get a 3.4ghz EE

You'll need a beastly PSU, there is a US make that is the best, it costs loads but they are amazing for stability.

Phase on the CPU and water on the NB/GPU sounds like a good idea, but its ambitious don't know what your previous skills are, but you have friends as you said. Just dont send it off to them -- watch them and/or get them to show you how to do it (assuming you dont know, of course :))

Then save the rest, 2 years down the line and a bit of interest and thats ANOTHER ownage rig -- this time you'll only need to buy a new socket attachment for your phase changer.

~t0m

[Sjaak]

For a PSU, get one of the 500W power thingies from enermax or thermaltake. I even believe i saw a 680W ATX somewhere.

[boffin2163]

just wondering where in England are you from i might have to pop along and say hello to this dream machine lol

[KOXC2003]

Your going to have voltage problems with 4 Gb of ram. Some times motherboards have trouble giving 2 x 512 Mb sticks stable power. Plus there is absolutely no need for 4 Gb of ram with games, 1 gig is more then enough, I would get 2 x 512 Mb and get a Max3 with Madcats volt mod (head over to the abit forums and PM madcat, he sends you everything you need). His mod helps get the vdimm levels much more stable.

Less can mean better results, and will in your case.

Take a look at the top 10 scores, I highly doubt any of them are using 4 Gb of ram, probably a lot of 2 X 256Mb setups.

edit:

For your PSU, remember how much the power supply can put out on each line means more then the max output. For example a 480 Watt power supply might do better then a 550 Watt power supply if it puts out more on the 12V line.

Thinking some more.. at 4.5ghz your FSB speed would be about 264 Mhz. Because your main focus is gaming benchmarks you probably want to do this in 1:1 with high latencies, instead of going for 5:4 and running 2-5-2-2. Maybe Adata PC4200 or OCZ PC4200, both should work. Maybe someone can coment on what ram will allow you to run the lowest timings at 265 Mhz.

[ajrettke]

Kox is right on with the RAM, in my first post I said to go for 2x256, yes it's not what you want for day to day use (so buy 2x1gb (or better yet 4x512) and 2x256, put in the 256 when your benching really high, and your gonna need to phase change cool your video card to get insane 3dmark scores.

Also for a PSU I'd recommend an antec 550 watt true PSU, it has adjustable pots (so you can increase the voltage on your rails).

For HDD's, there not gonna effect your 3dmark scores, but if you want the best, your gonna want maxtor atlass 15k SCSI drives, and run em in a RAID 0 array (no point in going more than 2 drives in a RAID setup unless your running PCI-E or PCI-X or 66mhz PCI slot because your bandwidth is limited to 133mb/s, which 2 of those drives RAID 0'd would easily saturate.

For simplicity I'd just pickup 2 73gb raptors and RAID 0 em and they'd be almost as fast as the SCSI's in a single user environment (If your gonna serve out files, this is where SCSI's shine when there are multiple users hitting them).

[rsjrv99]

Go for 8 GB man! Just get the kit that contains 4 2GB modules. You'll be set for the next 5 years :p


Get 4 sticks of 512 MB PC-4500. That will be REALLY good.

[KOXC2003]

Go for 8 GB man! Just get the kit that contains 4 2GB modules. You'll be set for the next 5 years

Maybe he would be set RAM WISE for 3 years (maybe?) but if hes going to spend that much on a system he probably won't keep a 4.5ghz chip for that long anyways. I would still wait a month, even though I'm sure you want the system now. Intel is in the process of making some advancements now, that your going to want to have on a top system.

ajrettke, sorry I was kinda skiming over the thread, didn't notice you had already said pretty much the same thing,

[PHILIP1193]

thank you for everyones feedback i think im gunna go with 2Gb of memory in 4x 256 moduals providing the abit ic7 max 3 suppots 4 slots??? does it?

Phil

[Canadian Bacon]

thank you for everyones feedback i think im gunna go with 2Gb of memory in 4x 256 moduals providing the abit ic7 max 3 suppots 4 slots??? does it?

Phil

It does but 4 x 256 = 1 GB of memory....not 2....so how much memory are you actually gonna get? 1 GB or 2?

[PHILIP1193]

sorry ment to be 4x 512 Mb wasn't thinking straight

so it seams im going to b getting:
4x 512 Mb corsair pc 4400
abit ic7 max3 vapochil phase changer or something like
watercooling the NB and GPU
x800xt
3.4 p4ee @ 4.5Ghz
2 cheetahs/raptors
ill get a 550w decents power supply

but what dvdrw do i get i need one that can rip real fast ( i dont want a dual layer one)

and what case do i get it obviouse has to house a lot of things inc watercooling a have good cooling properties??

Phil

[Busty St. Clair]

cant go wrong with cooler master cases. you'll have one kick ass pc and good luck with the top 10.

[ajrettke]

Personaly with a coolmaster case your getting ripped off...but that's just an opinion.
If your gonna spend a lot on a case get lian li, otherwise a cheapo chieftec or some of the newer antecs are nice and don't cost much.

For a fast ripper your gonna want to get any ol 16x DVD-ROM drive, I'm not sure what dual layer DVD burners are out so check in the storage section, but the 16x DVD rom will read faster than a DVD burner.

[CPL.Luke]

isn't the top record like 33000 with an x800xt pe on dry ice (edit in 3dmark 01)

I also thought the fx's were usually top in 3dmark

[KOXC2003]

As ajrettke said, your probably going to need more then water on the GPU for a top score, at least phase change.

[gunman]

Alienware ALX once they ship and make sure you have about 4gigs of ram and so forth mwahahahaa

[donedeal123]

I had to spend 11000 I would do a farm too like sk8 said clusters and proxy server, nodes, router,12x250gigs sata ect... in a rack. Or get a Lian li case, 6800 series, 1 gig of Mushkin, pair of Raptors 74 gigs, one 200 sata, Power Pc and Cooling Power Supply, Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-250 TV Tuner Card, Creative Audigy 2 zs plat., gigaworks s750, Sound Card, Dual 21inch maybe? one crt for gamming one lcd or (projector for tv 1024x780 ) fx-53 and so on. what ever I got to go have fun.

[Busty St. Clair]

well apparently nvidia will have their 6800 ultras able to be ran in array without buying alienware. once mobos with 2 16x pci-e come out you could run dual vid cards. so if u want dual vid cards u don't have to go alienware

[Duesman]

this machine has to get me top the 10 (in the world) in pcmark04/3dmark01/3dmark01. thats how good it has to be


Your gonna need more than a fast machine to pull that off. Wait until pci express comes out, get a mobo with x2 pci express slots, and shove in 2 6800 ultras in SLI mode. other than that, your going to have to do some serious tweaking to get the scores your looking for. oh yea, make sure you get a prommie.

[Duesman]

Dual FX53
4GB ECC ram
Dual 6800 ultras
lots of 15,000 rpm hdd's
mach 2 coolin

theres no such thing as running dual fx53's
it might be of advantage to wait for the dual core chips

[Drec]

p.s. Drec ill get u a card if i do have enough money left lol although u ahve to put a good case forward (im j/king) ut u can still tell me y u want one. :oP


bah i almost had a heart attack when i read that first part :eek:

butif you can find some **** fast 1GB sticks instead of 4x512 you may wanna go with that...4 sticks is gonna drain alot of power form your mobo...but if you get a nice psu it may not be a problem..

the 3.4EE is a real good choice and if you get a lucky chip and with mega cooling you can hit 5GHz..any 5GHz EE with a good clock on that 6800 can get you top 10...

good luck and post pics when ur done plz!! i wouldent mind drooling over this beast your going to unvail. :clap:

[Sun_tzu617]

NEVER GO WITH ALIENWARE!!
VOODOO OR FNW ARE WAY BETTER!!!
Alienware's ALX SYSTEM WONT BE OT TILL 8/17, AND THE BASE $5,000 IS FOR 1 VIDEO CARD AND 1 CPU, WATERCOOLING, AND RAPTORS PRE BUDLED, UD HAVE TO PAY MORE FOR THE EXTRA GPU AND CPU...
Wait for a few months.... the nvidia sli tech will be out and around,.... you wont need ALIENWARE

[Sun_tzu617]

Ill build you one... i wont put the vapochills in because i dont wat to risk em, but the rest ill do!
In all, for the duel video cards, duel cpus, 4 gb or ram, duel casades, ur lookin at almost all of ur money!

[KOXC2003]

Come on Sun. the fun is doing it yourself!

butif you can find some **** fast 1GB sticks instead of 4x512 you may wanna go with that...4 sticks is gonna drain alot of power form your mobo...but if you get a nice psu it may not be a problem..

Its not necessarily the PSU, the motherboard will probably have trouble regulating the voltage. Again Madcats volt mod will help you out a lot, but I'm not sure if it can make 2 Gb of ram run stably. Also with 4 sticks your going to get more heat, and less room for the ram to breath if you plan on keeping all 4 sticks in. I would deffinetly active cool the ram, there are some kits out there to do this. Might help you get lower latencies stably.

I would also suggest not going with corsair ram, I hear many mixed results, OCZ would probably be a better choice for you.

edit:

Heres a good reason to switch over, OCZ PC4400's stock latencies is 2.5-8-4-4. Corsair PC4400's stock latencies are 3-8-4-4. Now you probably could run the Corsair at least 2.5-8-4-4 at 265 Mhz, but you have a better chance of of getting lower with the OCZ at 265 Mhz then with Corsair. Just remember active cooling makes all the difference, especially with OCZ. And give your ram at least 3.1V, which might sound high but OCZ even allows 3.0V within the warranty.

[CPL.Luke]

well you won't get SLI without an alienware for the time being. Ive heard rumors that the nforce 4 may posess two pcie slots for such a set up but you won't get that till who knows when

[gunman]

SLI will be nvidia card exclusive most likely, but the Alienware ALX's way of using 2 PCI-E cards is compatiable with any Video Card, they use a PCI-X card to merge the two.

[PHILIP1193]

Once again i have been reading all your posts and i think that i will go the dual case route. it means i can effectivly cool the computer well (one case for all the watercooling stuff with HDD and powersupply and the other for the mobo dvd drives and graphics etc) what u think to that????

I think phase changing the gpu sounds mad and i am not sure how i would do it so any recomendations are welcome the card it would cool ais going to b a x800 platinum edition when they come out (im in uk remember) and when dual pci express slots come out ill get dual 6800's

what about for ideas?

p.s. if i get dual video cards i may need to get 3 vaphochill units. 1 for cpu 2 for gpu's

mad i tell ya

Phil

[KOXC2003]

You might need a Cascade vapochill units, if you want to get high up on the top 10 list. I'm not sure if you could get to 4.5ghz without them also. But anything can be done with money, might want to start a thread in the extreme cooling section and ask them what would be best for you.

Dry ice would keep everything very very cold, but I would imagine also annoying to have to keep getting more dry ice everytime you want to benchmark your system.

[f012t12]

Trying visiting www6.tomshardware.com

They have some interesting projects that they either film into downloadable videos or post on their website.

I would seriously go with an AMD 64-bit system, making sure it's either socket 940-based or socket 939-based.

No, there are no 64-bit software capabilities that take advantage of 64-bit registers in the CPU, but the integrated memory controller provides superior performance.

Also, what I've always liked about AMD is their CPU efficiency. Particularly, the Athlon XPs, for every electrical cycle, it can perform more instructions than an Intel CPU, making it more efficient.

I'm pretty sure the Athlon 64s offer similiar performance. In my opinion, more efficiency would probably provide a faster gaming experience.

Regarding dual video cards, I would buy one X800 that will last you a good amount of time. In the mean time, with extra money, wait for PCI express to take hold so you can buy a card to outdo any dual-GPU system.

that's just my 2 cents. Either way, you'll probably end up with one fantastic computer.

BTW, what display device would you be considering?

[Vortexkrow]

Why bother doing that? As other people said, buy an fx53 socket 939 system right now with a vapochill LS(nventiv is outta business :() and some nice memory. If i were you, i would get some kingston valueram, btd43 hynix ones; it'll be fine for what you are doing. Get an x800xt, and most importantly:


SAVE THE REST OF THE MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You can upgrade your computer often so you will always have top of the line!

i would go in this guys foot steps!

[CircuitBreaker8]

Pentium 133mhz
64mb RAM
Asus Mobo
ATI Rage Fury 128
Sound Blaster 8bit soundcard
Maxtor 8gb HDD
15" CRT
Labtec 2.0 speakers ( 5w x 2 )

[f012t12]

i would go in this guys foot steps!

Agree.

No need to blow €4000

You will definitely want the money for when AMD dual-core CPUs come out next year.

You also have PCI express. Data transfer rates beyond 5GB/sec

[tylerhskate]

you dont have to spend all your cash on this system, save some for later in case something breaks or in case new parts come out and you wanna be #1

[Sun_tzu617]

I wouldnty put 2 cases (per say) more of a half case on top or the bottom of ur main case... 2 huge cases put together is overkill....

[hrhrhrFOOT]

Glad to see people are agreeing with me :)

[Yuriman]

2 AMD Opteron 250s
8GB PC3200 ECC Registered DDR
The Alienware thing with multiple GPUs with X800XTPEs
4 72GB Western Digital SATA Raptors in Raid 0
IWILL DK8X Mainboard
52X32X52 CD Burner
Whatever the best DVD Burner is
4 400GB IBM Deskstars for storage
and of course, a T3 Line connected to the internet all for that pc. Game on.

[KOXC2003]

He wants to break records on gaming benchmarks.. Opterons are a bad idea. 8 Gb of ram? Why? Also why would he need 1888 Gb of storage for 3Dmark? Just add more heat into the case.

[wonderwrench]

well if you have the cake check this out.
http://go-l.com/desktops/index.htm

[Jex]

A nice, quality cube case would be great for what your planning. Plenty of room for everything plus growing space. With all of that stuff you are planning to put in, I would suggest you invest in a good sliencing plan. I would go nuts with all of that running...This would be an investment for your next system as well. You could reuse it for future systems you build.

[elec999]

I rather keep the money. The pc, you will later see you wasted your money. $11,000 is far too much for a pc. Just save the money and use as a down paymnet for a kick ass car.

[scrpat317]

buy a cat

[PHILIP1193]

i could buy a cat, dog, gerbal, horse, sheep, cow and probably feed them for a year lol with thart much money.,

Thanks for all the advice everyone i will keep you posted on my progress

Phil

[hooah]

I agree. Buy a kickass system now $4000usd with nice monitor (cause you can re-use that) then just upgrade the system when new **** comes out you like. Video, CPU, Ram and MB can all be upgraded alot. Spending $11000 right now on a system is dumb, because in a year from now you'll wish you could buy that new P5 4.4EE CPu or whatever they come out with. So go big now, but now $11000 big. And yes, buy a dog as well and rent a Ferrari for the weekend for some fun

[PHILIP1193]

lol cheers i will rent the ferrari - now why didn't i think of that?!

Cheers Phil

[Jiggahurtz]

pish posh. get that sweet Asus dual mobo, find some P4 2.4 Xeons that are running the M0 stepping. Build a custom phase change setup. You can do better than preboxed anyway. Then run the phase changer to the X800PTE. Setup a good water cooling unit and run it to the north and southbridge and the ram on the X800. Then put heatsinks on everything that might make some heat ecspecially the power setup to the cpu. Stick on some quiet panaflo's, keep all the cables neat and run WD76gb 10,000 rpm x2 in raid 0. Stuff 4 sticks of OCZ PC4400 into the ram slots. Volt mod the **** out of the board. Get 2x PC Power and Cooling 510 Watt PSU and run them parallel so you really have a 1KW psu, so you have crazy rails. Warning though custom phase change takes alot of power and some finese to setup but will pound the store bought solution. Also running water blocks to the ram on the gpu might require custom made water blocks.

This should give you the highest clockable dual P4 out there. As far as I know the PC-DL does allow you to overclock and Xeons are downward Multi unlocked so you can milk it for every mhz possible ecspecially since they are built on the 875. That gives you cpu, cooling, ram, hard drives, and motherboard. As for DVD drives, I would say NEC or Pioneer are good drives. I have a 2500 DVD+-RW drive that reads discs faster than my LG 16X Dvd-rom.

[KOXC2003]

No one seems to remember he is trying to get into the top 10 on gaming benchmarks. PCmark04 would be different, then a dually would be a good idea, but not for games. A 2.4 Ghz xeon is older technology, although some of them do overclock well.

The Mach L line is just overclocked P4s, stock settings for the processors they use (3.2C or 3.4C) are still those speeds. Just a pre overclocked over priced system with a ugly case.

I would suggest a FX-53 or P4 extreme edition 3.4ghz model. Max3 if you choose the Intel or AV8 for the AMD. Not completely sure if it is the AV8 that abit makes for the FX53.

OCZ ram with either system, PC4400 for the intel and PC4000 El model for the AMD. Because it has unlocked multipliers you can just play around with what gives you the best results, a high FSB or low latencies. But with the unlocked multi's you can still keep a high clock speed. 512 Mb X 2.

One ATI x800 platnium.

That cheetah drive you were talking about would be a good idea, 2x in raid. But that shouldn't effect your benches, just you will be able to load games faster/ boot faster.

Cascade Vapor chill setup. Use that to cool NB/ CPU/ GPU. Lian Li case.

Monitor.. whatever, not really a performance issue. NEC makes good monitors though.

Antec true blue 480 Watt PS... heard great things about them.

[Jiggahurtz]

Yea the 2.4 is a slow clock speed. But the M0 stepping seems to be able to hit the highest clock speeds. M0's are what the P4EE is based on. I agree for gaming a single cpu machine would do the best but for anything else that might even have a hint of being smp capable a Dual will hammer a Single.

[ogboot]

*The Mach L line is just overclocked P4s, stock settings for the processors they use (3.2C or 3.4C) are still those speeds. Just a pre overclocked over priced system with a ugly case.*

i also read a huge review on these machines in a hardware magazine a few months back, and they showed the wiring job on the inside and it was HORRIBLE. the hard drives had to be suffocating.

[KOXC2003]

The only thing they use that is a good idea is PuRam, a small capacity solid state hard drive. Only holds a a few Gb put is much faster then current hard drives. Very expensive to.

[Webzta]

think you should wait mate, especially spending that kinda cash.... give it till the end of summer and see what comes along... both amd and intel are still piddling around with new proc's etc..

[hooah]

No one seems to remember he is trying to get into the top 10 on gaming benchmarks. PCmark04 would be different, then a dually would be a good idea, but not for games. A 2.4 Ghz xeon is older technology, although some of them do overclock well.

The Mach L line is just overclocked P4s, stock settings for the processors they use (3.2C or 3.4C) are still those speeds. Just a pre overclocked over priced system with a ugly case.

I would suggest a FX-53 or P4 extreme edition 3.4ghz model. Max3 if you choose the Intel or AV8 for the AMD. Not completely sure if it is the AV8 that abit makes for the FX53.

OCZ ram with either system, PC4400 for the intel and PC4000 El model for the AMD. Because it has unlocked multipliers you can just play around with what gives you the best results, a high FSB or low latencies. But with the unlocked multi's you can still keep a high clock speed. 512 Mb X 2.

One ATI x800 platnium.

That cheetah drive you were talking about would be a good idea, 2x in raid. But that shouldn't effect your benches, just you will be able to load games faster/ boot faster.

Cascade Vapor chill setup. Use that to cool NB/ CPU/ GPU. Lian Li case.

Monitor.. whatever, not really a performance issue. NEC makes good monitors though.

Antec true blue 480 Watt PS... heard great things about them.


This is the right idea...but as someone else stated...if the ATI doesn't overclock very well, throw it on Ebay adn try another. Very minimal cost with doing this, so it ensures you get high overclocking parts which will help get you high, high 3dmark scores. 4Ghz P4EE at 1:1 ratio (DDR500 memory) with ATI x800XT PE should ensure 1 kickass system. Then you can still upgrade every 6 months if something new comes out that you like and still rent that
Ferrari for weekend donuts!

[Zippykid9]

If i were you i'd do this:

2x p4 xeon 3.4
duallie motherboard (the pci-ex one with two x16 slots)
2x 6800u's pci-ex
2x 1gb ram sticks
4x 74.5 10,000 rpm WD raptors
Modded Prommie
yah... *drools* that would be pretty kickass there.

[Cjwinnit]

just wondering where in England are you from i might have to pop along and say hello to this dream machine lol

Noting the size of England and your avatar, It shouldn't take you long.... ;)

[Mr.Guvernment]

i dont see how getting the 6800 JUST because it has PS 3 support is future proofing yourself - considering there is nothing to test it against to see how well it actually performs - if at all.

i think in another thread someone ran a tester for ps3 on this card and it could not complete the test's just as the 5900 could not complete the PS 2 tests completly (meaning it is not 100% ps3 compatible) and the end performance of the PS2 in NVIDIA's 5xxx cards was crap anyways - so who is to say their ps 3 wont be crap as well.


If you want to REALLY! future proof your self get one of the PCIe boards that are now out i beleive from Abit and get a REAL PCIe video card - ie, x800

My thoughts.

[JimboZ88]

Why don't you email the people who are at the top of the 3dmark lists and ask if you can buy their computers?
I believe the top right now is LardArse/Shamino from VR-Zone, their email is caramon@cyberway.com.sg
2nd place is Macci from www.akiba.fi, his email is macci@akiba-pc.com

Just go down the list of who has the best 3dmarks, and offer to buy their computers?

[hrhrhrFOOT]

Because they use cascades. And i imagine it would be hell to ship a cascade, not to imagine how hazardous it would be. You could, however, go on xtremesystems.org and have someone build you a s939 monster with 2 phase change systems, 1 on gpu and one on the cpu.

[madcow235]

Stop suggesting Dualies they suck for 3dmarks. You arent going to get top10 without a cascade system or LN2 and you wont be able to run 24/7 No matter how much you spend.

[Cereal Killa]

I think he could afford an über gaming rig and a dual cpu system if he wanted to. Man, I wish I could ;).

Also, don't get fooled by the ps 3 on the 6800 (Mr.Guvernment already pointed that out). And also when it actually becomes a standard in the gaming world ATI will have some cards ready to put to the test with nVidia.

If you can wait I suggest you wait 'till more of those new generation graphics cards are out and when Intel's new type of socket will come out (LGA or something).
I don't know much about these so if they're no good for gaming then ignore this last suggestion ;).

Wish you all the luck with your little expensive endeavor hehe :).

[ogboot]

i personally was not impressed by the review and benches at tom's hardware about the new socket T, other than the design. granted much of what they were running was industry samples, but still...

[PHILIP1193]

just a quick update i havce order some parts not all of them - just keeping the money situation under control

i ordered the
abit ic7 max 3
2Gb pc 4400 memory
3.4Ghz EE

Thats so far

Phil

[PHILIP1193]

i just read a post saying i should buy a pre built comp - where is the fun in that???
i mean if i build it my self and then i am able to put screenies on here with me building it and i would get more respect for that than i would for saying i bought it ( i mean any one can buy a prebuilt, pre-overclocked comp) but not everyone can build and overclock a computer so much to get into top 10 3dmark score board :oD can they??

Phil

[unbegripable]

i just read a post saying i should buy a pre built comp - where is the fun in that???
i mean if i build it my self and then i am able to put screenies on here with me building it and i would get more respect for that than i would for saying i bought it ( i mean any one can buy a prebuilt, pre-overclocked comp) but not everyone can build and overclock a computer so much to get into top 10 3dmark score board :oD can they??

Phil

Unless those computers on the "Top Ten" are small miracles in engineering, with unique and homemade hardware, i see no real hurdles for making it to the "Top Ten" (hurts my fingers typing those words)... except finances, but you seem to have that area covered. ok, if i am not mistaken a "pre-built" computer is just a way for someone to make money..
Get the specs of a high-scoring computer and buy the parts... if that's fun.
I would have used lots and lots of money to build my own case and cooling, after my own needs.. but i am getting old too... my case doesn't look like a miniature nightclub.
After a while you'll be asking yourself, just as many of us, which part of the computer to upgrade next?

[a c i d.f l y]

I would just like to mention I got bored of this post about 10 posts into it..

-Frank