Comp guys, questions about the chips

[Zeus]

I'm helping my friend put together a comp and need a little help regarding the CPU and related mobo. Here are the questions:

1) What's with the different sockets on the AMD and Intel chips? What do they mean?

2) My friend won't be doing much more than downloading and watching video and some older games on his comp, but mostly just surfing. I figure an AMD 2800+ or Intel 2.4 or so will be more than what he needs for the next 5 years or so. I'm also looking into getting a standard 64MB video card, he won't need more than that. What's good for bang for the buck? I'm assuming AMD will be better. What mobo should I get with it? We're not going for high-end here, but if it's $20 to move up to a really good mobo from an OK one or to gain 200Mhz on the CPU speed, that's what we want to make sure we don't miss out on

Thanks

[Flip]

Wow, you can build something like that cheap.

As far as mobo's, look for the ones that dont have a million features/bundled software and those will be the stable ones. If you are going with Socket A the Via KT600 chipset motherboards are reliable, inexpensive, and no frills.

With your description i think AMD Athlon 2800 sounds like a good choice, i'm still not holding my breath for 64 bit technology to take over the world so your friends 2800 should last him a while still.

[Garford]

1) What's with the different sockets on the AMD and Intel chips? What do they mean?

Basically, certain CPU uses a certain socket type.

AMD wise, the main kinds of boards/CPU are Socket 939, 754, Socket A and 940

More recent AMD Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 FX chips uses Socket 939

AMD Sempron and older Athlon 64 uses Socket 754

Older Sempron and Athlon XP processor uses Socket A

940 is used by AMD workstation class processors.

Intel wise, there are Socket PGA-478, Socket LGA775, Socket PGA-603 and Socket PGA-604.

Practically all recent variants of the Pentium 4 uses Socket LGA775.

Older P4 and Celeron uses Socket PGA-478

Socket PGA-603/604 are used by Intel workstation class processor

However, what kind of processor a board can actually use is also limited by its chipset. Chipset are much harder to explain, so I'll skip it for now.

2) My friend won't be doing much more than downloading and watching video and some older games on his comp, but mostly just surfing. I figure an AMD 2800+ or Intel 2.4 or so will be more than what he needs for the next 5 years or so. I'm also looking into getting a standard 64MB video card, he won't need more than that. What's good for bang for the buck? I'm assuming AMD will be better. What mobo should I get with it? We're not going for high-end here, but if it's $20 to move up to a really good mobo from an OK one or to gain 200Mhz on the CPU speed, that's what we want to make sure we don't miss out on

Give a more specific budget, it'll be easier to work it out from there I guess. Most motherboard these days come with soundcard/lan etc integrated, so can save on those.

I'll recommend an AMD base system, as it is for sure much cheaper, and a wider selection of motherboards are avaliable.

A random check on a Singapore pricelist site, a P4 2.4a with a mother board that had everything integrated come out to SG$319, for SG$319, avaliable AMD config is a Sempron 3000

[Nev]

What they said. Basicallly AMD and Intel processors use a different arrangement of pins (literally pins, the little spikes all over the bottom of the chip where it gets plugged in which conduct the current that transfers information), and a motherboard has to have a matching socket (the holes that the pins get plugged into that connect the circuits in the processor with the circuits on the mobo) with a matching pin arrangement in order to be able to support it. Just be sure that whatever mobo you get supports your chosen processor specifically - you can look up on the 'Net which processors are which socket types and which mobos support them.

One of the big things I used to look for in motherboards, believe it or not, was a good English manual. It's important because many of them are made in Asia and some of the translations blow goats. My current mobo is from 1st Mainboard and it's been great, though I have no idea if they're still around or what they're making now.

In my opinion, if his primary use is multimedia/entertainment, I would actually say that your video card is the most important piece of equipment. I actually do all right even on Half-Life 2 with my old Athlon 1100 since I bought a more recent BFG Tech video card with 128MB of memory. It also has quick and easy multimonitor support, which is so totally worth it if you can dredge up a spare monitor from somewhere - a friend brought over an old extra 17" monitor he had lying around and I am never, but never going back to a single-monitor setup. I think most games as well as media playback software will be more forgiving of a slow CPU than a slow video card, though I wouldn't mind someone else's confirmation/denial of that. So, unless someone tells me I'm completely full of it, I'd recommend trying to weight your video card purchase a little more heavily than the rest of the components.

Like everyone said, we can make recommendations if you give us an actual budget.

And I totally recommend AMD as a main CPU, because my current computer is AMD-built and has absolutely rocked for me.

Hope this helps.

[Zeus]

For the most part, we're looking at a person who's only going to surf, play a little bit of games with some video watching and maybe the occasional conversion, so I think a 64MB video card will be fine. He can save some good coin there and I do OK with conversion on a 32MB card (my comp's over 5 years old now). Time is not an issue with him, really. I just want to try and get him a comp that will be adequate as is for the next 5 years at least, kinda like mine was.

That's also why I'm leaning towards getting him the extra 512 of ram to get him to a cool GB. It's only $100 or less Cdn and you can never have enough of the stuff. I figure a 2Ghz or so processor will be adequate for his needs even in the long term. Just didn't know if there was a reason for the different sockets (ie. performance affect) or if it just was about matching CPU and board.

We're trying to keep this comp around $800 Cdn at most. I initially looked at Intel but I've also been very happy with my AMD (1133), so I thought of looking into it for him since they're cheaper. Just didn't know about the newer chipsets they have since I haven't kept up with it in the last few years. But if AMD vs Intel is still like Toshiba vs Sony (ie. equal or better performance for at least 20% less), then we'll get him an Intel.

Thanks for the input, guys

[Garford]

This is the current status of my comp. As you can see, more then 500mb is already used up, and I have Winamp, MSN, Firefox, Bitcomet and eMule opened, so having 1gb of ram is a worthwhile investment.

Price is base of http://www.tigerdirect.ca/ which is basically the first canadian price list I can find. This is how much I can squeeze out from CDN $800

AMD

Abit KV-80 Via Socket 754 MicroATX Motherboard and AMD Athlon 64 2800+ Processor - $256.99

or

Abit KV-80 Via Socket 754 MicroATX Motherboard and AMD Sempron 2800+ Processor - $188.99

2x 512MB Corsair DDR 400MHz PC3200 - $134.99
PowerColor Radeon 9550se 128MB - $74.99
Hitachi / 160GB / 7200 / 8MB / SATA-150 - $134.99
Casing - $100

$701.96 or $633.96

Intel

2x 512MB Corsair DDR 400MHz PC3200 - $134.99
Abit IS7-V2 Intel Socket 478 ATX Motherboard - $80.99
Intel Pentium 4 2.4Ghz, Socket 478 - $188.99
PowerColor Radeon 9550se 128MB - $74.99
Hitachi / 160GB / 7200 / 8MB / SATA-150 - $134.99
Casing - $100

$714.95

[Nev]

What the shit! You have a GIGABYTE video card?

[Garford]

Eh? What's wrong with Gigabyte? Several components from my various systems are from them.

[Nev]

Oh...uh.

I thought that was the amount of RAM on the card.

[Zeus]

Wow, thanks Gaford. That's actually the best site in terms of Canadian prices and the one I was looking at. That would likely be much more than enough for my friend's purposes for the next 5+ years.

Only change I'd make is switiching the HD for the 160 MB Maxtor which is $121.99 with a $40 mail in rebate. Very nice :-)

[Garford]

Wow, thanks Gaford. That's actually the best site in terms of Canadian prices and the one I was looking at. That would likely be much more than enough for my friend's purposes for the next 5+ years.

Only change I'd make is switiching the HD for the 160 MB Maxtor which is $121.99 with a $40 mail in rebate. Very nice :-)

Pffff, you HAD to misspell my nick....

J/K, hope it suits your friend's need. There is still some room to make changes. I didn’t really check out the ram/graphic card out in detail, just going by memory on which brand is cheaper. Since overclocking is not an issue here, just get the cheapest avaliable I guess.

I have pretty bad experience with all hard disk manufacturers except Hitachi, hence the choice there.

I've purchase about 5 boards from Abit so far, and they should be fairly easy to install/troubleshoot.

You might also want to take a look at traditional IDE hard disk and compare the price difference, to see if the price saving is worth it.

[Zeus]

Coo, thanks again