Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Looking Forward

I need to say something first. I haven't done a new post for awhile. This was primarily because I was waiting for some spare money. Lately I had a few other reasons. My internet connection kept dropping and would stay down, but a cable technician failed to find anything wrong. So, on Father's Day I didn't get online until later in the evening. However when I finally did get online I sent a Father's Day ecard to my father. The next morning I got a confirmation email that Dad had read my ecard. Then later that evening my brother called from the hospital and told me that Dad had had a heart attack and died. The following Saturday we had visitation. On Sunday we had the funeral and, since he had retired as a Senior Master Sargeant, he was buried with military honors. He had accomplishments, friends and children. He died with three beautiful granddaughters and five handsome grandsons after celebrating his 50th wedding anniversary. I guess that is about as much as anyone could hope for. I'll miss you, Dad.

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With the internet still flaky I had to make another call to customer service. They sent another cable technician who replaced the cable modem and now my connection is working much better. I also have some spare money but I'm still trying to figure out a new system. I guess I'm looking at something that would qualify as an AMD Dragon system:

Case: Cooler Master Storm Sniper

This case won't fit in the computer cubby under my desk. The case is too long and too wide. It will fit under the desk on the side without the cubby so I guess it will work. I probably don't need all the cooling but since you can dial the fans down it should be okay.


Power Supply: Antec Signature SG 850

I probably don't need that much power either but this seems like a good PSU.


Motherboard: Asus M4A79T Deluxe

I know this motherboard can handle 125 watts and it uses DDR3.


Harddrives: Western Digital Caviar Black WD7501AALS 750GB

I'm thinking about five of these: one for boot and four in a RAID. But I haven't decided for certain yet if this would be the best configuration.


RAID controller: HighPoint RocketRAID 2300

I've heard that the onboard RAID controller may have issues.


Blu-Ray Drive: LG Black Super Multi Blu-ray Disc Burner & HD DVD-ROM Drive Model GGW-H20L

There is a unit on NewEgg that appears to be a higher model but I can't find anything about it on the LG website and it doesn't say if it supports LighScribe. So, this one will do.


Video card: ASUS EAH4890/HTDI/1GD5 Radeon HD 4890

I kind of liked the double fans on this model but NewEgg seems to be out of stock on these right now. So:

ASUS EAH4890 TOP/HTDI/1GD5 Radeon HD 4890

This one is the same as the above but with slightly higher GPU and memory clocks for another $15.


This leaves processor and memory. I have been thinking about the AMD Phenom II 955 clocked at 3.2Ghz but lately there have been rumors of the 965 clocked at 3.4Ghz so we'll see. Memory is another issue because while the Asus board does support 1600Mz I wouldn't mind having 8GB's. Since two DIMMs per socket won't clock that high I'm still wondering if I should spend the money for faster memory.

The operating system is also confusing. I know I want a 64 bit version of Windows. However, there is Vista Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, and Ultimate. There's both OEM and retail, and then Windows 7 is due out in early November in Premium, Professional, and Ultimate. I don't want to waste money on Vista but I need an OS now. Secondly I wouldn't mind having the Windows XP ability but that is not available on Windows 7 Premium. At the moment I'm looking at: Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 64-bit for System Builders w/ Tech Guarantee - OEM.

I could end up running the RC version of Windows 7.

11 comments:

Unknown said...

Scientia:

I feel sorry for your lost, but according to what you described about your father, he lived a good life.

Keep going strong, and once again, my sincerest condolences to you and your family members.

Unknown said...

Sorry to here about your dad. My sympathies for you.

That being said, I would hold off on your build. Too many things are going to change within the next six months.

http://www.amdzone.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=136256

I am waiting for the following
Motherboard vendor: ASUS most likely, I have had the best luck with them.
Chipset Combo: RD890 Possibly the RD890D which includes the RV620 integrated graphics if AMD can get ATI Hybrid Graphics working again.
/SB810 wich is the same as the SB850 but lack raid 5.
CPU: Some Phenom X4 II (965?)
Video: ATI HD 5870 or HD 5870 X2, mainly for DriectX 11 and OpenGL 3.1 which support tessellation, Multithreaded rendering though the API)

Unknown said...

My condolences. Losing a loved one is never easy but life never throws anything at us that we cannot handle.

As to the OS. I figure if you really want to save some money, you can

1. Buy Vista home premium and then upgrade to 7. (Today is the last day to get Windows 7 premium upgrade for 50 bucks or 100 for the Professional edition)

2. Download Ubuntu or other flavor of linux and buy the OEM or retail version of Windows 7 when its released.

As far as i know the difference between OEM and retail is that with OEM you can only install to one computer once. With retail you can move that copy to several other computers one at a time.

Scientia from AMDZone said...

Michael,

That's not a bad idea about installing Linux now and then Win 7 retail in a few months.


Matthew,

What is going on that I should wait for? I've been thinking about just getting a single 1TB harddrive and partitioning into 2 halves with one for Windows and the other for Linux. I've also been thinking about getting a tri-core now for $110 and then wait to see what happens with 965. Yes, I know about the graphics but I'm thinking that if I'm running an HD 4890 the integrated graphics wouldn't matter much anyway. The board I'm looking at doesn't have onboard graphics. Is there that much of an advantage with the 800 series SB?

Scientia from AMDZone said...

Matthew,

Oh, I see. You are saying that the next generation ATI GPU has significant enhancements. Hmmm.

Unknown said...

If you can, I would suggest you wait for a month or two till we know for sure what is going to be in the RD8xx and SB8xx chipsets.

The RD8xx/SB8xx has quite a few tweaks, Specifically in the over clocking and power states area.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/AMD-to-Provide-Better-Overclocking-with-RD890-in-Q2-2009-101034.shtml
http://news.softpedia.com/news/AMD-to-Provide-Better-Overclocking-with-RD890-in-Q2-2009-101034.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_800_chipset_series

The one thing that irks me if true is that the Integrated Graphics will still be the 4000 series which only supports DirectX 10.1

Polonium210 said...

Please accept my condolences.

Unknown said...

I'd avoid that 'fakeraid' card.

Here are the easiest sources to start from.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID#Firmware.2Fdriver-based_RAID

http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/215848-32-help-raid-setup

Polonium210 said...

@Scientia

Regarding your build, I would go with the following:

PSU: Seasonic M12D-850. It can be bought for $149 on Newegg. IMHO it is far superior, technically, to the Antec on most if not all counts.

HDD: Western Digital WD7502ABYS(750GB). This is an enterprise class drive so will cost a bit more than an ordinary HDD but is well worth it. It also has raid enhancing features not found on most drives.

GPU: If you can, wait for the ATI DX11 products.

Scott said...

I was going to come here and leave some kind of snide remark about Intel being better than AMD, but then I read the stuff about your dad. I'm sorry to hear that and I wish you and your family the best.

Usama said...

I'm sorry about your father's passing away.

Regarding your need for an OS, I wanted to let you know that since July I've been using Windows 7 RC 1 as my primary OS, 64-bit too. I have not had any problems or crashes. I have all my programs installed including Office 2007 and my games like Bioshock and Half-Life 2 Episode 2. I highly recommend using RC 1 and I urge you to download it quickly since Microsoft is going to end the download on August 18.

By the way I do a lot of things with this computer including using its Media Center extensively for recording TV shows and streaming them and other media to my Xbox360. Everything works well except for streaming to the 360 which is slow over wireless, but if the PC is connected via ethernet it's perfect. This is a known issue that Microsoft said would be addressed in the final release of Win7.