wacky.banana

I would appreciate a recommendation on:

- The best board for this.
- The most appropriate AMD processors
- The most effective method of setup to get optimum performance from such a system (I'm already aware of the hotfix for Windows XP). I hear worrying stories about BIOS upgrades for some boards not being suficient to get them to work properly.
- Best place, price wise, to purchase your recommended system.

What should I be wary of and why? How do I solve the "mantraps", if any?

BTW, I'm not interested in overclocking. I simply want to undertake video editing and other related taks.

Thanks

WB

lightning101

Asus SLi 32 - most common and most stable

Abit guru series are excellent for extreme overclocking and have external temp monitors etc.

Dual core itself is plug and play and the best value is the 4400+ with dual 1mb cache and can be overclocked to 2.6ghz (fx60 speed) with a standard fan and some decent ddr 433 ram

wacky.banana

Lightning,

Thanks. One thing though, what am I getting from a dual core system that can't be delivered by an ultra fast single core item?

Is dual core really worth it or are we into hype at the minute? Have just found out that dual core systems don't "loadshare" between cores ie if a core is 100% utilised and an application needs more cpu time then the extra work does not fall over into the second cpu.

If that's the case what are the benefits of dual core?

Thanks

WB

lightning101

Well I have a single core 4000+ and a dual core fx60 and in every multimedia and rendering operation, the fx60 is nearly twice as fast. Also you can leave something priocessing/rendering and carry on browsing the net or modelling without any slow down. Also each core uses a seperate peice of memory unlike the old pentium 4 hyperthreading nonsense.

Iain Young

I've got the Asus SLi dual core motherboard with a 4800+ dual core chip in it. On normal apps there's not a massive performance hike over a single core processor, but when you have something that is written to take advantage of multi-threading, then the performance is superb. Things like photoshop, premiere, modelling / rendering (I use lightwave) absolutely fly....

DrEvil

ASUS A8N SLI Premium is a great board, nice layout and very stable.
ASUS A8N 32 gives you less flexibility on the PCI card front, but choose which suits your needs, both great boards.

Quite simply dual core gives you the freedom to do several things at once or one 'multithreaded' task quicker... its the future and the present - tis great

spectrum48k

Wacky, dual core shines only when the application has been written to take advantage of it.

Right now, there is a fair bit of stuff that will recognise, and take advantage of a dual core setup - like 3DS Max, Premiere, Windows Media Encoder, to name a few.

Games-wise, fast forward to winter 06 and the sequel to Far Cry is released - Crysis. This game will detect dual core and give unprecedented levels of performance.

wacky.banana

OK guys, thanks for the responses.

It sems tha ASUS SLi board is the favourite of most of you. What about answers to the rest of my questions please, the most important of which is which AMD CPU's to sit in the SLi? I am assuming that the CPU's need to be identical in spec/performance?

What sort of memory spec should I be considering?

If the board is a PCI express one (will look at it in a minute) what graphics card is best for this setup?

Finally any advantage of SATA storage over EIDE?

Speedy answers appreciated as I will be buying the kit this Sunday

Thanks

WB

lightning101

Its only ONE chip mate. It has two cores internally, so just one socket with 939 pins I'd recommend the 4400 or 4800 dual AMD

Memory should be an ASUS recomended brand - e.g Kingston, Crucial, or Corsair and needs to be at least pc3200 or above (2gb recommended)

Graphics cards wise - nvidia 7800gt/gtx 7900gt/gtx otherwise you need a crossfire m/board for the ATi stuff

Barely any advantage to SATA, about 20mb a second tranfer rate quicker at moving data and RAID capability is the norm, oh and smaller cables so better airflow in the case.

lightning101

Just so you can see it in your mind - ONE processor and one socket 939

wacky.banana

Bloody hell Lightning, nice one!

OK, I understand the concept better now. Board schematic was really useful and I have just been on to Asus website for additional spec info. I use an Asus board now and in one of my machines and never had a problem with it. I'm off to search for prices.

One question for you lot; has anyone of you used Linux to drive one of these boards? I know Linux has been supporting multicore systems from before Windows was a blob in the eye of it's parent but just wondered if anyone had hands-on experience of this kind of setup?

To give you a heads up I am looking to create dual boot systems but running Linux as my OS of choice (Windows will be there for when there's no other way round looking at some stuff).

Once again thanks for the responses so far. You lot can be bloody useful when you put your minds to it .

WB

DrEvil

What he said - 4400+ or 4800+ - both excellent chips - I've got both.

As for GFX, mid range - 7900GT
Top end 1900XTX

Apparently the latest ATI drivers will allow you to run Crossfire on SLI boards - but best check this out for yourself... before purchase.

I use the A8N premium in both systems.

wacky.banana

Thanks DrEvil,

Any more on the Linux point?

jpor

iTrader: (1)

This may help:

http://www.linuxhardware.org/article.../05/19/1625246