Shiny new $200 leather chair for Xmas... still holding off on Athlon 64 :(

[mcjimbo]

Hi all,

You may remember my various posts about buying a new xmas pressie pc. I'm a web developer by trade, and would use my pc for a bit of that, graphic design and games likes HL2. I pretty much had the specs finalised:

* CPU - AMD Socket 939 Athlon 64 3500+, 2.2 GHz, 512KB L2 Cache 64-bit Processor (90nm)- RETAIL
* MOBO - MSI "K8N Neo2 Platinum" NVIDIA nForce3 ULTRA Chipset Motherboard For AMD Socket 939 CPU -RETAIL
* RAM -Kingston ValueRAM Dual Channel Kit 184 Pin 1G(512MBx2) DDR PC-3200 - Retail x 2
* HD - Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000RPM SATA Hard Drive, Model WD740GD, OEM Drive Only x 2 (RAID O config)
* Video - Leadtek nVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT Video Card, 256MB GDDR3, 256-Bit, TV-Out/DVI, 8X AGP, Model "A400 GT TDH" -RETAIL
* Case - Aspire X-Dreamer II(Black) ATX Mid-Tower Case with 350W Power Supply, With Window, Model "ATXB4KLW-BK/350"
* Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS PCI Sound Card, Model "SB0350" OEM

I was also looking for a nice 19' TFT active monitor, but decided that I could wait for a little, same thing on the speaker front. Want a nice 7.1 setup.

However I bought the latest PC Gamer "The PC Building Bible" and it caused me to question the setup and whether I should wait until 1st quarter next year to buy a rig. Reasons being:

* New BTX case design to replace (ATX) apparently has much better ventilation
* Nforce4 chipset will be available
* PCI Express 6800GT or Perhaps X800 XL in PCI Express config vs AGP (better upgradability)
* Socket 939 Athlon 64 90nm processors should come down in price
* PC Gamer seem to recommend Pentium 4 config

Do you think these are valid reasons for holding off. I got a lovely $200 leather chair, nice pc desk and the money... i'm so ready to go, but for some reason I keep holding back thinking something much better is around the corner. I envisage using this PC for the next 2 years. I had an Athlon but sold it to a friend, so thats why im on my former MP3/File servers P3 733 at the mo.

Any advice, wisdom, recommendation, insults will be gladly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

James

[punkrunning]

Based on the following that PCGamer reccomended:
* New BTX case design to replace (ATX) apparently has much better ventilation
* Nforce4 chipset will be available
* PCI Express 6800GT or Perhaps X800 XL in PCI Express config vs AGP (better upgradability)
* Socket 939 Athlon 64 90nm processors should come down in price
* PC Gamer seem to recommend Pentium 4 config

BTX is only going to be supported by Intel in the near future. It is unnecessary and will not improve performance, especially since Intel is a worse choice than AMD at this point in time.

PCI Express is only worth it if you are going to take advantage of SLI, which will allow you to take two of the same video cards and link them, getting a performance advantage. These motherboards are beginning to surface for AMD systems but at a large premium. AGP version of the cards you listed perform identically to their PCI-Express iterations.

In the next year, there will not be that many new Socktet 939 Athlon 64's and prices should not drop hugely. I would expect that the Winchester 3200 won't drop more than $100 in the next twelve months. Not worth the wait.

PC Gamer is idiotic for reccomending a Pentium 4 configuration. Look at any recent processor reviews at anandtech.com, xbitlabs.com, or tomshardware.com and you'll see that $250 AMD processors will actually get you 10% more real life performance in games than $1000 P4 processor. AMD's processors are better for everything except certain types of media encoding. The fact that a "gaming" magazine reccomended Pentium is pretty outrageous.

[mcjimbo]

Yeah, their mid range rig was a AMD 64 3800+, high end system was Intel Pentium 4 w/HT - 3.6GHZ. They also discount that the AMD 64 being 64 bit add's any real advantage. Saying very little software currently supports it, and by the time it does the clockspeed will be out of date, or words to that effect.

[punkrunning]

They're right the 64 bit component adds no performance today. But even without that, A64's kick P4's (asses because the P4 is fat and slow (im tired and in a weird mood)) in general. Seriously, look at some benchmarks.

It's funny that their midrange system proc would have likely outperformed their high end's.

[rusty c]

You did the right thng! A good chair is the most important part of using your new rig. LOL!