Final spec check! + a few questions.

Dark_Angel · 7 Jan 2007 at 00:22

Pretty much ready to order everything. just waiting for my friend to buy my graphics card/motherboard/CPU off me sometime this within the next week or so.

I have decided on:

Gigabyte S3 (around 88 pounds)
E6300
OCUK 2GB 6400 DDR2 ram (146 pounds)
X1950 Pro (cheapest there is at the time, I will just clock them anyway).
Samsung Sata DVD writter (around 23 pounds)
FSP Sparkle Blue 500W PSU. (a shade under 60 pounds).

Should that all do the trick?

Total is about 567 pounds, well a shade over.

A couple of questions:

1. DVD ATA. I have no floppy drive, buy I require a ATA DVD drive because my hard drives are EIDE (and quite frankly, my hard drives are fast and large enough for my needs). Will it be hard to boot windows XP SP2 home via the DVD drive as it's ata (not had a ATA drive before!)

2, Will the computer in general feel nicer to use with dual core (I WILL overclock the CPU) in day to day tasks? (for example, win rar running plus surfing the net, or photoshop + whatever happening) compared to a venice @ 2.7 and 1 GB of ram

3. I am 99 percent sure on this, but windows Home only supports 1 physical CPU, but 2 cores, so conroe will be fine... it should just be a case of installing it, and windows says "hey dual core, thats nice, I will install the drivers for that!" and thats about it?

4. The is more a "I am curious" question. With dual core, is it literally like you are only running one major program at a time? For example, if I am (lets say) applying a filter to a 5000 x 5000 high res image in photoshop (or whatever operation) and say using DVD Decrypt at the same time, will it be as fast as if I was only say usng Photoshop? (this is assuming that I am not fully using 2GB of system ram of course).

Well thanks for reading and (hopefully) replying

semi-pro waster · 7 Jan 2007 at 00:31

The system looks fine from a compatability point, you might find a DS3 clocks a little better but it might not make much difference.

1) Minor point possibly but every drive you have had up to this point is ATA(aka IDE in most circumstances), now you are asking about SATA (Serial ATA). It won't make a difference to booting providing the motherboard supports booting from a SATA device (since it is new it should but I can't guarantee without further checking).

2) Yes, it certainly should do as you will be able to multitask more easily and it the CPU is a fair bit faster in each core anyway.

3) Windows XP Home will work fine.

4) You shouldn't notice that there is any slowdown on the CPU front, you will of course still be limited by other components (mainly hard drives I'd imagine) though.

Dark_Angel · 7 Jan 2007 at 00:59

semi-pro waster said:
The system looks fine from a compatability point, you might find a DS3 clocks a little better but it might not make much difference.

1) Minor point possibly but every drive you have had up to this point is ATA(aka IDE in most circumstances), now you are asking about SATA (Serial ATA). It won't make a difference to booting providing the motherboard supports booting from a SATA device (since it is new it should but I can't guarantee without further checking).

2) Yes, it certainly should do as you will be able to multitask more easily and it the CPU is a fair bit faster in each core anyway.

3) Windows XP Home will work fine.

4) You shouldn't notice that there is any slowdown on the CPU front, you will of course still be limited by other components (mainly hard drives I'd imagine) though.

Thanks mate you are a star...

After doing some random googling, it appears that the board makes it look to windows like its a Regular IDE drive!

- http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=29&threadid=1978220

PLEASE let me know if it is ok to link to that site... I am pretty sure it is, but I like to be sure

semi-pro waster · 7 Jan 2007 at 10:33

I'm not a mod so can't say for definite but I'm pretty sure that Anandtech is fine, in the Graphics Card forum there are links to the graphics card roundups all the time.