By that I mean bugs in software (i.e. 64-bit windows, new drivers). New stuff typically has bugs... although in this case it may not?


well I won't vouch for other systems, nForce4 based boards using the nVidia unified drivers have no problems at all. nVidia has firewire, USB, lan, SATA, SATAII etc. all built into their southbridge, and the drivers are perfectly stable with it. There isn't any noticeable issues.

I won't swear you'll have good luck with VIA, or Intel based boards since they haven't had the development lead that nVidia had.

That said, there are also a number of thrid party drivers for various addons like Promise raid controllers, some SCSI controllers etc. What is out there is getting the thumbs up from users.

3D vendors are scrambling to get 64 bit ports out. LW is out there with their Beta/should have been released by now version, XSI and Maya are likewise rushing to 64 bit.

Considering the advantages of 64 bit address space to the content creation market, it's only logical that AVID, and others will hop on board as well.

And even still, you do not need a 64 bit OS to run on. Win32 works just fine and is what I am running Avid on. To hear ILM tell it, Opterons are a gift from god when it comes to editing and HD work.

Pat,

I've got the same Mobo with a 3.0 P4 and also find it to be very stable. You mentioned you bumped up the RAM from one to two gigs. Did you notice a considerable increase in performance or a marginal increase in performance?


Actually I removed my other GIG.. When I was using 2 GB I always got ERROR COMPILING MOVIE..bah.. I tried all sticks in different configs.. If I use all 4 slots I got that error all the time..

Thank's all for the post's it has been a good read and I'm learning allot from all of you. If I go the Pentuim way and I need the new DDR 2 memory I don't need the expensive stuff do I? I went to Crucial and put in the ASUS P5AD2 Premium Motherboard I'm looking at and the first recomendation was this expensive Ram thats called Ballistix 240-pin DIMM DDR2 PC2-5300 it's 100.00 for 512 stick but then I went to the next page and they had this one 1 Gig DDR2 PC2-4200 • CL=4 • UNBUFFERED • NON-ECC • DDR2-533 • 1.8V • 128Meg x 64 for 129.00 and the kit with 2 512 for 139.00 those or more my prices. Going with the cheaper memory am I hurting myself is there a really big difference? I'm planning on getting 2 Gig's of memory and if I went with what Crucial recomends then I would be paying around 400.00 for just the memory. And the last question on the PCI Express video card I see a few for around a 100.00 would that be ok I don't need to spend allot for gaming because I will use my old Box for that and that has a nice video card in it. Thank's again all for taking the time out to help me I really appreciate it and hope everyone has a great Holiday weekend.

Chad

Don't spend extra on the RAM with the lower latency, such as Crucial's Ballistix. It's a waste of money, which I wish I'd known before I built my computer.

See these articles for more details:
Fast RAM Provides Low Value (http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,118372,00.asp)
Does RAM Latency Matter? (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1637762,00.asp)

The $100 graphics cards should be okay for your purposes.

Thank's Chris for the heads up. It makes me feel better that I don't have to spend that extra money. Should I get 2 sticks of 512 and 1 stick of 1 Gig or just buy 2 - 1 gig stick's? I'm gathering everything I'm getting and going to post what it is so I'm making sure I'm getting all the right stuff. You guys have been so helpful I really appreciate it.

Thank's
Chad

Usually you want pairs of matched sticks of RAM so that they run in dual channel mode for increased throughput. I'm not sure how two sticks of 512 MB and one stick of 1 GB would run - hopefully someone else who has had experience with a similar configuration can chime in. Regardless, two sticks of 1 GB would give you more room for upgrading RAM in the future.

Rule of thumb for dual channel platforms is to get pairs of the exact same model/capacity memory. Those are the top performing combinations. On the 865 chipset, you lose 9% in performance (compared to pairs of the same RAM) if you run with a single stick of RAM (single channel, one of the slowest RAM configurations you can run).
I suspect 4X512MB is a few percent faster than 2X512MB, but I have no means of testing that.
In any case, not a big difference if you don't run pairs of the same RAM, but when it's "free" you might as well do it.
Kind of more info: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=37831


I'd get 2X512MB or 4X512MB (2GB may be overkill, but it really depends). I don't think you can really go wrong with 1GB.

This is the setup I'm thinking on getting.

intel Pentium 4 640 Prescott 800MHz FSB 2MB L2 Cache LGA 775 EM64T Processor 3.2

ASUS P5AD2-E Premium Socket T (LGA 775) Intel 925XE ATX Intel Motherboard


THERMALTAKE Silent PurePower TT-420AD(DUAL FAN) 420W Power Supply


CHAINTECH Geforce 6600 256MB 128-bit DDR PCI-Express x16 Video Card

DDR2 PC2-4200 • CL=4 • UNBUFFERED • NON-ECC • DDR2-533 • 1.8V • 64Meg x 64 1 gig to start off with


Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 SATA NCQ ST3160827AS 160GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive - OEM



The two things I might change is the Motherboard and the CPU. On the CPU I'm wondering if I should get the 3.0 instead of the 3.2 I wonder if there is a big diffrence bettween the two. And last the Motherboard. I know it's a very good motherboard but I'm wondering If I should go with a cheaper version. This Motherboard is like 230.00 I never spent that much on a motherboard and I see there is a few out there that has the 775 socket thats around 120.00. It would save me allot but again I want the best at least what I can afford. I'm not much of a overclocker actually I have never done it but if I can get the 3.0 chip to run just as fast as the 3.2 I just might go that way. Thank's again all for the input.

Chad

Processor: You can guestimate speed by dividing the clock speeds along the same processor line. So the 3.0ghz is about 6% slower.

Motherboard: I'd probably get a cheaper board. The more expensive boards just add more features, like more hard drive controllers and things like that. You may want a IEEE1394 port.

Power supply: Some people recommend Sparkle and Fortron power supplies for good price/performance.

Video card: If you want good gaming performance, that would be a good card (and it may also have dual DVI?). For certain compositing programs that take advantage of openGL acceleration (read the program's recommended specs; combustion is one example), a workstation card would be faster because they are not crippled at openGL.

Plus this motherboard allows you to do a very easy 10% overclock as mentioned earlier. Since I wouldn't know where to start if this board didn't do it for me I consider the extra money worth the extra speed it brings me. I think this would be the main reason to spend the extra money on this board.

If you are comfortable overclocking on your own or the extra 10% speed isn't worth the extra $150 then look at some cheaper alternatives.

I don't think the board overclocks better than other boards? I think I read the review over at hardocp.com and there doesn't seem to be anything really special about that board that makes overclocking easy. I think you definitely risk instability.

I believe the videoguy's DIY2 rig was overclocked 10% and was unstable?

2- If you really want to overclock:
Get a motherboard that is decent for overclocking... Abit and Asus are typically good, and Intel motherboards can't be overclocked. You can check hardocp.com for reviews. You are looking for boards without issues and allow tweaking of front side bus, voltages, etc.

(recommended) Get a better heatsink, which'll let you overclock more or have the CPU run cooler. i.e. Zalman 7000/7700 alcu, or Thermalright XP-120 + fan.

Use thermal paste like Artic Silver 5 or the stuff that comes with your heatsink instead of the thermal pad/wax on your CPU. This is a cheap way to cool your CPU. Read the instructions! Less is better.

Get a good power supply. A lot of the cheap power supplies do not actually deliver their rated wattage, which will lead to instability. OCed systems draw extra power, which means a good power supply is needed. Sparkle, Fortron, Antec are good brands. If you already have one, you can use a motherboard monitoring utility to check if your power supply can handle things.

STRESS TEST YOUR SYSTEM. Use Prime95's torture test and a motherboard monitoring utility from your mobo's manufacturer or Motherboard Monitor or a similar program. You need to do this to ensure stability. Pentium hyperthreading systems: You can also run CPUBurn at the same time because it loads your system more. If your machine can do the torture test for 24 hours, it should be quite stable.

Pentium systems: You overclock your system by raising the front side bus (FSB) speed. This will make the CPU and RAM and FSB run faster. Typically, RAM craps out first, then CPU, then your FSB. CPU speed makes a difference in performance, while the others contribute marginally to performance. So, you want to have your CPU run faster (at the expense of RAM and FSB speed if necessary). RAM will typically be unstable first, so you can change the memory divider so it runs slower.

http://cdrinfo.com/Sections/Reviews/Specific.aspx?ArticleId=12430&PageId=6

They use the Asus utility to get 3.5Ghz out of a 3.0Ghz chip. Thats probably a little more than I would be comfortable with, but none the less....

Thank's all for the info. I will probley go with this board because I have read so many reviews and every review gave it great marks Plus it comes with the WiFi adapter and that will save me 40.00 on a card to make this system wireless. Have a question with the sata Drive I'm getting. This is my first time getting a sata so i'm a little new at this. The 160 gig I'm getting I was going to particion it with a 20 gig Particion and another one at 140 gig and that is the one I will use for video. I have a few IDE drives I will also hook up to it but these will just hold misc files. Do you think it's a good setup or should I go another way? Thank's again for all the info.

Chad

Well I got everything ordered the only thing that was out of stock was the 160 gig Sata drive so I went and bought the 80 Gig and I'm figuring I will use this one for the bootup disk. I was at best buy today and I was asking a guy there about Sata drives and making particions on them and he told me it's not that good to particion a sata drive because if you lose one drive you will lose the whole hard drive. Is this true? and if so I guess it would be ok just to leave it at 80 gig's right? Thank's again all for the help.

I was at best buy today and I was asking a guy there about Sata drives and making particions on them and he told me it's not that good to particion a sata drive because if you lose one drive you will lose the whole hard drive. Is this true?
If a hard drive fails you lose the data on it regardless of whether or not it is partitioned. Partitioning a hard drive doesn't make it more or less likely to fail.

Then again, maybe he was talking about the partition table getting corrupted, in which case there are tools to restore it, like Partition Recovery (http://www.partition-recovery.com/).

Personally, I like to partition my system drives. I have one partition for Windows, one for applications, and one for data. It helps to keep things organized, and if I need to reinstall Windows my data is kept safely in it's own partition, untouched during the process.

Regardless of whether or not you decide to partition, make sure to back up your data frequently. I can't emphasize this enough. It's not a question of if you will experience a hard drive failure, but when. The easiest way to back up is to get an external USB 2.0 drive. We all know the easier something is to do, the more likely we will do it.

Run out and buy (or order online) an external drive now. You'll be so thankful you did on that day a hard drive goes south, taking all your precious data with it. Then you'll just pull out your backup drive, plug it in, and be on your way. (Oh, and be sure to test your backup before you need it, just to make sure it works when you need it!)

Thank's Chris for the help. I wasn't sure about Sata drives because I never used one but I'm glad I'm able to partition it. I also like to keeps things organized. I think this drive being a small one I will partition it with a 10 gig for Window's and the rest for applications and data. Thank's again for the help.


Chad

Yes, there's nothing special about SATA hard drives that makes them unsuitable for partitioning. I've got two desktops running partitioned SATA drives, both purring away happily.

Have fun putting your new computer together!

Wrong Thread!!!

Well I got the system up and running. Did have a little trouble with it heating up but I took the heatsink off and put some ArticSilver 5 and reset it and the temps are allot better. It idle's around 39 and when I'm doing something intensive it goes up to 64/C. When I first got it going it idled around 50 and went up to 75/C and the computer was slowing down when it was that hot. I've Rendered a 56 min video this weekend and it took 1 hour and 25 min to Render using mainconcept plugin set to VBR with XP 64 bit . I also tested my old PC with the same files and it took that machine 2 hours and 5 minutes to do the same movie. It took me awhile to figure out installing my drive's I have the 80 Gig sata as my Windows drive and my two IDE Drives as my backups everything is showing up but I'm not sure if there installed right. In the Bios it show's Primary IDE Master Not detected and the second show's my Burner and the 3rd it show's my sata drive. I know it probley need's some adjustments in the Bio's but had the flu for a few days and haven't read the manual much. Thank's again all for the help I really appreciate it.

Chad

Help!!!!!!! Ok my first problem I went to burn something last night and it went very slow for a new NEC 3520 DL burner so I checked to see if the DMA mode was on and sure enough it wasn't. I've tried everything to get it to switch to DMA and not PIO mood but no go. I went to NEC website and read and couldn't find anything there that help's. Do you all think the drive is bad or do you think it's XP 64 bit causing it? Any suggestions will be very much appreciated.

Thank's
Chad

I just installed my other drive and the same thing so at least I know it's not the drive itself. It must be the 64bit problem or something in the Bio's but I can't figure it out.

Cabling or drive errors or scratched disks will cause Windows to automatically drop the speed down on your burner. That might be it?
The way to fix that would be to uninstall the drive in device manager. If it keeps happening, their is a registry tweak you can do to prevent Windows from dropping the speed down (this would be the right thing to do if the drive is getting errors from scratched CDs).

Your BIOS can also limit your drive to PIO, although I haven't heard of that ever happening to anyone.

I have zero experience with 64bit windows XP, so I wouldn't know if it's causing the problem.

Chad,

Glad to see you got your system up and running!

About your Nec DVD burner problem, another person had a similiar problem with the same model DVD drive (http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=136511) even with DMA turned on. He solved it by setting his Nec burner as the Master drive on the secondary IDE channel.

Thank's Guy's for the help. It was the 64 bit version that was causing the problem so I loaded up XP Pro again and everything is working good. I want to do some test's with this version and really see if there is and advantage now going with 64 bit or should I wait a bit. I'm going to do the same render test again and see how long it will take this time I post what I find out. Thank's again all.

chad

OK now I'm very confused. I just edited a 56 minute video and rendered it in 59 Minutes with the same settings I used for the other test on the 64 bit system. So I guess I'm not going back to 64 bit anytime soon. The only thing different is I have AI Booster running instead of doing the 10% overclock in the bio's.


Chad

Greets, Chad,

The AiBooster settings are the same as the BIOS...if you make a change to Ai, it simply reboots with the BIOS changes made for you.

If you need any help with your new board, feel free to shoot me an email. Not saying that I have it all figured out or anything, but if it's worth a shot let me know.

With the 865 chipset boards, AiBooster will change speeds on the fly/dynamically. For example, if you put something stupid in there you can get AiBooster to overclock your system too much and crash it while windows is running.
It does not change settings to "catch" when you reboot.

I don't have your particular board, but I don't see why things would be any different. A quick way to check what's happening is to put stupid settings into AiBooster (i.e. 30% overclock... your RAM probably won't like that). Minor warning: Make sure AiBooster won't load up with those settings when your computer reboots. You can always boost into safe mode and get yourself out of that, but you save a little time by preventing it from happening.

The Ai NOS settings, accessable from the bottom left of the Ai Booster app will do exactly what Glenn says, they will dynamically adjust your OC'ing when under load, but the standart Ai Booster settings along the lower right and far right side of the app work as I described above. I personally do no use the Ai NOS dynamic adjustment app...it seems like it would be slightly less stable, just on gut instinct.

I think I'm going to uninstall Ai NOS and just do the 10% profile in the Bio's. Everything seem's to be working ok the only thing I'm still having a little problem with is the WiFi adapter. I will be sitting here and I will lose the connection for a minute and then it come's back. I have a Linksys Wireless g and this computer is only 10 feet from it.I'm new to wireless so I'm not sure if this is the norm. I asked a guy at best Buy the other day and he told me it shouldn't be doing that so I don't know all I know is those pop up message's at the bottom right drive's me nuts when they come up and go off all the time so I have to figure this out or I'm just going to run a wire. Thank's again all for the help.


Chad

Chad,

Did you check the Asus support site for anything they might have on your WiFi problem?

http://support.asus.com/

I think I'm going to uninstall Ai NOS and just do the 10% profile in the Bio's.


Thats exactly what I did. As far as wireless goes, I've never tried it and know nothing at all! If you want to be able to read the temp after getting rid of NOS/Booster, you can use ASUS Probe.

Hello all,
Well the system has been working pretty good but sometimes I'm notice it being sluggish with Photoshop and when I'm rendering so I notice the cpu temp going up to 68 when I'm rendering so I figure I would buy a better heat sink so I was thinking on getting a ZALMAN CNPS7700-CU 120mm 2 Ball Cooling Fan it's seems pretty good so I was wondering what you all think or do you have a better one that will work with my system. Thank's again all for the help.

Chad

The better heatsink won't really help you unless your processor is doing thermal throttling. If the processor gets too hot, it will slow itself to 50% to cool itself off. I doubt it's happening on your system... although a 10% overclock might push it in the thermal throttling range.

I think Pentiums will do it at 75C for Prescott processors.

2- Photoshop sluggishness- typically this is due to not enough RAM / pagefile usage. TO check, hit
crtl alt del
click on performance tab
look at PF usage meter
Close Photoshop and look at the difference. If it drops significantly, you probably have high pagefile usage.

Pagefile is Windows using your hard drive as RAM. Your hard drive is many times slower than RAM (something like 60 times), which would explain big performance drops. Fix it by adding more RAM or lowering the amount of RAM your system uses.