Current Best-value Mainboard, Gfx Card?

[chanchao]

I recently got a DV Camcorder and found that my old computer is really not up to the job of capturing, editing, rendering and burning videos, both in terms of storage as well as computing power.

I also don't want to spend a lot of money. Getting a computer custom-built is of course not a single baht more expensive than doing it all yourself, and you get somewhat of a warranty on the whole thing. Then again, I just know I'd do a better job myself putting things together and actually reading the manuals beforehand, as opposed to the 'plug it all in and see if it boots up' approach that I think most shops go by.

And, I want to SERIOUSLY reduce cost AND get a system that does the job performance-wise. This means I will not go for anywhere near the fastest CPU on the market and watch it depreciate 50% in the next 6 months. I DO want to spend money on a quality mainboard, memory, disk etc. And actually on a good case too that's easy to open up, but it seems it's mostly wall-to-wall plastic crap cases that cost less than 1000 baht. I'd be very happy to pay double that and get something that's easy to work in, doesn't look like a plastic toy and has a good power supply and quieter fans.

The money saved will go towards things I actually want to use the thing for, like a DVD burner, and a bit later a nice sound system. I'd rather spend my money on a good screen and sound, i.e. things that don't depreciate faster than throwing money off a bridge in a fast flowing stream.

Looking at http://www.pantip.com/tech/market/price/index.php , are those prices accurate or a tad high? (I'm up in Chiang Mai and looking to find out what the BKK prices are)

So I need recommendations for a good quality mainboard with a recent, fast chipset (800Mhz FSB) that includes LAN, Firewire and good sound on the board itself. Suggestions for something that's good value at the moment in Thailand? Prices for a typical Gigabyte or Asus board? Are Micro-ATX boards significantly more expensive? (Want to keep overall size down if possible)

Other major part is the Gfx card.. It should play games properly, and give a good image when connected to a TV. Ati Radeon card? What models/prices are good at the moment? (I'm not spending more than 3000 baht on the gfx card though, preferably less).

Everything else is minor, I'll make sure it has enough memory and diskspace, and will probably go for an older cheapo P4 and overclock it some, knowing that next year I can plug in that P4 3.2E HT for 3500 baht, not the 10,000 baht it costs right now. That'd be blowing money faster than a good night at Poseidon.

Cheers,

Chanchao

[Richard-BKK]

Asus P4S800D-E Deluxe

http://www.asus.com/products/mb/socket478/...-d/overview.htm

Panthip price +/- 4000Bht

[monty]

Prices on pantip.com are indeed a tad high. Check following sites for prices and an idea what's available in most shops:

http://www.famous.co.th/price/brochure.cgi

and

http://www.bangkok-computers.com/

I am a bit of a fan for AMD based systems, they are cheaper then Intels CPU's and generally faster. Only make sure you have a case with decent cooling! If you check out some of the PC gaming magazines, most of their recomended systems are AMD based and these guys are addicted to performance

The best mainboard for AMD would be any nforce2 based model. Start at around 2700 Baht for the Gigabyte GA-7N400E-L, if you want to be future proof go for the GA-7N400 Pro 2 at 4500 Baht. You can upgrade to serial ata harddisks later on if you want...

[bangbuathong]

I want to SERIOUSLY reduce cost AND get a system that does the job performance-wise

your lucky that dv editting is not so demanding

[Thetyim]

I am with Monty all the way on this one.

I have just replaced my computer with an AMD Athlon 2600 and Asus motherboard. Much cheaper and very good performance.

I had to modify the cooling arrangement myself as the original one was not up to it and very noisey. All you need is a bit of common sense.

Just remember it is not the number of fans which is important but where you put them.

[joka]

hello...

being from the u.s., i must recommend intel.....we are lucky to have any jobs these days

so here is a website with prices, one of the small "chains" operating out of pantip, zeer, etc.

http://www.jib.co.th

[joka]

hello...

If you check out some of the PC gaming magazines, most of their recomended systems are AMD based and these guys are addicted to performance

and these magazines are published by who?

[bkk_mike]

being from the u.s., i must recommend intel.....we are lucky to have any jobs these days

???

AMD is in Sunnyvale, and unless California has seceded from the union, not sure why being American would make you choose Intel.

[chanchao]

Thanks all for the great replies and the links, they're really very helpful!!!

> If you check out some of the PC gaming magazines, most of their

> recomended systems are AMD based and these guys are addicted to

> performance

I have a feeling that this is changing with the newer versions of Pentium 4 that support hyper threading and a very fast bus of 800 MHz. Even faster Athlons still use a very slow bus. Gamers who want the absolute best maybe shell out for the new 64 bit Athlon which may have the edge for games, but it's also not inexpensive by any definition.

So forgetting the high-end and looking strictly at price:performance, an older P4 may be similarly priced to an Athlon, BUT be more overclockable, requiring less radical cooling AND can be used on a recent mainboard that supports fast RAM and which is generally ready to plug in a recent P4 when it falls in price. With Athlon mainboards I get the feeling that they're near the end of the Athlon lifespan.

Anyway, enough talk, let's look at the numbers and focus specifically at gaming/3D as this is where Athlon is strongest. (For general applications, video encoding and so on pretty much any P4 is faster than even the highest end Athlon. So for argument's sake let's go with gaming):

http://www20.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030217..._charts-22.html

Here we see that the current bottom-end Pentium 4 (2.4A) is pretty much in between the Athlon 2600+ and Athlon 2700+. Note though that this test is already a year old and that on a recent mainboard, the P4 will be running at 400 MHz memory, whereas Athlon is pretty much maxed out already at 333 MHz. And, the P4 can most likely be over-clocked, at least to 2.6-2.8 GHz. So let's compare against the 2800+ Athlon. (Again referring to the charts, 2800+ Athlon is comparable to a P4 running at 2.6 or 2.8 Ghz)

Athlon 2800+ : 4980 - 5320 Baht

Pentium 4 2.4A : 5400 - 5450 Baht

I think that price difference is not significant. So the same amount of money buys comparable gaming performance, and in case of P4 a bit better 'general use' and video rendering performance. On the other hand, you cannot buy a cheaper P4 CPU, whereas with Athlon you could settle for a 2200+ and save some money.

I think what swings it in favor of P4 architecture for me is that I will be able to plug in a (currently) high-end P4 when it drops in price and get a nice performance boost, whereas with Athlon I think this is pretty much it?

(Please let me know if you feel if I've made any mistakes in this reasoning.. )

Cheers,

Chanchao

Edited October 6, 2004 by chanchao

[monty]

Chanchao,

No mistakes in your reasoning

The major drawback of the AMD Athlon is indeed the fact that the product is at the end of its projected lifetime. Amd is directing all it's resources to the future of 64 bit computing!

The big advantage of AMD at the moment are their 64bit processors, which are not very expensive, outperform anything intel has on offer and they are very futureproof. Certainly when Longhorn appears...

Atec markets a 64 bit machine in Thailand at a very decent price. Check out

http://www.atec.co.th/gamer_pc.html

At 26000 this is a very decent machine, not the fastest but very upgradable when faster stuff becomes available at lower prices. Decent videocard, fast motherboard (at 800Mhz buss) supports serial ata if you have a need for fast hard drives, firewire...

Unfortunately it seems to be hard to find the parts to assemble your own 64 bit PC.

[Firefoxx]

Hmm, I do lots of DV editing, and I play lots of 3D games. Maybe my system will appeal to you. I'll tell you what I have, and explain the reasoning behind each:

Mainboard: Asus P4P800-Deluxe: It's a great performer, it supports everything, has firewire, has RAID, and is rock-stable. You might not need to get the Deluxe, just the SE version, and get a firewire card added (around 500-700 baht). You won't miss the RAID, since there are plenty SATA and parallel ports on the SE version, enough for tons of HDDs. The only thing is that newer Intel chipsets (the 9xx series) are coming out with PCI-x, and might be more future proof (and more expensive).

CPU: P4-2.4C: It's hyperthreading, and I've got it overclocked to 3.2GHz, with stock cooling. The 2.4A you mention is not hyperthreading, and IMOH, hyperthreading DOES help. I picked Intel because of heat concerns, and because of the uber-overclocking potential of the 2.4C. And of course, HT.

RAM: Normal 512MB DDR 3200 (2 sticks): If you're not overclocking the system bus (and I don't, I only overclock the CPU), you don't need uber RAM. 512MB (256x2) is good enough if you don't have a lot of apps open (but alas, I do).

VGA: Radeon 9600Pro: It's got 2 heads (gonna get another monitor for more real estate soon... when you use premiere, you need all the space you can get), it's great for games, and it's not ultra-expensive. You can't get anything decent for 3,000, but for 4,000 you can get the 9550, a step below the 9600.

HDD: A few Maxtor 160GB's, SATA. I picked maxtor because they have a good warranty policy, they have a center in IT Mall, and they offer ugrade plans. SATA, of course, for best speed, less clutter.

DVD: A pioneer 108 16x DVD+-RW. It got good reviews, and was ###### cheap. No-brainer.

Mouse: MS Wireless Exporer ("matrix" model). S'good. Got it for half price.

Case: A chinese-made aluminum case. 2,100 baht, but comes with power supply. It's not as gee-whiz great as the expensive lian-li cases, but it's mucho better than the steel/plastic cases in terms of cooling. I replaced the power supply with a Enermax. It has front USB, firewire, and audio ports, all of which I use often. I put in some japanese-made fans, since stock fans tend to die and kill your system.

Total is around 25-30k, sans monitor. But I have no trouble at all with large DV vids.

[Mr_Happy]

Watch out for prescotts they really run hot...

[chanchao]

!!Thanks!!

I went looking around the Chiang Mai computer mini-malls (there are like 3 right next to each other, oh, the perfection of the 'me-too' business model.

You wouldn't believe what I found on sale there.. Look at this:

http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?locat...&var1=97&var2=0

And more specifically, look what they added, makes you wonder if the weed is good in Taiwan:

http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?locat...&var1=97&var2=0

I'm actually sort of tempted, it's a nice package and includes on-board video AND 8x AGP for when you want to play recent games, s-ata, raid, firewire, a remote control, flash card reader, toaster oven, electric toothbrush connector, you name it. Basically if I get a cheapo but overclockable P4 and 512MB memory and plug in my old harddrive (for now) then I should be sittin' pretty. The on-board video is adequate for 2D uses like video editing anyway. The barebones case goes for 9700 baht (in Chiang Mai) so adding a cpu for 5000 baht and memory for 3200 would bring the total cost to about 18,000 baht for something that looks quite special.

Please someone, talk me out of it. That 200 Watt mini-power supply especially has me worried if I would add a fancy 3D card, and there's no space to plug in a standard sized ATX power supply.

Cheers,

Chanchao

[Firefoxx]

SFFs are nice in that they're all in one deals that take up little space. However, like notebooks, that comes with a price: proprietary upgradability and limited options. The price isn't all that different from a comparable desktop barebones (actually more expensive).

Let's see, it's 9700 baht, and is basically a motherboard with a case. Right. You can get an asus p4p800-se with an aluminum case and a radeon 9550 card for basically the same price, and it would be a lot better, albeit twice as big (vertically). A firewire card and flash reader would set you back another 1000 baht, but basically you would have more than the funcationality of the SFF.

Cool looks are nice, but does it help when you're actually using the computer? And the aluminum case isn't all that shabby-looking either.

[chanchao]

> Cool looks are nice, but does it help when you're actually using the

> computer? And the aluminum case isn't all that shabby-looking either.

Thanks for being very effective in talking me out of it!!

Cheers,

Chanchao

[joka]

amd chips, like many things "american", ARE NOT MANUFACTURED IN THE US.

[bkk_mike]

amd chips, like many things "american", ARE NOT MANUFACTURED IN THE US.

Half of AMD's fabs are in the US.

(and 3 of Intel's aren't).

Semiconductor Industry Association - Wafer fabrication plants