Building a PC...what to look for

[GuardianOdin]

Hey guys and gals

I'm wanting to build a pc from the ground up and need some tech help.

1. What is the difference between an AMD vs. Pentium in terms for specs? For instance what is the difference between a 2.4 AMD and a 2.4 Pentium?

2. best mother board for either AMD or Pentium?

Anyway I have a feeling I will be running into a of cash. I will still be on a budget. About the most I can afford for both Mother board and CUP will be about $500- $600. I already have two 400mhz 512 memory.

[Dash Martin]

Well, the 2.4 gHz Pentium is loads slower than that 2.4 Athlon. The naming scheme they use on the AMD chips represents their performance compared to a Pentium chip. For example...the AMD Athlon64 3500+ is a 2.2gHz processor, but due to other technology built into the chip like hypertransporting etc, it benchmarks like a Pentium clocked at 3.5 gHz. They also usually cost a few hundred bucks less than a Pentium, but AMD motherboards are usually cost $50 or so more than a Pentium board. Either way, the best most stable boards I've used have been Asus. I've used Epox, Abit, Gigabyte...all worked fine, but not stable enough for a workstation like the Asus boards.

[astrocity20]

Depends on what you want the machine to do. But you should easily be able to make a PC for less than what you're looking for. Personally I'd go with AMD, I've been with them since K6-2 and have trusted them since. Intel costs too much for me, specially when you can get the same/better performance out of AMD at less the price.

Other basic variables include graphics card, whether or not you want a sound card or if you can settle with onboard soundchips that some/most motherboards have intact. Ram of course, PowerSupply and case. All depends on what exactly you want it to do.

[GuardianOdin]

I am mainly wanting to use the PC for Photoshop and Painter type programs and something that will handle heavy graphics and video.

I'm not so worried about the sound, but I would like something better than onboard.

Thanks Meth, That clears a lot up about the two. I have some understanding about PC's. I can build one easy enough, I just need to learn the tech and spec side of them now.

[astrocity20]

well since you're not completely hardware computer illiterate you can usually look up the lowest prices on computer stuff at www.pricewatch.com just get the fastest junk your checkbook can handle I guess

[Rocket37]

i just built my pc..I went with the amd 2800 processor and a ecs mobo. i put got a 512 stick of ddr400 ram and added another 256 ddr400 ram i already had. I also got a new video card for it that was an ati 9550 with 256 meg of memory on it . I also got a 80 gig WD mybook external usb drive to keep all my art stuff etc. on after al was said and done i think i put around 400 dollars into it. Photoshop runs great on it. i recommend amd processors due to the fact that they are very reliable and stable, and also alot cheaper than intel! if you can build it your self you will make out alot cheaper and have a much better machine than a name brand box with shared memory .. if you have to buy a case get one with a 450watt power supply or larger! most name brand boxes have very small power supplies which makes upgrades and addons a crap shoot!

if you have any questions pm me and i will try to help you...

Frank

[G-man_2000]

Remember it the monitor that’s the big money eater. Western Digital makes good and cheap hard drives that won’t break for years. AMD vs. Pentium, I gets what’s cheaper, I seem to go from one to the other ever few years anyway. The motherboard and the goodies that it has on it seem more important to me, PCI and AGP slots are still a must for me, having 3 or four slots for ram makes allot of deferent’s, ram chance’s every few years as well. Build in sound is a must for me, mostly for trouble shooting if I need to take all the cards out for some reason. You can get a build in graphics card but they will still look ugly for newer PC games, some time in bad case’s they can make it harder to put in an external graphics card. Get some thing about 450 to 500 watts of power supply, or you just going to have to by a new one when you update your motherboard a few years from now. CD burners are cheap, but make shore you do your research on a good one. Oh and one thing there starting to take out the joystick ports on the new motherboards every year so you will need a USB controller and don’t forget to get fast hyper-threading for your motherboard!!!

[Dash Martin]

They still make AGP videocards?

[GuardianOdin]

This what I have right now.

Processor
1.80 gigahertz AMD Athlon XP
128 kilobyte primary memory cache
64 kilobyte secondary memory cache

Mother Board
PcChips M11

Main Circuit Board
Bus Clock: 133 megahertz
BIOS: Phoenix Technologies

Memory
1024 Megabytes Installed Memory

Display
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5500

Harddrive
Western Digital 40g

[astrocity20]

That won't run Photoshop? I used to have a machine similar to that, ran photoshop fine.