Athlon64 x2

Big Dog · Sep 3, 2006

Looking to purchase another PC. Mom wants to experiment with the internet so I'm gonna give her one of my PC's (Athlon 1.4ghz) to try out so that leaves a hole in the lineup. I've done AMD for years and built many for people. My last purchase was an Intel I got through an employee purchase program which was quite a deal but I rate it so-so. I'm looking at the Dual Core systems. Everything I've researched dictated by my use indicates the AMD is the way to go. I've had great service from all my AMD's and it looks like I'm going to go for it again. AMD is running a lot cooler and less power hungry than the Intel in this genre and out performing Intel except in mutiple applications.

Does anyone have one of these machines? I'm looking at 4400 - 5000 (2.2 - 2.6 ghz) on the socket AM2 format, 2gb RAM and probably dual 160 HD's. Also anyone running RAID 0 (2 HD's running as one) for performance? RAID 1 is not a concern, backups of vital data will be done on a external drive. Looking for any help and please give some feedback if possible!

BTW ......... I'm not doing Apple, it will be a Windows machine (so far) ready for Vista.

Doc · Sep 3, 2006

Whoa, sounds like a kick ass Workstation. I to have used primarily AMD in systems I build. I've been completely satisfied. AMD CPU's were always cheaper, but performed just as well as intell.

I just loaded a two cpu dual core system last week (at work). It was a dell 2950. Boy was it fast. With dual core on each of the cpu's it operates as a 4 cpu box. This technology seems to be the way of the future. Disks have been the slowest part of the system for a long time. Going raid 0 will speed up your disks, but they'll still be the slowest componet.
Are you building this one yourself?
I'm planning to build a new Linux server for home use later this fall. I'm undecided on whether or not to go dual core. It will depend on the cost.

Big Dog · Sep 3, 2006

Frankly Doc, the build doesn't intimidate me but WHY? I can't build for what I can configure at a respected seller. I found that out awhile ago plus let them take the risk a grounding the MB .... Don't ask me how I know........ LOL! I might save $100 but it ain't worth the time. I'm pretty picky and as far as components, they offer anything I request like a Gigabyte motherboard, Western Digital HD's and ATI/nVIDIA video cards. The system is going to be around $1000 - $1200 without monitor, christ I got more a those than I can use now.

Doc · Sep 3, 2006

I usually end up saving a little bit by building, but the reason I build them is for dependability. Also I think you get to know your system better if you build it. You also get all the docs and cd's that come with each piece of hardware you buy. Makes it easier to trouble shoot down the road or when adding new hardware at a later date. You can rebuild from scratch in any configuration you want when you have the driver CD's & manuals.
It is normally the 'unnamed' componets that will get you since that is where sellers cut corners. I like the MoBo with built in network and usb but a built in sound card has caused me grief.
Attaching the AMD CPU used to be a bit tricky. I wonder if the new socket will be a little easier to attach?

Big Dog · Sep 3, 2006

Doc said:
I usually end up saving a little bit by building, but the reason I build them is for dependability. Also I think you get to know your system better if you build it. You also get all the docs and cd's that come with each piece of hardware you buy. Makes it easier to trouble shoot down the road or when adding new hardware at a later date. You can rebuild from scratch in any configuration you want when you have the driver CD's & manuals.
It is normally the 'unnamed' componets that will get you since that is where sellers cut corners. I like the MoBo with built in network and usb but a built in sound card has caused me grief.
Attaching the AMD CPU used to be a bit tricky. I wonder if the new socket will be a little easier to attach?

I've relied on the internet for doc's, software updates. etc.... and I'm a member of driverguide.com and they usually get the newest submissions so it's one stop for anything. Hell the sockets only require your ability to hit 400+ holes at one time ...... LOL!

Doc · Sep 3, 2006

I've never heard of driveguide.com. Now I know who to call to dig me up a driver.

(I mean you, not driverguide

)
How much does membership cost?

I've never done raid 0. Data has always been important. It will allow you to see both 160 gig drives as one logical drive of 320 gigs. Thats a bunch of space bubba!!!!

DaveNay · Sep 3, 2006

I used to build my PC's. Not any more. It's just not worth the time. PC's from makers like Dell have seriously become commodity items. Earlier this summer, we purchased a system from Dell to use for bookeeping. I'm not sure of the CPU (it's Intel) speed, but theese days that barely matters. The HD is probably only 80 gig, but that's enough for everything execpt your porn collection. The real kicker was the entire system was only around $800 and INCLUDED A 17" LCD MONITOR and delivery.

In my opinion, building your own PC these days is like going out to collect lead ore and smelt it down to form your own bullets.

Big Dog · Sep 3, 2006

Doc said:
I've never heard of driveguide.com. Now I know who to call to dig me up a driver.
(I mean you, not driverguide )
How much does membership cost?

I've never done raid 0. Data has always been important. It will allow you to see both 160 gig drives as one logical drive of 320 gigs. Thats a bunch of space bubba!!!!

It's free ............ only takes registration

http://www.driverguide.com/

Dargo · Sep 3, 2006

It seems odd to me to have such small hard drives. I have one 500 gig drive and one 250 gig drive in my office computer. I couldn't imagine putting 160's in a new system. They quit making those well over a year ago. I wouldn't consider anything smaller than a 500 gig in a new system. I'm going to replace my 250 gig with a 750 gig and put the 250 in my son's computer.

Doc · Sep 3, 2006

Ahhh Dave it's not that tough. NewEgg.com makes it pretty easy. All you do it plug the componets together. We have dell servers and workstations at work. With over 1000 workstations I see and hear of all kinds of 'issues'. I would agree that the majority of dell workstations are okay, but we've seen runs of various models that have issues. It would be just my luck to get one of the bad ones.
Sick as it might sound .....I actually enjoy building mine. But, I buy all my bullets.

Big Dog · Sep 3, 2006

Dargo said:
It seems odd to me to have such small hard drives. I have one 500 gig drive and one 250 gig drive in my office computer. I couldn't imagine putting 160's in a new system. They quit making those well over a year ago. I wouldn't consider anything smaller than a 500 gig in a new system. I'm going to replace my 250 gig with a 750 gig and put the 250 in my son's computer.

I'll never ever use it ................ but maybe in 2015 .............

BTW ....... you have to have identical drives for RAID

Dargo · Sep 3, 2006

Big Dog said:
I'll never ever use it ................ but maybe in 2015 .............

That's what I thought for a while. I have over 250 gig of digital pictures on my drive that I've taken in just the last year or so. That grows every week. That's in addition to the roughly 200 gig of tunes I have. If you ever buy a relatively high resolution digital camera you'll eat through a 160 gig immediately. Hell, the new Vista operating system will probably fill a 160 gig drive!

Besides, a 400 gig drive isn't much over $100. How much more can that be than a 160?

Big Dog · Sep 3, 2006

Dargo said:
That's what I thought for a while. I have over 250 gig of digital pictures on my drive that I've taken in just the last year or so. That grows every week. That's in addition to the roughly 200 gig of tunes I have. If you ever buy a relatively high resolution digital camera you'll eat through a 160 gig immediately. Hell, the new Vista operating system will probably fill a 160 gig drive!

Besides, a 400 gig drive isn't much over $100. How much more can that be than a 160?

I'll look and BTW ............ :weneedpic

You have chit on that thing you'll never look at again, clean your chit up ......... :yankchain:

Big Dog · Sep 3, 2006

Dargo said:
That's what I thought for a while. I have over 250 gig of digital pictures on my drive that I've taken in just the last year or so. That grows every week. That's in addition to the roughly 200 gig of tunes I have. If you ever buy a relatively high resolution digital camera you'll eat through a 160 gig immediately. Hell, the new Vista operating system will probably fill a 160 gig drive!

Besides, a 400 gig drive isn't much over $100. How much more can that be than a 160?

400's are $80 more a piece ............ 500's are $100 a piece

You talked me into 250's at $23 more a piece

Spiffy1 · Sep 3, 2006

My primarys are only 32Gig. However, I'm running 2 pair of SCSIs in RAID 0 [I was going to go with all 4 in a 10, but I just got a huge SATA cheap and run an occasional manual "mirror"], so any larger drives would have been $$$$

.

It's so fast, it actually chokes the SouthBridge Bus [which slightly negates the RAID 0 speeds, but still faster than any other configuration despite the bottleneck].

I'm running Intel on this build because the AMD MOBOs just didn't have many PCI-X [not PCI-E] options. I went with SuperMicro: awesome board, but I don't think they do any AMD yet.

I'd go with Asus again in a heartbeat too, and I'm not afraid of Tyan.

Like Doc noted, I build, not for the savings, but to know every component in there; and it does keep the cobwebs off my puny cranium. I have gone through both big and local builders in the past (because before internet sellers, they could get much cheaper prices), and 3 times [out of 3] they tried to sneak something under me (I got the best of the first 2, but the last went broke before I could get it straightened out).

Spiffy1 · Sep 3, 2006

Doc said:
I've never done raid 0. Data has always been important. It will allow you to see both 160 gig drives as one logical drive of 320 gigs. Thats a bunch of space bubba!!!!

I have tried the "WinRaid 5" [or whatever the proper term is] in the past, and I wasn't too impressed. Coming through my Adaptec controller card though, I am getting about twice the drive size and nearly twice the speed [though my aforementioned chipset bottleneck won't allow full advantage of that for more than a second before saturating].

That said, I'll definitely agree that any RAID for capacity or speed [rather the redundancy] directly impacts your odds of a drive failure.

Dargo · Sep 3, 2006

Big Dog said:
I'll look and BTW ............

You have chit on that thing you'll never look at again, clean your chit up .........

Well, I have to admit that I'm not sure why in the hell I have an album by Screeching Weasels...

Oh yeah, what pictures do you want to see? :5boobs:

Doc · Sep 3, 2006

I figured BD was going with SCSI, and that was the reason for 160's. SCSI is much more expensive but you get the speed. We've been building our Dell Power Vaults (16 drives in a box) with 146 gig Scsi's. 15,000 rpm spindle speed. For big DB's. We need the faster access times that gives you.

We've also had special needs for 300 gig SCSI drives that do 10,000 rpm. But those drives run 800 bucks each.

Doc · Sep 3, 2006

Spiffy1 said:
I have tried the "WinRaid 5" [or whatever the proper term is] in the past, and I wasn't too impressed. Coming through my Adaptec controller card though, I am getting about twice the drive size and nearly twice the speed [though my aforementioned chipset bottleneck won't allow full advantage of that for more than a second before saturating].

That said, I'll definitely agree that any RAID for capacity or speed [rather the redundancy] directly impacts your odds of a drive failure.

I'm not sure from the way you worded it ....but do hardware raid instead of software raid if possible. I set that up right after the setup window but before the OS comes into play. I use Perc controllers on Dell, I figure the Adaptec controller would have that option. ...if that is the way your already doing it ..Nevermind. :pat:

Spiffy1 · Sep 3, 2006

Doc said:
I'm not sure from the way you worded it ....but do hardware raid instead of software raid if possible. I set that up right after the setup window but before the OS comes into play. I use Perc controllers on Dell, I figure the Adaptec controller would have that option. ...if that is the way your already doing it ..Nevermind.

Actually I follow - that's exactly what I was saying: I tried the software version of [I think] Raid 5 one time when I was reviving an old computer with a lousy SCSI card and small drives.

Else, same procedure: after the setup but before the OS. If I remember right, they do have a program that allows you to make changes from the OS, but I've never used it (especially when half my drives have the OS on them).

Spiffy1 · Sep 3, 2006

Doc said:
I figured BD was going with SCSI, and that was the reason for 160's. SCSI is much more expensive but you get the speed. We've been building our Dell Power Vaults (16 drives in a box) with 146 gig Scsi's. 15,000 rpm spindle speed. For big DB's. We need the faster access times that gives you.

We've also had special needs for 300 gig SCSI drives that do 10,000 rpm. But those drives run 800 bucks each.

Pehaps not out of line when some of the 15K drives with half that capacity cost even more but still: $800 for a drive

.....that's why my 15Ks are only 32gig.

I bet BD was thinking SATA with an onboard controller though. I have no idea of reliability, but he'd probably be plenty happy with a couple pair of Raptors for his primary drives and then a slower (perhaps external) back-up drive.

Of course, I keep saying the next time I build, SAS will be cheap enough, but I'll probably need one more SCSI build before that happens.

Dargo · Sep 3, 2006

Spiffy1 said:
...I was reviving an old computer with a lousy SCSI card and small drives.

I have a couple of old SCSI cards, ribbon cables, and (most likely bad) 540 mb SCSI hard drives along with several old ASUS boards from when I had my 'basement' computer business. Heck, I still have a leftover, NOS, IBM AT complete computer. Need one?

I still wonder if I did the right thing selling my computer business now. The company that bought it is still in business and still have the two dozen or so businesses I had who used me for hardware and hardware support. Maybe I screwed up? The businesses weren't too bad, but I bailed out about the time that everyone was getting on the internet. Me and my business partner spent nearly all of our time with calls concerning how to get their dial up working with the internet or why their damn dial up kept dropping (with their call waiting bleep). People wouldn't pay for the service call when it wasn't hardware related (which would have been covered), and they just got pissed off if I billed them anyway.

Anyone still run a computer business here? The guy who bought my company now charges $125 an hour for service calls and bills 1 hour drive time no matter how close they are and has a 1 hour minimum. So, for a minimum service call to a business he's charging $250. If he keeps his three "road techs" busy, I suppose he would still be doing okay even with basically no in store hardware sales to speak of.

Doc · Sep 3, 2006

I haven't run anything SATA yet. If anyone has how about sharing what you think of them?

Spiffy1 · Sep 3, 2006

Dargo said:
I have a couple of old SCSI cards, ribbon cables, and (most likely bad) 540 mb SCSI hard drives along with several old ASUS boards from when I had my 'basement' computer business. Heck, I still have a leftover, NOS, IBM AT complete computer. Need one?

Better not, thanks though Dargo! With all the computer parts coming out of nooks and crannies in our other house everytime move something down here - I think I'd be shot if she found as much as 3 1/2 floppy drive in our mail box.

Spiffy1 · Sep 3, 2006

Doc said:
I haven't run anything SATA yet. If anyone has how about sharing what you think of them?

I've played with a couple cheap ones, and aside from the one MOBO being a bit picky about the right setup, they were easy to install and setup; pretty fast too.

Spiffy1 · Sep 4, 2006

The Southbridge bus is "bursting at it's seams" with that RAID 0, so some funky looking data; but the cheap SATA is running about half the throughput (58.6MB/s) of my RAID (128.2MB/s). Without that bottle neck, I've little doubt those SCSIs would really smoke the SATA drive, but for all purposes it's holding it's own: $ for $ actually really doing well.

Doc · Sep 4, 2006

Interesting Spiffy. Thanks!!

Big Dog · Dec 21, 2006

Sorta lost track of this thread and thought I'd post an update. I've had the system for about 6 weeks and it's a real pleasure to work with this machine.
Got a heck of a deal on my employee purchase program and thought I'd show it off.

Dell Dimension E521
Athlon64 x2 5000 (2.6ghz dual core)
2 gig ram
Dual Western Digital 250 gig HD's (another 250 WD external)
24" wide screen monitor (already had the 19")
Dual DVD drives one being DVD R/W
Media reader (Didn't really need it cause the monitor also has one incorporated in it)

OH the power.....................

Dargo · Dec 21, 2006

Alright, now I'm pissed. Your desk makes mine look like a messy disaster with all the constant piles of paperwork that goes through the "in" and "out" boxes. But, you don't have the pretty green desk like Bob's.

P.S. Nice system! I'm glad to see that you have adequate storage space now.

Doc · Dec 21, 2006

Dargo said:
Alright, now I'm pissed. Your desk makes mine look like a messy disaster with all the constant piles of paperwork that goes through the "in" and "out" boxes. But, you don't have the pretty green desk like Bob's.

P.S. Nice system! I'm glad to see that you have adequate storage space now.

Ditto on the messy desk feeling.

Papers every friggin where.

Nice System BD. That is the ultimate!!!! :a1:

Athlon64 x2

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