MSI NEO2 Platinum vs Asus A8N-SLI

[bulldawg1979]

I really have a CPU issue as well as mobo. I'm putting together a new system and have a great price on a bundled AMD 64 (Newcastle) 3500+/MSI NEO 2 Platinum. Before I bumped into this special, I thought the way to go was an AMD 64 (Winchester) 3200+ (best price point without a deal) with a mobo using the newer PCI Express/SLI technology (Asus A8N-SLI). The system will be made for video editing and some gaming (but not enthusiast level). Would someone please help me sort out the Newcastle vs Winchester issue and whether I'll regret missing out on the PCI express train?
Thanks,
bulldawg1979

 

[OrangeParktech]

My boss has the newcastle 3500, and i have the winnie 3200. We are both highly pleased. Mine runs at 2.6Ghz, his runs at 2.3Ghz. He hasnt even tried to push his yet. I would say you cant go wrong with either.

Overclocking: 3200 Winchester
Stock speeds: 3500 Newcastle

I think its as simple as that.

As for the Mobo, i have the Neo2, and im adding a 6800 Ultra to it on feb 10th. Im sure that will last quite a long while. the money you save right now going Neo2, will almost cover the cost of switching boards and GPU later, because the High end PCI-e Cards are ridiculous right now.

Do what im doing. High end AGP now, pci-e and SLI in about 1 1/2 - 2 years. Let the new technology mature, then get it when the price is "normal". In the end, you'll spend the same. But far Less up front, and have newer stuff in 2 years than the guys jumping on it right now.

 

[imported_slippy]

Newcastle is probably fine, though it is based on the 130 nm process, so runs a little hotter than winchesters which are based on the 90 nm process. But these are amd athlons we are talking about so heat isn't really as much of a problem with either when compared to intel chips.

I doubt you'' miss out too much on pci-e unless you think that sometime in the near future you'd want to switch to a new motherboard, which will be trending pci-e for athlon. For me I simply weighed the cost of having to change both the motherboard and videocard together if I wanted to upgrade in the future- say in a year and a half to two years from now, or bite the bullet now and have the choice of either changing one or the other when that upgrade date arrives. Buying AGP now is obviously not a good idea if you see yourself wanting to upgrade your videocard in two years and not have to buy a new motherboard. It was just cost effective in a way. $380 now for some level of future compatibility, or $335 for an AGP solution and not much upgradability. These would be the basic prices of a 6600gt and a compatible mobo for each. That is really what you have to weigh.

If you don't plan to upgrade for 4 years, then agp is fine. If you plan to upgrade in 2 years, you might want a pci-e motherboard so you have at least some sort of choice as to what to upgrade.

My 6600gt is more than powerful enough for my needs, so if I do make any sort of upgrade in two years, it might be a motherboard... but the simple fact is that I will have a choice.

 

[bulldawg1979]

Thanks for the head to head review on the CPUs. Noticed your setup and wondered if you'd give me your take on my hard drive dilemma. I can get two 120 gig WD SATA 7200s for $100 and put them in a RAID 0. Although I lust for two 74 gig Raptors in Raid, I can't afford it. If I give up the idea of a RAID array, I could afford one 74 gig Raptor and one of the WDs for $230. What do you think based on performance and price?

 

[Dijital]

Originally posted by: bulldawg1979
Thanks for the head to head review on the CPUs. Noticed your setup and wondered if you'd give me your take on my hard drive dilemma. I can get two 120 gig WD SATA 7200s for $100 and put them in a RAID 0. Although I lust for two 74 gig Raptors in Raid, I can't afford it. If I give up the idea of a RAID array, I could afford one 74 gig Raptor and one of the WDs for $230. What do you think based on performance and price?

well i can tell you that the raptors are insanely fast. i stepped up from a WD 7200 ide drive to the raptor and i dont regret it.

i like to game, but i also do photo editing and music editing. havent tried it yet, but i plan to soon.

price is a bit expensive, but if you can afford it, i'd definitely pick it up.

 

[darkconz]

The 74gig Raptor is a better stand alone drive than 120gig in RAID 0. The performance of the raptor by itself is greater than the SATA raid you want to config.

 

[OrangeParktech]

Get a 74 gig raptor and as much sata as you can afford as a storage drive. Anything above 160 gig starts to jump a bit in price. My 160 is overkill, but thats ok with me. I dont plan on buying Hard drives again for a long while. Unless i decide to splurge and raid 2 raptors

Everyone is right, raptor is much faster than 7200 raid.

 

[sxr7171]

Those new Maxline III drives with 16MB are said to be close in performance to WD Raptors. My gut tells me that the Raptor will probably "feel" faster due to the insanely fast seek times but you never know how well they've utilized the 16 MB cache on the Maxline III to boost performance.

 

[bulldawg1979]

My pocketbook is liking the advice to get one Raptor and a big storage device. I'm curious and confused, however, about the better performance of the single Raptor vs two 7200 RPM WD SATA drives in Raid O. Wouldn't the Raid array give you 14,400 RPMs while the Raptor spins at 10,000 RPMs? I'm sure there must be a lot more to the equation than the rotational speed, but I'm curious. Any comments?

 

[JMag]

Originally posted by: sxr7171
Those new Maxline III drives with 16MB are said to be close in performance to WD Raptors. My gut tells me that the Raptor will probably "feel" faster due to the insanely fast seek times but you never know how well they've utilized the 16 MB cache on the Maxline III to boost performance.

If you can feel the difference of 3-4ms I would be shocked. Access time is only important if doing alot of I/O requests...

I have both a 36gb Raptor and a 300gb 16mb Maxtor

I have been using them in different systems, so it is an unfair comparison, but the Maxtor definately feels faster...

A couple of the comparison reviews out there that I have seen pitting a 74gb raptor vs a larger 300gb 16mb cache drive have mixed results. I really only look at the real world perfomance, cause I could care less about synthetic benchmarks. Anyway, it seems sometiems the raptor loads levels in games faster ( if my memory serves me correctly I believe it bested the maxtor in farcry), but in others the maxtor does better...

Anyway it is real hard to compare, because whenever one installs an app it will be on a different portion of the disk and the outer secots of the disc are going to be faster. Well since the maxtor has more space I would assume that it is more likely that an app will be installed in a slower part of the disc vs the raptor.

Realistically, the newer the dirve the better in my opinion if all other variables held constant (which is real hard to do)

One more point the Raptors are WAY louder... The new maxtors are better value...

What I really want to see is the rumored 200+GB raptor, this will increase the density of the data on the platters which is KEY for true throughput performance.

Think about it: if one inch of disk has 3 times the data (which is approximately the case here) well you would have to spin 3 times as fast to read the same ammount of data.

 

[JMag]

darkconz: I just noticed your sig and was curious....

Why are you running 2-3-2-6 ? Do you have evidence that this is faster than 2-3-2-(9-11)

I have the same motherboard and sorta the same ram (same chips as long as your hyper ram isn't the old school BH-5 stuff)

Anyway I have found that a value of 9 gives the highest memory bandwidth using Sisoft Sandra...