I keep going back and forth between building a
Pentium 3 1000mhz or a Thunderbird 1.2 (200 or 266 fsb)

both systems
sdram 512 , 20g 7200rpm ide100

I would choose the AMD but have heard that there is a greater chance of burning it up building the system and the added heat issues with it.

i have never buily a system from the ground up but have practicaly rebuilt my 166 p1 over the last 5 years.

I will mainly be running Photoshop and other adobe products and macromedia products

I would also like to use a "raid" supported motherboard
and at least 768 ram

Well, the 1.2ghz Athlon will cost ~half (for the processor) as the 1ghz P3. Generally speaking, and in photoshop as well, Athlons are equivalent to P3s (generally +-5%) per clock. Of course, you'l have the advantage of the increased clock-rate of the Athlon.

If you are worried about installing and cracking the core, you can buy a "copper shim" (doesn't have to be copper, but it does have to be the correct thickness), which basically prevents you from screwing up (they cost about 10 bucks). Yes, AMD Athlons generate a LOT more heat than P3s. That is an issue. Athlons also don't have an internal thermal diode, so the temperature readings from the motherboard isn't as accurate as that of a temperature reading from a P3.

If you buy a decent cooler, the Athlon will be cooled just fine.

Another thing to consider is that quality Crucial DDR costs the same as quality crucial SDR. I dont' know what brand you were choosing, but from a top company like Crucial, the only reason NOT to get DDR is because you don't have a DDR motherboard.

That is another issue: if you are looking for a RAID board, they will be more expensive. If you're going to get a RAID board, you might as well get a DDR RAID board, as DDR will give another bit of a performance boost if dealing with large graphics files (as photoshopers do ).

Another thing to consider is platform longevity. Socket A will be around, likely, for at least another year. Socket 370 is sticking around for maybe 6 months as a "high-end" solution from Intel. Intel will be coming out with 1.26Ghz "Tualitin" cpus, which should be faster, and are definetly cooler, than equivalent Athlons. The problem is that, from the roadmaps I've seen, the P3 architecture finally dies off (in the high-performance segment, at last) at 1.26Ghz.

Even then, you have to be careful with which P3 board you choose, if you wish to ever be able to upgrade to the Tualitin chips.

Socket A should be around for another year, and you could possibly upgrade to a 1.7Ghz Palomino at some point (assuming you buy a quality board which gives bios updates). If you want more advice, stop back ;-)

Building from the ground up? Solution: The 1.2 GHz (right now it's the most bang for the buck) on a Biostar M7MIA RAID (there's your RAID).

The Biostar board gives you a stable chipset (the AMD761) with a HPT370 RAID controller. The board supports DDR ram which has come down in price considerably and is up to 40% faster than standard SDRAM. Board, CPU and RAM and you're STILL under the price of the PIII.

Expandability? The M7MIA already supports the 1.4 and the current selection of Palominos. Get a P4 approved power supply so you have enough juice for a 1.4 Athlon or up, or maybe a P4 if one ever happens to "fall into your lap" down the road.

Look for my upcoming titles.... one is a column about PC Economics and another is a review of the Biostar M7MIA RAID. It's not "all good" (board has limitations for overclocking), but it's proven to be an EXCELLENT board for the no nonsense Athlon builder.

__________________
Hey. What kind of party is this? There's no booze and only one hooker. -- Bender (Futurama)

I'm using the iWill KK266-R with Raid 0 config.
Yes, it uses the PC 133 ram, but a highly stable, easy to
OC motherboard. Also have a Vantec cooler with a
1.4 AMD cpu.

The iWill KA266-R supports raid also and has the DDR
ram. It uses the Ali chipset instead of Via.

__________________
Serious Soldier

Thanks for all the help . It was helpful in coming to a decsion . I think i'm going to build p3 for my high end and a later build a lower end amd system to get more knowlege with AMD and give my mom a computer to play freecell on so she will not have to use my high end.

thanks patrick

Build an AMD as a low end?

What are you going to build? A $40 Duron on a PC100 board?

__________________
Hey. What kind of party is this? There's no booze and only one hooker. -- Bender (Futurama)

I was kinda wondering that to, but I didn't want to say nothing.

Just good luck with the "cough" high end P3 stable system!







ROCK SOLID STABLE ENHANCED PERFORMANCE AT 1/2 the PRICE

AMD 1 Ghz FSB 266 AXIA at 1.333 Ghz STABLE!
PC133 VCM ram, 256 meg
GeForce2 GTS 64 Meg SUMA Video card
iWill KK266-R (super magazine awards) motherboard
SB Live Plat Sound Card
Lian-Li PC60+USB case
Twin ATA 40 gig WD hard drives
Vantec stock cooler keeping the temps at 32c continous!!!!
HP 12X8X40 CD-RW and LG 52X CD roms
3Com 10T/100 Lan card
EIDE ZIP 100 internal
All for 1 grand.

Well crap, I have dual PIIIs on a ServerWorks chipset, but you don't see me calling AMD "low end". For an SMP set up, the PIII is by far the most sensible way to go. But for single processor set ups, PIII is dead. So I fail to see what is "low end versus high end" about "AMD versus Intel" when you're talking about a platform that's just getting started and already offers CPUs exceeding 1.4 GHz (the Socket A) and a platform that was, like so many other Intel platforms, cut short at a relatively slow speed of 1 GHz (the Socket 370/Slot 1).

__________________
Hey. What kind of party is this? There's no booze and only one hooker. -- Bender (Futurama)

The iWill KA266-R meets all of his requirements.
Plus it uses DDR ram and has the latest Ali chipset.

This chipset is much improved from the earlier days.

This board is very stable, easy to overclock and the
AMD cpu runs at a cool 32c. That's a 1 Ghz cpu OC'd
to 1.333.

It beats the pants off of the P4 1.4 and leaves the PIII 1 Ghz
in it's dust.

You are right, the PIII is dead. AMD has the lead and market
in this arena. Expandability is in AMD's favor. Intel just has to
keep changing their boards and cpu's to play catch up.

I hope he reconsiders....with all the information given, he
should have easily chosen the AMD setup. Can't figure
it out.

__________________
Serious Soldier

(Originally posted by Paul)

If you are worried about installing and cracking the core, you can buy a "copper shim" (doesn't have to be copper, but it does have to be the correct thickness), which basically prevents you from screwing up (they cost about 10 bucks). Yes, AMD Athlons generate a LOT more heat than P3s. That is an issue. Athlons also don't have an internal thermal diode, so the temperature readings from the motherboard isn't as accurate as that of a temperature reading from a P3.

If you buy a decent cooler, the Athlon will be cooled just fine.

Paul,
Question #1: Where do you buy a copper shim and what is sthe "correct thickness"? Is it just a flat piece of sheet metal that allows you to put even pressure over the total surface of the chip?
Question #2: Question: What would be a "decent cooler" to use, and where would you buy it? Would I find it on Pricewatch?

Socket A should be around for another year, and you could possibly upgrade to a 1.7Ghz Palomino at some point (assuming you buy a quality board which gives bios updates). If you want more advice, stop back ;-)

Question #3: I use Photoshop, Illustrator, 3D Studio Max, Dreamweaver, etc. I know for sure that Photoshop and 3D Max will both take advantage of a dual processor machine. Is there a dual Mobo with RAID, and at least 3 (or 4) Dimm slots for DDR that will take Palominos?

Question #4: Last but not least- ATA 133 is just about to be introduced, and the Mobo's to support it should be right behind. It seems to me that it will be worth waiting for this as I am not in a super rush to build a new machine. It will match the RAM's Bus speed, and lower the bottleneck. I think the next innovation will be serial ATA, but it won't be backward compatible, will cost more at first, and won't be out as soon as parallel ATA 133.

Jump in everyone, tell me what you think! Thanks Steven

__________________
Steven

Yes, it's basically just a piece of metal. In another thread jonnyGURU showed that Copper shims (any metal shim would act this way) conduct heat back to the chip, to a certain degree. What happens is the chip heats up the heatsink, and then the heatsink conducts it (partially) back to the shim. The shim is touching the ceramic, which heats up around the core. A plastic shim would not conduct the heat (well, it would, but not nearly as much), so that would be a better option.

All in all, the shim does nothing more than make sure you don't crack the core. If you're not careful, it could raise temperatures.

However, metal shims can be found http://www.systemlogic.net/adserver...php?bannerID=19



I'm gonna have to defer to Mike, or someone else who's more "in the know" about cooling. They'll probably have their own opinions about the shim too.

I'm not up to snuff on motherboards. Maybe jonnyGURU knows more? What I do know is that for the 4 DIMM slots, if they're around, for the 760MP chipset (for dual palominos), you'll need registered dimms (more expensive).



The bottlneck right now isn't the ATA spec. Many drives don't even take very much advantage of ATA 66 (though some due when bursting). ATA100 should be plenty.

I hope others join in on this one

The DDR SMP Athlon boards have Ultra160 controllers, but not RAID. This is no big surprise, however. Even my Asus dual PIII board has Dual Chennel Ultra160 and my Dual Xeon Tyan board has dual channel Ultra160, but none of them had native RAID. One of my boards has SCSI RAID, but I had to buy a seperate $300 Adaptec SCSI card to do it, rendering the onboard DC U160 virtually useless to me. Suck!

__________________
Hey. What kind of party is this? There's no booze and only one hooker. -- Bender (Futurama)

Question #3: I use Photoshop, Illustrator, 3D Studio Max, Dreamweaver, etc. I know for sure that Photoshop and 3D Max will both take advantage of a dual processor machine. Is there a dual Mobo with RAID, and at least 3 (or 4) Dimm slots for DDR that will take Palominos?


Right now max for the 760MP chipset which is dual Palominos is 4 Dimm slots. The only available 760MP board out right now that I know of is the Tyan Thunder K7. Take note that this is a high end server motherboard and is probably overkill for you... I mean this is the kind of thing we should be using for our database server *hint* *hint*

it has support for 3GB of memory, registered ECC PC2100 DDR
Optional on-board SCSI
One AGP Pro 50 slot
Five 64/32-bit 33MHz (5-volt) PCI slots
Two 3Com 3C920 LAN controllers (like I said hardcore server)
10/100Mbps data transfer rate per controller


I'd wait until athlon MP gets cheaper if you want to go that route... if you're cravin dual, then 2 PIII 1ghz should quench that thrist for now... dual tualatin ready boards are coming out using DDR so that's something to look at...

__________________
SystemLogic.net - Editor

2 Pentium III 1 Ghz 2 Alpha HeatSinks with 38 CFM Delta Fan | Abit VP6 | 512 MB PC-166 | Antec SX1030B with 4 High Output 80mm Sunon Fans | 2 30 GB IBm 75 Drives in RAID 0 | Plextor PlexWriter 16/10/40A | Mitsumi 40x CD-ROM | Generic 3.5" Floppy Drive | VisionTek Geforce 2 GTS 32 MB | Sound Blaster Live! Value | 3com NIC | Diamond Supra Modem | 19" Sony Monitor | Klipsch Promedia V.2-400 Speakers | PcMods.com Sound Sensitive Blue

"No more yankie my wankie. The Donger need food!"

More people are killed annually by donkeys than die in air crashes.

Paul's right the bottleneck isn't really the spec but the drives. Once the higher speed drives like 10K+ RPM ones start getting more common, that would start getting into the ATA-100 limitations but right now I don't think they even come close yet.

RAID would be the best way to increase your performance. SCSI RAID will be expensive so it depends on your budget. IDE RAID has good enough performance for me, and it's pretty cheap to implement.

__________________
SystemLogic.net - Editor

2 Pentium III 1 Ghz 2 Alpha HeatSinks with 38 CFM Delta Fan | Abit VP6 | 512 MB PC-166 | Antec SX1030B with 4 High Output 80mm Sunon Fans | 2 30 GB IBm 75 Drives in RAID 0 | Plextor PlexWriter 16/10/40A | Mitsumi 40x CD-ROM | Generic 3.5" Floppy Drive | VisionTek Geforce 2 GTS 32 MB | Sound Blaster Live! Value | 3com NIC | Diamond Supra Modem | 19" Sony Monitor | Klipsch Promedia V.2-400 Speakers | PcMods.com Sound Sensitive Blue

"No more yankie my wankie. The Donger need food!"

More people are killed annually by donkeys than die in air crashes.

cooler: cheap and effective: Check out the Vantec 62540D I reviewed a couple weeks back. 20$ or so and just a little shy of the Thermoengine, and its a VERY friendly sink to work with, I don't see it killing cores frequently.