Is this where I need to go?

OK, I think I've finally worked out what I want but it is muchly tooooooo expensive. I need someone (please) to check compatability and

someone (please) to find the bits cheaper (if poss) oh and preferably 1st hand although not essential.


Asus K8V/GD SKT754 VIA K8T800 Sound GIG LAN USB 2.0 FSB800 SATA Retail Box 061526 21 £56.87 £56.87
Gigabyte GA-k8vNXP SKT 754 VIAK8T800 Sound Gig lAN 1394 USB 2.0 FSB800 SATA Retail Box 054502 36 £96.89 £96.89

Which is better?

GAINWARD FX PowerPack! Pro/680 TV/DVI, nVidia GeForce FX5200, 256MB DDR, 8x AGP Retail Box 052249 162 £48.83 £48.83
JNC SJA520 Slim ATX Tower Case Grey 350w PSU Front USB & Audio 051362 731 £10.99 £10.99
AMD (Newcastle) Athlon 64bit 3000+ 754pin/512 L2cache Retail Boxed with 3 Year warranty CPU 058431 31 £127.35 £127.35
Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 9 200Gb 7200rpm 8mb Cache ATA133 Hard Drive - OEM 043707 *3 days £68.08 £68.08
Ebuyer 1024mb DDR333 PC2700 Extra Value Ram 054265 66 £79.67 £159.34
Belkin Omniview Monitor Extender 021905 6 £24.90 £24.90
All the above are from www.ebuyer.co.uk
I would also like something like a M-Audio Audiophile for my sound card.



Thankee in advance for any advice.


Oh yeah, need some good (but cheap fans too :P)

Methinks you can't moan 'too expensive' & then spec an amd 64 !! :p

Earlier I ventured the idea to get a top end athlon board & use your current chip & memory & other stuff for now, replacing bits as you go - should I 'toss' that idea ? (the motherboards involved will only take a 32 bit athlon or a 64 bit athlon, but not 'either' {different socket assembly}) .. An AMD 64 & motherboard for it has got to be £200 on its own or thereabouts ..

Still too many possibilities I think to get a straight answer ;) ..

Perhaps an opinion on that ebuyerUK website would help here as well.

PS
It must have taken you a half hour to find this question -ed.
-eek-

The question found me ! - turn on notify by mail when replies are made or whatever the hell it is in your user cp profile ;)

E-buyer is very good price wise, but not so smart on service or delivery dates ;) which is why personally I don't use 'em .. & I have too, heard horror stories about returning stuff, but I got so sick of waiting for stuff to come that I gave up ordering way before I ever got around to returning anything, so that's just 'net scare stories' perhaps ?

I've got to get my stuff built & delivered to deadlines - so this place is no good to me - stock isn't guaranteed either - but other folks may have different priorities & saving a few quid may come higher up their list than mine - 'horses for courses' applies :) ..

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Originally Posted by confus-ed

Methinks you can't moan 'too expensive' & then spec an amd 64 !! :p

Earlier I ventured the idea to get a top end athlon board & use your current chip & memory & other stuff for now, replacing bits as you go - should I 'toss' that idea ? (the motherboards involved will only take a 32 bit athlon or a 64 bit athlon, but not 'either' {different socket assembly}) .. An AMD 64 & motherboard for it has got to be £200 on its own or thereabouts ..

Still too many possibilities I think to get a straight answer ;) ..

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No... its a good idea... I was kinda planning that if I couldn't find anywhere cheaper and yes.... ebuyer are bad for dates, I bought my Maxtor USB2 ext drive from them and it took them quite a while

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Drent

No... its a good idea... I was kinda planning that if I couldn't find anywhere cheaper and yes.... ebuyer are bad for dates, I bought my Maxtor USB2 ext drive from them and it took them quite a while

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& ? he says {well types} confus-ed-ly is there a point to these posts then ? or are they just bumping up my post count ?

I note e-buyer has those MSi barebones systems, (that I like & seem to sell lots of & referenced earlier) as a 'featured product' (note I think these though don't have the TV card & remote with them it uses the phrase 'Optional' which here most likely means extra ;))

Quote:

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Originally Posted by confus-ed

is there a point to these posts then ? or are they just bumping up my post count ?

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Ummmm yes there is a point, how do I find out what type of RAM is currently in my PC cos I wanna know if it'll fit in my new motherboard..... :S

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Drent

Ummmm yes there is a point, how do I find out what type of RAM is currently in my PC cos I wanna know if it'll fit in my new motherboard..... :S

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This is like pulling teeth :rolleyes: :- for anyone to stand a chance of answering you need to quote the motherboard details ..

Hold up, he wants to run Maya... Drent, are you intending to create animation from scratch and render the results to produce a movie?

If so, how long do you want to spend rendering? I think drent, you should quit looking at looks and whizz bang bleeding edge and set out what you will actually use this machine for.

My eldest son has recently completed a Graphic Design degree in which he used maya alot. On a short movie of 10 minutes, with a dual xeon processor with raid scsi (cheetahs) 2 gigs of ram and a vid card that had hardware mpeg encoding decoding (oxygen I think it was) which cost £500 on its own, still took 24 hours to render from Maya.

You will never be able to throw enough money at a box designed for graphics work....unless you win the lottery.

You need to work out exactly what your priorities are, then the budget you have, then and only then, you can look for hardware to satisfy the priorites and then compromise to satisfy the budget.

I just want a basic system that I can use for general stuff and the ocassional overnight slog (I did a 43sec and 2min project in Maya both took weeks to render) buuuut I dont have a lot of cash at the mo... plus I just want something to keep me occupied between modelling during the summer hols... I will eventually upgrade...... :S Make sense :( ummmm...... Mr. Ed? Dya need both Mboard specs or one of them :S I assume both right?


Ummmm I habe plenty of comps to network render with if Push comes to shove... but Im hoping that won't happen (Ideally I'd love a SGI or MaxVision comp to render on (or something bigger) but...... thats doubtful)https://forums.windrivers.com/images.../2005/03/1.gif

Oh yeah sorry.... wait no I'm not I enjoy pulling teeth... so should you!https://forums.windrivers.com/images.../2006/04/1.gif

OK.... so which would be better.... a Xeon, P4 or 64 for rendering and which is fastest for around the £120 marker :S This is getting too complicated...

would have thought you would want a good allrounder motherboard like asus and a video card to die for with hardware mpeg encoding capabilities.

Scsi and sata are nice but not necessary, a vid card with hardware mpeg attached to a quality motherboard, coupled with some reasonable DDR ram which you can increase as money becomes available

Quote:

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Originally Posted by NooNoo

would have thought you would want a good allrounder motherboard like asus and a video card to die for with hardware mpeg encoding capabilities.

Scsi and sata are nice but not necessary, a vid card with hardware mpeg attached to a quality motherboard, coupled with some reasonable DDR ram which you can increase as money becomes available

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Thankee will give that a try....
Plus I got some jobs coming up soon, should help https://forums.windrivers.com/images.../2005/03/1.gif

Quote:

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Originally Posted by NooNoo

..Scsi and sata are nice but not necessary..

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On this, I'd say get a sata ready motherboard even if you can't yet get a sata drive (they take eide too) it won't cost much extra, maybe not at all .. ;)

Sata ready boards almost always are able to do semi-hardware raid too, which is very quick for the money (much smaller capacities but for system drives), save up though until you can afford a 10k sata drive or of course a pair, but one on its own is 'fast' ..also 7200 drives are about 10-15% more than the same capacity eide drive

& you might 'squeak' an AMD 64 for £120, but your motherboard will be dearer {instead of say £50 it'll be £80}, & there's currently one slower & one faster chipset available for them -& yes its complicated :D