Conflict?!?

[533y4]

Hi, I'm tuck on whether or not I should buy an Alienware ALX machine, or just attempt to rebuild my machine. The Alienware I want is $9,891.00! To do the same to my already bought PC, it would definitly cost no less then $6,000.

Alienware ALX:
-AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 Dual Core with Hyper Transport
-Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 with Service Pack 2 (64 bit)
-Three year warrenty
-Alienautospy
-Space black
-Alienware AlienIce + Acoustic Dampening (Red or green)
-Alienware ALX Active Liquid Cooling System
-850 Watt Alienware Approved Turbo Cool SLI
-Quad NVIDIA SLI technology featuring four GeForce 7900 GPUs
-Ageia PhysX Physics Processing Unit w/ 128MB GDDR3
-Alienware NVidia nForce4 SLI X16 Motherboard
-4GB Low Latency DDR PC-3200 SDRAM at 400MHz - 4 x 1024MB
-Extreme Performance - 1TB RAID0 (2 x 500GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7,200 RPM w/16MB Cache)
-Addition Storage - 1TB (500GB x 2) Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7,200 RPM w/32MB Cache
-Alienware Respawn Recovery Kit
-16x Dual Layer DVD±R/W Drive
-16x Dual Layer DVD±R/W Drive
-Samsung SyncMaster 920N 19" 8ms LCD - Black (Quad Display)
-Integrated High-Performance 7.1 Surround Sound with S/PDIF and Coaxial Digital Outputs
-3.5" 1.44 MB Floppy Disk Drive - Black
-Alienware ALX System Power Cable
-Media Center Remote Control
-Exclusive Alienware ALX Items
-GameFly - Unlimited Game Rentals for 15 days - FREE TRIAL
-3DMark05 Professional
-Free Alienware® ALX T-Shirt
-Black Free Alienware® ALX Mousepad
-Exclusive AlienGUIse Theme Manager
-AlienInspection - Exclusive Integration and Inspection

My PC (Sorry about the order):
-AMD Athlon XP 2400+
-Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 with Service Pack 2 (32 bit)
-V-Stream TV Tuner + Video Bay
-ATi Radeon X1300 with 256 RAM
-450 Watt Power Supply
-U.S. Robotics 56k Modem
-D-Link 10/100 Ethernet NIC
-Sony DVD-ROM
-Lite-On 16x DVD±RW DL Burner
-5.25" HDD Fan Coolers
-Nexus Fan Controller
-200GB Wetern Digital Hard Disk Drive x2
-Floppy Drive
-43-in-1 Flash Card Reader
-Mercury VIA kt266a motherboard
-Turtle Beach Santa Cruz 5.1 Sound Card
-Samsung SyncMaster 17GLi (17" CRT)
-512 PC133 RAM

[err_ok]

Last time i looked i couldn't find a quad SLi motherboard anywhere so i have no idea how you are going to build one.

[=NukeBlaze=]

If you pay above $2000 USD for a computer system you are insane.

$9000 for a computer system is for those with more finance than brains. If you split $9000 up, OVER 3 YEARS YOU COULD BUILD A NEW 2250$ system every year....Of which would be faster, and faster than the year previous. Plus, next year you could ebay that system for about $1000 if you want to replace it.

Reccomendation? Quad-SLI sucks. Waste of money. Athlon FX? Waste of money. I would just wait untill AMD's socket AM2 arrives, or Intel's conroe chip, and built a dual core system. SLI? I really would not bother with it. A second card is going to cost you double...and in six months a new single card will arrive that does 2.5 times the performance of an SLI version of the card you orginally bought...while comsuming less power....and adding new hardware features...IE better HDR support, DX10, etc.

[Coded-Dude]

Off Topic, does anybody know whether or not DELL/alienware is gonna abondon AMD
(since dell is such an Intel whore?)

ALIENWARES are sick, but pricy; you can get teh same for cheaper by upgrading, but it won't look as nice as the AW.
my two cents...

[err_ok]

http://www.planetamd64.com/index.php?showtopic=20181

that suggests not

[Coded-Dude]

thanks! ;-]

[Garfunkel]

you would be insane to spend that much on a pc and you can get it alot cheaper if you custom build

also when vista comes out you will have a lot more fun with a DX10 based card, trust me.

[533y4]

O.k. Thanks, guys. I'll wait then.

[WolfmanNCSU]

Whew, 9K on a machine! Definitly glad to hear you are going to wait!

[Garfunkel]

even if you spent 9k it will be out of date in like a year.

[Alias]

I wish I had that kind of money. Glad to see you're waiting, I think that's the smart thing to do.

[speed stick]

Don't spend that much on a computer. Don't upgrade the one you got either. Just get a good computer and do what nuke said. That makes the most sense.

[533y4]

K. This is what I'm going to do/get, when ever it maybe:

-AMD AM2 Athlon 64 FX-62
-4GB DDR2-800
-nVidia GeForce DX10 Video Card (SLi or Quad)
-Windwos Vista Home Premium
-Black Case
-Neon's
-Liquid Cooling System
-650-850 Watt Turbo Cool SLI
-Ageia PhysX Physics Processing Unit
-16x Dual Layer DVD±R/W Drive (Black)
-16x Dual Layer DVD±R/W Drive (Black)
-LCD (Black, Quad Display)
-3.5" 1.44 MB Floppy Disk Drive (Black)
-3DMark"xx"

I'm not sure about the motherboard yet, though.

[=NukeBlaze=]

Insanity. I can't stop you from buying that, but let us look at some buying logic. If you are still find with it after reading....by all mean go forth and purchase a 5000+$ system. I believe you are placing all your eggs in one basket and in the end will be non-satisfied as time progresses..like in a year people are creaming your system performance-wise for a price tag of $2000 dollar on less new system.


Processor:::

FX-62 : $1000+ 2.6Ghz, 1MBx2 cache
X2 4400+ : $440 2.4Ghz 512x2 cache

Maybe 10 frames diffrence, but over 500$ price diffrence. If I were to choose, I would actually pick the 4200+ or even 3800+ X2's with a decent heatsink and overclock a bit to 2.4 Ghz.

The price is not justified in the performance obtained. This works with all so called "Extream" processor lines. In a year, you will be able to top that $1000 processor with another $350 processor. Besides, most games do not take advantage of dual cores as of yet so only encoding and general multi-tasking would notice speed inprovments.

Not to mention, intel's new chip "Conroe" is comming about and it will be quite a nice performance suprise from INTEL.


Graphics::

Quad SLI = Crap. Huge waste of money, consumption of power, and laughable performance increases for each successive card. Let us consider this : The performance increases in SLI are usually only noticeable when using very high resolutions and high levels of graphical filtering "HDR, Antistropic, etc.". While Dual cards may be justified in the short term with a Apple 30' display, in the long run in about 7-8 months, a new single card will be out that outperforms SLI of your current cards while adding new features.

Geforce 7900GT : Great performance , great price $350 for a 520 Mhz GPU version. SLI? $700 cost. Now, in about 5 months a new card comes out for $400 and beats the SLI setup signicantly. Wait a month or so...now we are at $350 again....So...For the same cost as the SLI in the short term, you get great 3D performance witha single card, and in about 5 months a new card that does everything , and then some, for the same price. PLus! Now you can sell your old card for at least half your inital investment!



RAM:


In recent tests, systems with 1GB of memory performance well while 2GB offered some marginal improvment. 4GB was unchanged from 2 GB performance wise. Now, unless you are running a server or are doing massive video editing, 4 GBs of RAM is excessive for the time being. You can buy a quality 2 GB set of RAM for about $200 dollars from Corsair.



Physics Card::::

Garbage, for the time being. Untill about a year or more, when better physics cards are avilable in PCI-express form and games actually migh use it..The current cards are worthless. They are useless today, and by the time they are useful they will be upgraded to much bigger and better things.


Disk Drives:

-16x Dual Layer DVD±R/W Drive (Black)
-16x Dual Layer DVD±R/W Drive (Black)

Are you honestly going to be burning two DVDs at a time more than once in the PC's life? One nice buner and one DVD-ROM is usuaully a better route. Use the burner for just that, and the other drive for allother wear and tear reading of CDs/DVDs.


Speaking of HDDs, get a raptor from WD if you want a nice HDD. Then get another High capacity drive for data storage.


OS::

Vista....windows vista. Will not be available till spring 2007...then you have consumer Beta testing for an entire year untill Microsoft releases a service pack to address numerious problems.


Case a lights::

Sure, if you want a cool looking case go for it...but do not rate its "coolness" by the number of fans someone crammed into it. Prepare for noise too.


Power supply::::

PC power and cooling is a permier line and thier products are awsome. To save $$$, substitute with one of antec's true power line or Seasonic great power supply.



Modem?!?:::

-U.S. Robotics 56k Modem

You speak blasphemy.


Monitor:::

You can get a 20inch Dell ultrasharp LCD for about 400$ with online coupons. Why you would want four monitors..I am not sure..Unless you are working on a Italian wall mural restoration project, or really..really like autocad and solidworks.



tada!

[WolfmanNCSU]

^, Nuke, this is why I love you!

Seriously, with those specs, you must have a ton of cash you want to blow. Four screens, two DVD burners.....?

[533y4]

O.k. How about this setup then?

-Windows Vista
-AMD X2
-nVidia GeForce
-4GB (By the time Vista comes out, It'll be standard) :\
-Dual Layer DVD±R/W Drive (Black)
-Blu-Ray Burner (Black)
-650 - 850 Watt Power Supply
-LCD Monitor
-Neon's + Liquid Cooling

Also I already have "noisy" fans. Search for Vantec Tornado 92mm case fans. ; )

[Garfunkel]

getting there

Processor:::

FX-62 : $1000+ 2.6Ghz, 1MBx2 cache
X2 4400+ : $440 2.4Ghz 512x2 cache


the 4400+ is 2.2ghz and has 2x1mb cache

personally i would wait till AMD releases M2, get a motherboard based on it (non sli) get a G71 based card (7900gt) get 2gb ram (can upgrade but seriously 2 is enouth unless you use a server, get a quality psu from seasonic, enermax, antec and ditch the tacky "case mods" and install a linux distro!

[Moses]

Let us all agree that dual layer burning is something that 99.9% of all computer users do not use. Where do you fall? And a blu-ray drive? What kind of shit are you downloading?

[533y4]

I'm going to wait for M2 socket. I can give or take the case mods, but the linux thing I can't stand. Also, I'm already running a server (http://xtremepack.us.tt) from my PC. That's kinda why I want to upgrade. Running all these applications, games, and background things at the same time on my machine, really becomes bogsome.

Let us all agree that dual layer burning is something that 99.9% of all computer users do not use. Where do you fall? And a blu-ray drive? What kind of shit are you downloading?

I tend to use dual layer for my PS2 "back-ups". And the Blu-ray burner would be helpful for backing up PS3 games, and my hard disk drive.

[Eidorian]

I'm going to wait for M2 socket.



I tend to use dual layer for my PS2 "back-ups". And the Blu-ray burner would be helpful for backing up PS3 games, and my hard disk drive.Cause you know Sony wants you to "backup" your games. I still haven't found a use for dual-layer DVD's. I've been able to burn them for almost two years now and I haven't used a single one. I've come very close in iDVD though.

[533y4]

All I use dual layer for, is to "back-up" GT4, God of War, Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition Remix, etc.

Also, I'm going to wait till Windows Vista comes out, and then see what my "options" are.

[Moses]

So nothing legal. Thanks for that. FAIL.

[533y4]

If I overclock my current PC, do you guys think it would make a difference in speed? Also, can you give some 'ideas' on how to do it, and what speeds to clock it to?

PC:
AMD Athlon XP 2400+ (2.0GHz, ~300fsb)
512MB PC133 RAM (?66MHz?)
ATi Radeon 9600 (400MHz Core+Mem)

[Garfunkel]

only if you have decent coolin'

[533y4]

I have two Vantec Tornado fans.

[Garfunkel]

maybe before you decide to get into o/cing you should read some tutorials on it, it is realy easy, (change a couple things in bios) but you should read up on it first so you dont stuff up your machine.

[=NukeBlaze=]

Be very careful on the athlon XPs.... They have a higher thermal tolerance "75C or so" than current athlon 64s, but they also DO NOT HAVE AN INTERGRATED THERMAL DIODE. These processors must depend on the motherboard Diode to keep them safe if they overheat" IE cut power"...not to mention you do not get an exact reading with motherboard Diodes.