PC Peripherals Tips for buying a new PC - What to avoid

Crazy_Eddy said:
Couple of clarifications.. as to why its not good to generalise ;) :
- poor performance versus the X2 will be obvious in apps that can't take advantage of multiple cores.. especially with the lower clock-speed per core on the Phenoms.
- 9x50 procs are out and even available in India. B3 stepping variants ensure the TLB bug is no more!
- Not everyone who picks up a quad core machine overclocks. At stock clocks, a Phenom is still within reach of the Intels C2Qs and can be coupled with much cheaper boards making the platform still VFM.
- The new Phenom Tricore models seem interesting, again if you do not factor overclocking into the picture.
Saw this being discussed elsewhere, and its a common misconception.
1. Everyone seems to be forgetting the 'burst speed' i.e. the speed between your controller and your hard disk's cache. You probably won't saturate the bandwidth during sustained transfers, but stuff often gets cached on your hard disk's cache that can make full use of this 300MBps bandwidth.
2. SATA 3.0Gbps drives are backward compatible, so there's nothing about people being 'forced' to upgrade to SATA 3 Gbps controllers.
3. Lastly with hard drives always increasing in speed, why wait till you hit the limit before increasing the interface speed? An interface should never be a bottleneck. P.s: Its Gbps, not GBps.
Data is very rarely accessed in a sequential fashion from a hard disk. This is exactly why a disk that performs great in sequential data tests like HDTach may not exhibit similar performance gains in a real-world environment.
You also forget that there are 101 processes running in the background that do need to access files every now and then (step away from your computer and notice the hard disk LED flashing every few seconds?).
And once again, its not forcing anyone to upgrade.. its upto end users to determine its benefits before upgrading ;)

This is one case where I have to agree that public perception of DVI > VGA is correct. However it is also true that LCDs with a VGA-only port tend to have better circuitry optimised for the VGA port than LCDs with DVI + VGA ports, but the quality with DVI is noticeably better.
Actually its the other way round, people are encouraged to use HT 3.0 equipped boards for optimal performance with Phenoms. Nothing at all about Athlons or anything else. And again, nothing wrong with providing a higher-speed interface.

Two things :
1. For Intel platforms, it has always been ideal to keep FSB:RAM ratios at 1:1 . 1066Mhz DDR2 RAM will help you touch FSB speeds of 533MHz when overclocking. Considering all the latest E8xxx series come with 333MHz as the stock FSB speed, its still not a lot of headroom for overclocking.
2. Buying higher speed RAM usually gives you better latency settings when down-clocked to lower speeds. Also note the flexibility of tighter timings when running stock, or higher clock speeds when overclocking.

------------

Summing up, I do think you put in a lot of effort. But without ground work, making generalisations like this can be just as misleading as original recommendations :)
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hello mod,

well i was not generalizing but trying to save us from endless cycle of hoopla triggered upgrades that actually deliver very little on the ground.

well here what i have to say.

1. very few desktop apps are quad optimized today.
so if u are buying quad , u are either ar heavy multitasker(read gigatasker) or running server apps(database , virtualization etc etc).

YES phenoms have removed tlb bug in b3 steppings. but performance is still pathetic as compared to athlon 6400+ or c2d.also amd for a long time has not had any price cuts.
now they are being beaten in price to performance ratios by intel too.

and c2q are miles ahead of phenoms.

so if u know that u need a quad , then u ar much better buying c2q than phenoms.

2. sata1/2

well here i wanted again to to tell fellow frnds that if they have a sata-1 mobo
and they want to enjoy new drives(7200.11 series) they need not upgrade their mobos.(i am not suggesting present owners to downgrade their mobos to sata1)

only thing they lose out on is burst speed.but sustained transfer speeds are not limited(at present)

yes sata drives are backward compatible , but many sata-1 mobos can't detect sata2 drives(via chipsets) that is why we got those jumpers in the drives.

so simply saying what i meant was frnds go and buy those 7200.11 disks without too much worry for ur sata1 mobo.

3. ncq.

as i said to see any advantage of ncq u need to run into situation below

-> u have highly fragmented drive
-> u are running utorrent at ur 2/8 Mbps conn
-> u are at same time playing halo3/crysis(multiplayer preferable)
-> u are also burning a dvd at same time(16x suggested)
-> u are sharing a movie collection on ur 100Mbps lan
-> u also are copying a 200 gb data to ur hd from a portable hd.

i doubt if a normal desktop user would anyday run into above situation

yes data is not accessed in sequential fashion. but that affect can be highly reduced by todays fast drives , and properly defragging the drives(derfaggers are free and really good now days)

all i said was that that ncq is not "killer feature" that demands an upgrade .

4. hdmi/dvd

i believe what i see. i have seen dvi only lcd's and vga only lcd side by side (using same config for rest of things) of aoc 22".

i couldn't notice any diff at all.(games/text)
maybe i am just a normal user, mabe i am not that much of an expert.
but if i couldn't notice any diif , maybe other "normal" user wouldn't too.

if they were prices same , then it is a no issue.
but vga only lcd are noticeable cheaper(bout 2 k)

thus i said that dvi still doesn't demand an upgrade.

5. am2+
well 780g is all the rage today.
but since it supports ht3 , users may think that they need ht3 capable proccys(phenoms) for their optimal usage.

but that is not true.
they can enjoy all the fruits of 780g without expensive phenoms , by just buying good athlon X2 's.

and athlon arch itself couldn't saturate HT1. then how about HT3.
if HT was the bottleneck then athlon 6400+ wouldnt be faster than many phenoms.
6. ddr 1066
as far as i know benchies couldn't prove anything bout higher speed rams benefiting c2d's.

speed offered by core 2 is totally due to to its internal architecture.
outside params affect it very little(unlike athlons)

if that was not the case then athlons /phenoms wid their integrated memory controllers would kik butt out of core 2. but it is the other way round.

all i said was that if we really want a faster system then invest in overclocking of our core2 proccys.that would yield much better results.

as u see all my suggestions were for us to kik out all the jargon and focus only on things that matter.
PS-> nice to see a complete review of my post by a mod.
 
Its great that you have put so much time and effort in this but i really don't see the point

Don't get me wrong, it sure helps to have this info about peoples' experience but it is very misleading to say that based on a couple of people who had a bad experience that something is bad and vise versa

for instance I have been using a frontech gamepad for a couple of years and it works fine. this is my opinion, now I want to stress on the word "fine" here. What is fine for me may not be fine for you for example I don't care if the vibration doesn't work and I don't care if the three keys I never use don't work, as long as its main keys are working I don't see a reason to slam it. But you might want it to be perfect even if you paid for it with the change that you were left with after a drink or whatever.

Everyone (including me) says never use a generic PSU but a friend of mine has been using the PSU he got with his navtech cabby for a year and a half without any glitch. And you may say it might be harming or shortening his h/w's life (I seriously don't know)but maybe he doesn't care and is prepared to change the h/w every 2 years or whenever it gets fried.
My point with all this usless explanation is that it all comes down to personal opinion, the fact that how much money you have and knowing what you need. And for that you need to do more than just read one thread with some peoples' bad experiences if you want the worth for your money.

Just my 2 cents..

P.S. I would like to say once again though... great effort :)
 
I have been using a VIP 400W PSU for around 13 months now, and it runs pretty well.

It handled my rig pretty well, even with some overclocking.

While I was in Pune, it starting making a groaning sound due to too much dust in the fans. I took it for service, and it was serviced for FREE, and its working absolutely fine.

I have a friend who uses a zebby platinum 400W PSU on a core 2 duo e6300 rig and a HD3850. Working fine without issues (so far)...
 
leo_club said:
Its great that you have put so much time and effort in this but i really don't see the point

Don't get me wrong, it sure helps to have this info about peoples' experience but it is very misleading to say that based on a couple of people who had a bad experience that something is bad and vise versa

for instance I have been using a frontech gamepad for a couple of years and it works fine. this is my opinion, now I want to stress on the word "fine" here. What is fine for me may not be fine for you for example I don't care if the vibration doesn't work and I don't care if the three keys I never use don't work, as long as its main keys are working I don't see a reason to slam it. But you might want it to be perfect even if you paid for it with the change that you were left with after a drink or whatever.

Everyone (including me) says never use a generic PSU but a friend of mine has been using the PSU he got with his navtech cabby for a year and a half without any glitch. And you may say it might be harming or shortening his h/w's life (I seriously don't know)but maybe he doesn't care and is prepared to change the h/w every 2 years or whenever it gets fried.
My point with all this usless explanation is that it all comes down to personal opinion, the fact that how much money you have and knowing what you need. And for that you need to do more than just read one thread with some peoples' bad experiences if you want the worth for your money.

Just my 2 cents..

P.S. I would like to say once again though... great effort :)
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thanx for ur input buddy.
well u can have local psu power ur rig for years without ever running into problem. but that wont mean that we must all throw away cooler master's and have iball/navtech/zebronics psu's.
the thing is how much RISK u are willing to take.
if u got a good rig , u investing in a good video card then it wouldn't make any safe bet to have a chepo psu power that system.
but what u are telling me kinda "HELMET ANALOGY"

here it goes->
for road safety u must , on a two wheeler always "WEAR HELMET"
but my frnd(who is in fact a very scary driver) has been riding bikes at 100kmph and above speeds on delhi roads for say bout 10 years(time since cbz/pulsar came out) without any helmet.
and he hasn't had a single accident(a few rare challans though :bleh: )

and his bike collection is practically scratch less.

so what to do?
should we all start to ride bikes at scary speeds without helmets?
i think u get my point.
 
Ok first off, you seem to have taken this on as a personal attack, which it certainly is not. The whole idea behind a forum is to debate info and correct it when necessary :)

main_trouble said:
hello mod,

well i was not generalizing but trying to save us from endless cycle of hoopla triggered upgrades that actually deliver very little on the ground.

well here what i have to say.

1. very few desktop apps are quad optimized today.

so if u are buying quad , u are either ar heavy multitasker(read gigatasker) or running server apps(database , virtualization etc etc).

YES phenoms have removed tlb bug in b3 steppings. but performance is still pathetic as compared to athlon 6400+ or c2d.also amd for a long time has not had any price cuts.

now they are being beaten in price to performance ratios by intel too.

and c2q are miles ahead of phenoms.

so if u know that u need a quad , then u ar much better buying c2q than phenoms.
Click to expand...

My aim was only to update and correct the relevant points I had highlighted in bold. For eg : You mentioning the Phenom's TLB bug, when in fact the current shipping batches are without the aforementioned bug :)

An app that can take advantage of all 4 cores will *definitely* show better performance than an X2 6400+, if not the C2D.

I think a couple of well-reputed reviews have placed the Phenoms as being just about competitive with the C2Qs at similar clocks, except that they aren't able to scale as high as the Intels. As always, enthusiasts buy the winning product (C2Qs in this case), overclock it quite a bit and help further public notion that the performance gap is really wide.

Many forget that the motherboard is a vital component to determining a platform's cost. You can slap a Phenom onto a 2k board and not experience as much variation in performance, whereas a P35 board (>5k) is a necessary minimum to get decent performance from the C2Qs.

2. sata1/2

well here i wanted again to to tell fellow frnds that if they have a sata-1 mobo

and they want to enjoy new drives(7200.11 series) they need not upgrade their mobos.(i am not suggesting present owners to downgrade their mobos to sata1)

only thing they lose out on is burst speed.but sustained transfer speeds are not limited(at present)

yes sata drives are backward compatible , but many sata-1 mobos can't detect sata2 drives(via chipsets) that is why we got those jumpers in the drives.

so simply saying what i meant was frnds go and buy those 7200.11 disks without too much worry for ur sata1 mobo.
Click to expand...

Thats fair enough, and backward incompatibilities are exactly the reason why the jumper was introduced. Your earlier post implied that the SATA 3.0Gbps standard was merely marketing propaganda.

3. ncq.

as i said to see any advantage of ncq u need to run into situation below

-> u have highly fragmented drive

-> u are running utorrent at ur 2/8 Mbps conn

-> u are at same time playing halo3/crysis(multiplayer preferable)

-> u are also burning a dvd at same time(16x suggested)

-> u are sharing a movie collection on ur 100Mbps lan

-> u also are copying a 200 gb data to ur hd from a portable hd.

i doubt if a normal desktop user would anyday run into above situation

yes data is not accessed in sequential fashion. but that affect can be highly reduced by todays fast drives , and properly defragging the drives(derfaggers are free and really good now days)

all i said was that that ncq is not "killer feature" that demands an upgrade .
Click to expand...

Again, you do not need to be running such exaggerated situations to experience the benefits of NCQ. Simply running 2 simultaneous major file copy operations in windows explorer is sufficient to bring a hard disk to its knees. This is where NCQ will come in pretty handy. All this while, NCQ implementations have been broken, so it has largely been ignored. On paper though, the theory behind it looks good.

4. hdmi/dvd

i believe what i see. i have seen dvi only lcd's and vga only lcd side by side (using same config for rest of things) of aoc 22".

i couldn't notice any diff at all.(games/text)

maybe i am just a normal user, mabe i am not that much of an expert.

but if i couldn't notice any diif , maybe other "normal" user wouldn't too.

if they were prices same , then it is a no issue.

but vga only lcd are noticeable cheaper(bout 2 k)

thus i said that dvi still doesn't demand an upgrade.
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I'm a normal user and I don't have golden eyes either :eek:hyeah:

I used to be on the VGA side too, but after having made the leap to LCDs, DVI is convincingly better. With higher resolutions it is only bound to get more noticeable since VGA does have its bandwidth limitations. The way LCDs have to "tune in" phase/clock freq settings only shows how analog VGA is.

Of course there are still numerous 'normal' users running 60Hz refresh rates on CRTs and being quite content.. but the point is why not offer the better option?

5. am2+

well 780g is all the rage today.

but since it supports ht3 , users may think that they need ht3 capable proccys(phenoms) for their optimal usage.

but that is not true.

they can enjoy all the fruits of 780g without expensive phenoms , by just buying good athlon X2 's.

and athlon arch itself couldn't saturate HT1. then how about HT3.

if HT was the bottleneck then athlon 6400+ wouldnt be faster than many phenoms.
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I have yet to come across a user with the viewpoint of buying a Phenom just to make use of HT3.0 ! :)

6. ddr 1066

as far as i know benchies couldn't prove anything bout higher speed rams benefiting c2d's.

speed offered by core 2 is totally due to to its internal architecture.

outside params affect it very little(unlike athlons)

if that was not the case then athlons /phenoms wid their integrated memory controllers would kik butt out of core 2. but it is the other way round.

all i said was that if we really want a faster system then invest in overclocking of our core2 proccys.that would yield much better results.
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As I already said, I am of the opinion you ought to run FSB:RAM at 1:1, I never said run it higher :)

If you run your 1066MHz FSB proc at stock, have the RAM dialled in for 533MHz. And if you need to overclock the proc, you obviously need to run your RAM clocks higher to maintain the 1:1 ratio, which is where the headroom of faster DDR2 sticks matter.
 
the thing is how much RISK u are willing to take.
if u got a good rig , u investing in a good video card then it wouldn't make any safe bet to have a chepo psu power that system.
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@main_trouble

umm actually I don't think you got my point here

A person can only buy what he can afford. But for the people who can afford it, a heavy system starts with a strong PSU so they are not the one with the confusion and dillema.

a guy who is buying a basic cheapo(meaning low budget and not crappy h/w) rig does not "necessarily" need the power from a branded PSU. It is definitely safer to go with a known good PSU but you can survive without it if you are not using too much power and are willing to take the risk due to budget constraints or whatever.

and if you decide to put a high end GPU in it later you can change to a good enough PSU from corsair or CM or whatever you are suggesting.

My point actually was that it comes across as if a rig will certainly go up in flames if I go with the things that you are discouraging.

Maybe the thread's name should be changed to bad experiences or something similar so that people do not take it as some standard.

And about the bike thing,
riding a bike at 100 or above with or without helmet does not get you into accidents but not knowing what you are doing sure does.

If you don't know how to get your speed down in case of emergency then it is a huge risk for you but for your friend its not a risk at all cuz he knows what he is doing.

Its a matter of personal opinion as I said earlier.

P.S. I think CBZ/pulsar came out around 2001/2002 i think
 
main_trouble said:
11. avoid WD portable hard disks as they are known to cause headaches(as reported by a lot of people here)
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I own and use a 500gb WD My Book Home Edition (USB 2.0 + Firewire 400/800 + eSata :hap2: ) which i bought for ~Rs.6k. :hap2:

A friend bought the 500gb basic WD My book for ~Rs.5k (Only USB 2.0), he likes it so much that he bought another one recently :)

Overall i have had a great experience with it so far and i would recommend a WD My Book!:)
 
So long as the laptop is not using a desktop CPU in it, right :)

About enclosures, the main reason for them used to be the longer warranty with individual drives as opposed to the much shorter 1yr one with the all-in-ones. Tho i think the mybook's have a 3 yr one now.

A good enclosure is always the best choice, prob is the ones sold here are not that good quality, if you look in the west there are new ones coming out every 6 months, the chinese just keep pumping them out at a crazy rate.

Then there is the question of interface, firewire, USB or eSata.

eSata is the best as it functions just like an internal drive. Firewire if you have the interface and lastly USB which is what most have with pc's.

Personally i've just got bigger drives for the desktop instead of bothering with enclosures, too much bloody effort to find the right one :(
 
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