Wow, Price vs Perf right now in PC's is nice...

One of my supervisors threw out a small "contest" of sorts to see who could spend the closest to $1000 without going under to build a brand new PC from NewEgg. (he wants to use the $1000-no-interest-for-six-months deal)

It basically goes like this:

$56 - Basic black steel mid-tower case
$59 - Fortron 450W ATX12 PSU
$95 - Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L mobo (doesn't need overclocking stuff)
$190 - C2D E6750 (2.66Ghz 4mb) retail with cooler
$300 - Asus 8800GT 512mb (yes, it's in stock)
$80 - Western Digital Caviar SE 320Gb SATA-II drive
$32 - Samsung 20x DVD+/-/R/RW/RAM SATA-II drive
$115 - Patriot 2Gb x 2 DDR2-667 sticks
$112 - Vista64 Home Premium OEM (he's not going to be swapping parts)

Grand total was $1029 (actually a few cents lower) plus shipping. He's reusing his 19" LCD and wireless keyboard/mouse from the previous rig, so that helped a bit. Still, that is a LOT of computer for a grand -- with a Vista OS even.

 

Indeed, I'm FAR from worried about the PSU in this thing. He will not be overclocking in any way,shape or form -- he's not an enthusiast at that level. he likes his video games, and for better than 50 years old, I think it's cool that he still plays Halo / COD / Crysis / et al.

There's obviously places we could trade off a bit, or hell, we could slap in another $50 (still wouldn't break $1100) and have an even bigger and still high quality powersupply if need-be.

The original spirit of this thread was much less about the state of PSU affairs, and much more about the huge bang I think you can get for what seems like a very modest amount of cash.

 

I want to know when and where everyone started thinking that running the memory faster than the front side bus speed results in some notable speed increase. It's not just you, there's a slew of people who always make similar comments all over hardware sites, and every time I'm forced to make this same basic post and nobody really comes back with ANYTHING to back their position

Here's some math:
A 1333FSB Core 2 Duo uses a 333mhz front side bus. Yes, I said that right, a 333mhz front side bus. It sends four data signals per clock cycle, for an "effective" rate of 1333 million data cycles per second. The clock is still 333mhz.

DDR2-667 memory operates at 333mhz. Yes, I said that right too... Same concept as above, except the memory sends and receives data twice per clock cycle, for an "effective" rate of 667 million data cycles per second. The clock is still 333mhz.

A dual channel memory interface will effectively "double" the memory bandwidth by allowing data to send and receive to both chips near-simultaneously, meaning that a pair of DDR2-667 modules will have essentially the same data cycle rate as the 1333FSB it's attached to.

End result? A pair of DDR-800 modules accomplishes exactly jack squat on a system that doesn't operate at 1600FSB.

So, can someone please point me to a benchmark where running memory faster than the bus makes any impact AT ALL on actual performance of the machine? And by impact, I'm talking something greater than the general standard deviation / acceptable error limits of the testing platform.

 

Maybe, but then why limit yourself to DDR2-800 when DDR2-1066 is just that tiny bit much more? Here's a reason why not: because DRAM prices are going nowhere but down. Why buy something today that you're NOT going to use due to the notion of "future proof"; versus buying an equivalent or better product when you're actually going to use it and it will actually be cheaper?

What logic does that really fall into?

As for 3Ghz Penryns dual-cores going for $180 in January? I'll believe it when I see it.

 

Why would you build a brand new rig, with high performance parts, and use a five-year old operating system on it?

Let's take a tally: we have people who don't understand the reality of power draw, who don't understand the reality and economics of "future proofing" a piece of PC hardware, and who can't really comprehend why a five year old OS isn't the perfect choice for a brand new PC?

Anyone want to chime in and ask me why I didn't spec out an ISA network card too?