brit chick going 'round the bend!

[Dudster]

I see, I thought you were gonna say I was gettin too techie again

[dashiel]

ok chaps here are soem of the combos i like. my main concern is good warrenty and 5 slots (cos that's why this whole spree came aobut)

ECS
ECS P4ITA, i850 Chipset, Four RDRAM RIMM, ATA100, 1AGP/5PCI/1AMR. Retail Box with cpu + fan Pentium 4 1.5GHz. RETAIL BOX PROCESSOR - THREE year warranty on the kit

do you know anything aobu the company?

[CocoMan]

ECS makes good,cheap and stable motherboards that are usually poor performers when it comes to overclocking. I like them myself, since I don't overclock my cpu and don't expect a great software bundle.

If your set on a Pentium 4, you might want to check out an article about the sis645 chipset at www.anandtech.com. Looks good, support for fsb at 166 and ddr333.

Here are a couple of good sites for info on video editing:

www.vcdhelper.com
www.videoguys.com

Hope this helps?

[DutchMaster]

http://www.ecs.com.tw/products/p4ita.htm
Nothing wrong with that.

Could somebody explain RIMM. I am totally DDRAM minded at the moment. DDRAM is cheaper and faster isn't it? And does RIMM has a future in case you want to upgrade later on?

Dudster mentioned this before:

I think basically with RIMM/RAMBUS memory, it's expensive and might be extinct in the not so distant future (and it's not really any faster than DDR memory as far as I know).

[CocoMan]

Great article here on RDRAM:

http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboard/00q1/000315/

DDR is the future!

[dashiel]

what do you think of Athlon? Thunderbird?

ECS K7VZA, Rev 3.0, Full ATX, KT133A, SOCKET-A CPU, 5PCI SLOT / 3DIMM /4X AGP 3D Sound. Price for PHONE ORDER MUST MENTION PRICE WATCH - with cpu - AMD Athlon Tbird 1.4Ghz 266FSB Socket A w/Big Fan/Heatsink

[DutchMaster]

Thanks for the link!!
Good ol'Tom never lets us down.

[CocoMan]

I"m running on a ECS K7VZM right now. It's the same as the K7VZA but in micro-atx form factor. It has only 2 pci slots and boy do I miss those other 3 slots!

I only bought this board because it was dirt cheap. I used it to run a linux counterstrike server at the IT school I was attending. The school didn't mind because it was teaching linux at the time. Oh! those were fun times, 20+ students fragging away the hours, not to mention their tuitions. We even got the instructor hooked.

Anyway, back to your question.

I find the K7VZM to be stable in linux and win2k. Make sure to install service pack 2 and the latest via4in1 drivers. In win98se I had problems with the via ide drivers. I never could get it to recognize my dvd-rom or enable udma on my quantum fireball as harddrive. I have no such problems in win2k. You want to use the NTFS file system in win2k anyway if your doing any video editing, so you can by-pass the 4GB file limit in fat32.

Did I mention that the 1.4GHz T-Bird is a **** fine cpu?

Oh! one more thing ditch the onboard sound and get a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. Don't get a SB Live! they suck for video editing.

[Dudster]

Good article Cocoman

The only thing about Athlons is the fact they're a bit delicate but if you can get a good local shop to fit the heatsink on an Athlon 1.4GHz w/ 266MHZFSB onto your chosen motherboard (I like the look of the Asus A7v266 ) and then fit the motherboard into your chosen case (it sounds like Enlight cases are the best. You'll also want case fans in your case, one in the lower front sucking air in (preferbly through a dust filter though I don't know if Enlight cases come with a filter) and one on the upper rear blowing out, as well as the power supply (PS/U) fan) then I recommend going for the Athlon (and get retail models of everything to make sure you get the full warrenty. probably 3 years).

The A7V266 supports DDR memory so I recommend getting at least 256MB of PC2100 memory from www.crucial.com/uk/index.asp though I personally would get 512MB (maybe even more if you do go with Windows 2000 which sounds like the best OS for editing).

Then just get a hard drive or 2. You'll want ATA100 7200rpm drives with 2MB of cache. I'm not sure what brand of hard drive you should get but I would get the IBM 60GXP (the biggest one/s they do).

Obviously if all that didn't make sense, just post the fact

Oh yeah, I agree that you should get a motherboard without onboard sound (and certainly without onboard video) and also avoid the Sound Blaster cards. The Turtle Beach sounds good (though I don't really know ).

edit: Just a point about DDR memory; you don't have to worry about CAS/CL rating with DDR memory. It only seems to be SDRAM (PC100/PC133) that is available in two different CAS ratings (2 or 3). PC1600 is CAS2/CL2 and PC2100 is CAS2.5/CL2.5 (btw, I think CL stands for CAS Latency and so as it's latency, the lower the number the better though I still recommend PC2100 over PC1600). Now, whether you should get ECC or non-parity memory, I don't know, any takers?

[DutchMaster]

ASUS A7V266is a very good choice I think, havn't heard bad things about it yet. And it's got 5 PCI slots, so no worry there. Together with an AMD 1.4GHz(266MHZ FSB) CPU and 512Mb PC2100 memory a good choice!!

[Infinitus]

Welcome.
Considering you are in the UK I'd recommend to get your parts from www.scan.co.uk because they are nice and cheap.
I personally think the Athlon beats the Intel hands down, but Intel does have its specialties. I dunno if vid editing is one of these....
Dutchmaster, good choice of mobo, but it'll all be rewritten in the coming weeks. I'm waiting to build my own machine with ASUS A7V266A (the KT266A chipset), and the Athlon Palomino XP 1800+ (1.53GHz). Benchmarks at Toms Hardware look very promising!
Any other parts you are still looking for?

BTW The above comes with onboard 5.1 sound so agrees with Dudster's audio preferences. Agree on the IBM 60GXPs and 512Mb RAM never hurt anyone

[Dudster]

dashiel... what editing software will you be using? Just wondering what requirements it has (operating system, CPU, memory etc.)

[dashiel]

I curretnly have premiere 5 and may upgrade to 6

BTW although i am british i'm in LA at the moment so need to really be able to buy my gear over here

[Dudster]

It looks like you might have some problems with Premiere 5 if you get an Athlon (or maybe it wouldn't work at all ). I've just been having a look round Adobe's site and found this http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/29456.htm

Premiere 5.x for Windows supports only Intel Pentium processors. If the computer has a non-Intel processor (for example, Cyrix, Dec Alpha, or AMD K6), Premiere 5.0 returns an error and doesn't start; Premiere 5.1x returns the error the first time it starts.

Edit: Ah, found this on a different page

Premiere 5.x for Windows only supports Intel Pentium-based computers. When you start Premiere, it queries the system to determine whether the computer has an Intel Pentium processor. If the computer has a non-Intel processor, Premiere 5.0 returns an error and does not start; Premiere 5.1x returns the error the first time it starts, but will run.

Premiere may also return this error if a computer's Intel Pentium processor was modified to run faster. Premiere may be unable to recognize a modified processor as an Intel Pentium.

Edit: If you do want to get an Athlon, I suggest emailing Adobe and asking if there are any issues with Athlons that you should be aware of (and Pentium4s for that matter as the system requirements for Premiere6 only mention Pentium3s).

[CocoMan]

Hey dashiel,

If your in LA right now, go visit a Fry's Electronics store. It's like Disneyland for computer geeks, long lines and surreal atmosphere. Seriously, if you go, you'll propably end up buying something.....and returning it a short time later!

I really am trying to help, you'll understand if you go to Fry's.