HARDWARE RECCOMENDATION GUIDE
WTF do I have now?
Try EVEREST or CPUZ
Are there any good hardware information sites with reviews and such?
X-bit Labs
Anandtech
VR-Zone
Hardwarezone
Hexus
Legit Reviews
Insanetek
Madshrimps
SilentPCReview
Systemcooling
1. PROCESSORS
AMD and Intel are the only candidates to choose from, so that makes it a tiny bit easier to choose a chip. Intel has superior server processors, but AMD, with its 64-bit technology, dominates the gaming field. The speed of the chip has little to do with its performance. The speed of a chip is measured in MEGAHERTZ (Mhz) or GIGAHERTZ (Ghz). If a chip is running at 2400 Mhz, it is also known as 2.4 Ghz. The performance markers of the chips are the Front Side Bus (FSB) and the Level 2 Cache (L2). Intel chips average out to have a FSB of 500 Mhz, and a L2 cache of about 1 Megabyte (MB). AMD chips have lower clock speeds Gigahertz wise, but outperform Intel with their average 1000 Mhz and about 512 KB of L2 cache. Enough said, AMD is the way to go for gaming, its proven fact. Remember to note the socket type when buying a motherboard
2. MEMORY
Q. What do the ratings "DDR400", "PC3200", "2.5-3-3-7" refer to?
A: DDR400 - Double Data Rate RAM which runs at 200MHz, but since it is double data rate it basically works twice as fast as normal RAM (regular SDRAM, which is used in most Pentium 3s, some P2s/P4s and the AMD systems during that era). Hence its effective frequency is 2x200MHz, therefore we have the DDR400 rating.
The PCxxxx rating refers to the bandwidth of your RAM. Basically this is how much data your RAM can transfer in 1 second. PC3200 means that it has a maximum bandwidth of 3200MB/s, or 3.2GB/s. However, please remember that this figure is only a theoretical maximum.
Also note that the PC rating is ~8x the DDR rating.
2.5-3-3-7 refers to the timings, or latencies of your RAM. It's a bit hard to explain but basically lower (tighter) latencies are better. As a rule of thumb, try to avoid buying RAM that has latencies of 3-3-3-8 or worse.
3. Video Card
Bling for the case, none the less. Modern games use ultra powerful rendering engines and such to give you those amazing looking games. Ati and NVIDIA provide the chips to dozens of 3rd party manufacturing groups that brand the product and sell them. Both brands are excellent, however.
The older form of graphics card interface is AGP and PCI, which are home to some classic cards such as the FX5700, and 9550. AGP was a big leam in performance, and is still used today. A good portion of both lines can utilize this interface.
The newest interface is the PCI-E, or Express x16. This interface allows for such functions as SLI and Crossfire, or the ability to put 2 cards on a motherboard and run them as one with 2x the power.
Video Cards use a high bandwith form of memory known as DDR3. The best performance models use the GDDR3 memory interface. The NVIDIA 6 and 7 series, and the X8xx and X1k series from ATI are the best for gaming. The speed of a graphics card is measured by its Memory Clock Memory Size Memory Interface and Memory Type. Bigger is better
Graphics cards utilize microsofts DirectX rendering (currently at 9) and supporting other rendering software such as OpenGL (in games like DOOM 3), and Smart Shader 3.0 and Pixel Shader 3.0. Most new cards also support HDR rendering (High Dynamic Range) aka. Light. To each is own on video cards.
4. Motherboards
Really a motherboard is a matching game with the rest of the parts you have. Make sure that you buy a mother board that supports the type of video card you have (i.e. AGP ~ AGP board), the socket type of the chip (socket 939 with a socket 939 motherboard). Gaming made motherboards will use the NVIDIA nFORCE 4 chipset, or the ATI XPRESS 200 chipset.
5. POWER SUPPLY
Never EVER skimp on a power supply. It is crucial that you have a steady stream of power going to you computer. Make sure that you have enough power as well, because higher end graphics cards and chips use more power
Top-tier: (expensive but superb quality and warranty coverage)
PC Power & Cooling
Zippy
OCZ
Mid-tier: (good bang-for-buck and generally reliable quality)
Antec
Cooler Master
Enermax
Fotron
Silverstone (not recommended for quiet PCs)
Seasonic
Tagan
Topower (OCZ Powerstreams are souped-up Topower units)
Vantec
Zalman
Budget: (cheap but good)
Enlight
TTGI/Superflower
Sparkle
PSU brands recommended for quiet PCs:
Seasonic
Enermax
Antec
If it isn’t on here, I wouldn’t really trust it.
6. Hard Drives
Essential for stuff to turn on. I will make this short and sweet. A hard drive holds stuff, nuff said. IDE is the older version, and cheaper to boot. They hold stuff, and they keep it in. SATA is the new type of drive, or Serial ATA. It has a data rate starting at 150 Ghz, unlike the IDE which is 100 Ghz. SATA drives offer more functions for future proofing, such as NCQ, or Native Command Queuing, which will be helpful for the newest windows operating system, Vista. NCQ allows for the hard drive to change the order of processes, instead of following a 1234 pattern.
thank you for reading this!
WTF do I have now?
Try EVEREST or CPUZ
Are there any good hardware information sites with reviews and such?
X-bit Labs
Anandtech
VR-Zone
Hardwarezone
Hexus
Legit Reviews
Insanetek
Madshrimps
SilentPCReview
Systemcooling
1. PROCESSORS
AMD and Intel are the only candidates to choose from, so that makes it a tiny bit easier to choose a chip. Intel has superior server processors, but AMD, with its 64-bit technology, dominates the gaming field. The speed of the chip has little to do with its performance. The speed of a chip is measured in MEGAHERTZ (Mhz) or GIGAHERTZ (Ghz). If a chip is running at 2400 Mhz, it is also known as 2.4 Ghz. The performance markers of the chips are the Front Side Bus (FSB) and the Level 2 Cache (L2). Intel chips average out to have a FSB of 500 Mhz, and a L2 cache of about 1 Megabyte (MB). AMD chips have lower clock speeds Gigahertz wise, but outperform Intel with their average 1000 Mhz and about 512 KB of L2 cache. Enough said, AMD is the way to go for gaming, its proven fact. Remember to note the socket type when buying a motherboard
2. MEMORY
Q. What do the ratings "DDR400", "PC3200", "2.5-3-3-7" refer to?
A: DDR400 - Double Data Rate RAM which runs at 200MHz, but since it is double data rate it basically works twice as fast as normal RAM (regular SDRAM, which is used in most Pentium 3s, some P2s/P4s and the AMD systems during that era). Hence its effective frequency is 2x200MHz, therefore we have the DDR400 rating.
The PCxxxx rating refers to the bandwidth of your RAM. Basically this is how much data your RAM can transfer in 1 second. PC3200 means that it has a maximum bandwidth of 3200MB/s, or 3.2GB/s. However, please remember that this figure is only a theoretical maximum.
Also note that the PC rating is ~8x the DDR rating.
2.5-3-3-7 refers to the timings, or latencies of your RAM. It's a bit hard to explain but basically lower (tighter) latencies are better. As a rule of thumb, try to avoid buying RAM that has latencies of 3-3-3-8 or worse.
3. Video Card
Bling for the case, none the less. Modern games use ultra powerful rendering engines and such to give you those amazing looking games. Ati and NVIDIA provide the chips to dozens of 3rd party manufacturing groups that brand the product and sell them. Both brands are excellent, however.
The older form of graphics card interface is AGP and PCI, which are home to some classic cards such as the FX5700, and 9550. AGP was a big leam in performance, and is still used today. A good portion of both lines can utilize this interface.
The newest interface is the PCI-E, or Express x16. This interface allows for such functions as SLI and Crossfire, or the ability to put 2 cards on a motherboard and run them as one with 2x the power.
Video Cards use a high bandwith form of memory known as DDR3. The best performance models use the GDDR3 memory interface. The NVIDIA 6 and 7 series, and the X8xx and X1k series from ATI are the best for gaming. The speed of a graphics card is measured by its Memory Clock Memory Size Memory Interface and Memory Type. Bigger is better
Graphics cards utilize microsofts DirectX rendering (currently at 9) and supporting other rendering software such as OpenGL (in games like DOOM 3), and Smart Shader 3.0 and Pixel Shader 3.0. Most new cards also support HDR rendering (High Dynamic Range) aka. Light. To each is own on video cards.
4. Motherboards
Really a motherboard is a matching game with the rest of the parts you have. Make sure that you buy a mother board that supports the type of video card you have (i.e. AGP ~ AGP board), the socket type of the chip (socket 939 with a socket 939 motherboard). Gaming made motherboards will use the NVIDIA nFORCE 4 chipset, or the ATI XPRESS 200 chipset.
5. POWER SUPPLY
Never EVER skimp on a power supply. It is crucial that you have a steady stream of power going to you computer. Make sure that you have enough power as well, because higher end graphics cards and chips use more power
Top-tier: (expensive but superb quality and warranty coverage)
PC Power & Cooling
Zippy
OCZ
Mid-tier: (good bang-for-buck and generally reliable quality)
Antec
Cooler Master
Enermax
Fotron
Silverstone (not recommended for quiet PCs)
Seasonic
Tagan
Topower (OCZ Powerstreams are souped-up Topower units)
Vantec
Zalman
Budget: (cheap but good)
Enlight
TTGI/Superflower
Sparkle
PSU brands recommended for quiet PCs:
Seasonic
Enermax
Antec
If it isn’t on here, I wouldn’t really trust it.
6. Hard Drives
Essential for stuff to turn on. I will make this short and sweet. A hard drive holds stuff, nuff said. IDE is the older version, and cheaper to boot. They hold stuff, and they keep it in. SATA is the new type of drive, or Serial ATA. It has a data rate starting at 150 Ghz, unlike the IDE which is 100 Ghz. SATA drives offer more functions for future proofing, such as NCQ, or Native Command Queuing, which will be helpful for the newest windows operating system, Vista. NCQ allows for the hard drive to change the order of processes, instead of following a 1234 pattern.
thank you for reading this!
