Double Pentium!!

Glenn Chan · September 13th, 2003, 09:17 PM

The better sound cards will have better inputs and outputs (less hum, better frequency response). If you use headphones you can find the hum from your sound card to be disturbing. If you are happy with the built-in sound on your motherboard then you don't need a sound card like one from M-audio or phillips. You'd install those later anyways so I would start off with on-board audio and move up if you are unsatisfied. On-board sound can suck because of interference

Processor: The 2.4mhz is the best for overclocking, but the 2.6mhz is also good. The 3.0mhz doesn't have much room for overclocking. The 2.4mhz and 2.6mhz processors are good value. Pentium processors only overclock by increasing the front side bus speed (the ratio between FSB and processor clock speed is fixed). Processor speed tops out at around 3.5/3.6mhz (with conventional air cooling). Both FSB and processor clock increases improve performance so you want both to be as high as possible. With a lower clocked processor you have more potential. see http://www.ocaddiction.com/reviews/cpu/p4roundup/

RAM: Make sure it will work with your motherboard (should be on the Asus website IIRC). Quality RAM will let your overclock more. If not overclocking then you can lower the timings on your RAM (though the BIOS) to get better performance. Some brands are slightly better and more expensive than others (OCZ). If you want value then get (hyperx) kingston RAM. If you want insane speeds then go with the top of the line OCZ RAM (can hit like DDR550, while normal RAM would be DDR400).

Matched pairs of RAM are guaranteed to work together and are usually cheaper.

Firewire and ethernet are built in I believe.

XP Pro is fine.

Hard drive: A large western digital drive plus a smaller drive should be good. You want to keep your video and your system/applications drive seperate. Get the 8MB cache for your system drive. storagereview.com has reviews of drive, but basically the Western Digital drives come out on top. storagereview.com has lots of information on hard drives, but some of the info is contradictory, outdated, or turn out to be wrong in practice.

Vegas versus Premiere 6.0: Do you mean Premiere Pro? I would stay away from Premiere 6.0. Vegas is a very nice NLE. There could be some debate between it and Premiere Pro.

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September 13th, 2003, 09:17 PM	#31
Glenn Chan Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 4,750	The better sound cards will have better inputs and outputs (less hum, better frequency response). If you use headphones you can find the hum from your sound card to be disturbing. If you are happy with the built-in sound on your motherboard then you don't need a sound card like one from M-audio or phillips. You'd install those later anyways so I would start off with on-board audio and move up if you are unsatisfied. On-board sound can suck because of interference Processor: The 2.4mhz is the best for overclocking, but the 2.6mhz is also good. The 3.0mhz doesn't have much room for overclocking. The 2.4mhz and 2.6mhz processors are good value. Pentium processors only overclock by increasing the front side bus speed (the ratio between FSB and processor clock speed is fixed). Processor speed tops out at around 3.5/3.6mhz (with conventional air cooling). Both FSB and processor clock increases improve performance so you want both to be as high as possible. With a lower clocked processor you have more potential. see http://www.ocaddiction.com/reviews/cpu/p4roundup/ RAM: Make sure it will work with your motherboard (should be on the Asus website IIRC). Quality RAM will let your overclock more. If not overclocking then you can lower the timings on your RAM (though the BIOS) to get better performance. Some brands are slightly better and more expensive than others (OCZ). If you want value then get (hyperx) kingston RAM. If you want insane speeds then go with the top of the line OCZ RAM (can hit like DDR550, while normal RAM would be DDR400). Matched pairs of RAM are guaranteed to work together and are usually cheaper. Firewire and ethernet are built in I believe. XP Pro is fine. Hard drive: A large western digital drive plus a smaller drive should be good. You want to keep your video and your system/applications drive seperate. Get the 8MB cache for your system drive. storagereview.com has reviews of drive, but basically the Western Digital drives come out on top. storagereview.com has lots of information on hard drives, but some of the info is contradictory, outdated, or turn out to be wrong in practice. Vegas versus Premiere 6.0: Do you mean Premiere Pro? I would stay away from Premiere 6.0. Vegas is a very nice NLE. There could be some debate between it and Premiere Pro.