Building a new computer for my gaming habit...

Link of the day:
This is a very interesting view of the Apple-Intel deal: PBS I, Cringely . June 9, 2005 - Going for Broke

New computer thoughts.

I'm ready to build another PC, and since one question I often hear is "what computer should I get?", I thought I'd blog a bit about my thought process here. Understand first that my needs and wants are probably not your needs and wants, so my choices will probably not be best for you. But the point here is the process and the processing, not the conclusion.

Overview:
The first thing to know about ANY computer purchase (and really, any technology purchase) is that the question to ask is not "What do I buy?", it is "What do I want to do?" or "what task(s) do I wish to perform?". Step two, after you know what you want to do, is to determine what software will best perform those task(s). Step 3 is to determine what hardware will best run that software. If you start at step three, you are probably going to mismanage your expectations - you'll end up spending more or getting less value for your money than you ought.

My Goal:
Build an AMAZING game machine, with good upgrade potential, using parts I already have so as to spend as little as possible for excellent gaming performance. By gaming performance I mean the ability to play current and future FPS (first-person shooter) games such as Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Doom 3, Battlefield 1942, Battlefield 2, etc.

So, you know I'm constraining my budget, but I want to be able to grow this computer into something better as my budget permits. I'm also using this machine for gaming - not word processing, web browsing, etc.

Fundamentals:
If you're not familiar with building a computer, all PCs need the following parts:
Case
Powersupply
CPU (and usually a fan for it)
Memory
Storage (hard drive, CD/DVD drive, floppy drive, ZIP drive)
Display (CRT or LCD, generally)
Keyboard and Mouse (generally)
Various input and output connections (parallel, serial, FireWire, USB, IR)

And they may need some of the following:
Network interface
Modem
Sound capability

Additional Constraints:
After a little research, it is apparent that the best gaming computers all are currently using the AMD Athlon 64FX CPU. If I am to build a machine that could use that, I need a motherboard with the AMD Socket 939 CPU socket. Also, since that CPU is expensive, I want a motherboard that can use a slower CPU and later upgrade to the faster one.

Sound capability is important, and built-in quality sound would be nice, but I usually play games with headphones on. Almost any sound circuitry will do fine. Plus, I can always upgrade sound at a later date with a better sound card if I want to.

Video performance is the most important aspect, and I already have the video card I plan to use: a VisionTek Xtasy Radeon X850 XT. This is a PCI Express video card, so having a motherboard with AGP graphics will be useless for me. Most computers come with ethernet built-in, but for future performance, I'd prefer gigabit ethernet (1000 megabit ethernet... much faster than today's more common 100 megabit ethernet) capability. Also, I'd prefer this to be based on the motherboard bus, instead of the slower PCI bus

(the math will explain this: PCI maximum bus speed is 133MB - megabytes per second - and gigabit ethernet would use 1000 megaBITS per second - which equals 125MB, almost ALL of the available PCI speed. With only 8MB left over for other PCI cards or other PCI tasks, the performance will be bottlenecked.)

Parts I will not need:
I already have plenty of CD and DVD readers and writers to choose from, and I have several floppy drives around. I plan to share the monitor, keyboard, and mouse with my existing system (by using a KVM - "keyboard, video, mouse" - switch), so I'll not need those. I also have a bunch of unused hard drives to choose from, and I have at least two PC cases into which I can install this new components (though I may need a new power supply - more on that later).

Parts I will need:
That leaves me with needing the following for the computer itself --
Motherboard
CPU/Fan assembly
Memory
and possibly:
Sound Card (if motherboard does not have sound)

Research:
After a little more research, it also becomes apparent that the nVidia nForce4 chipset family has the features I want most, and has been getting the best reviews. This chipset offers something special: SLI - the scalable link interface. This permits to identical high-end nVidia video cards to be paired for increased video performance. While my current video card choice will not do that, I have the option of upgrading someday to some that will.

So... what motherboards have this chipset and get good reviews, and what are their prices?

I've had excellent experience with motherboards made by Abit, and they make the AN8 motherboard using the nForce4 SLI chipset (actually, the motherboard is available in several flavors with various features enabled). Another company getting rave reviews is ASUS for their A8N motherboard series (also using the nForce4 SLI chipset).

If all things were equal, price would determine my choice here - and in fact, they are not equal. The ASUS has better on-board audio capabilities, and the Abit has a bunch of features I do not need. Also, the ASUS price is cheaper. ASUS wins.

Memory can affect system performance by being a bottleneck when there is not enough of it. This motherboard has four memory slots, and can accept a maximum of 4GB of DDR RAM. This memory is available at various speeds and memory timings, but I need to same money somewhere, so I'll choose relatively fast memory with relatively slow timings. If that sounds confusing, it is... it actually it quite technical. RAM prices are all over the board, and the differences really come down to: has it been tested and approved for use in the system? does it have a lifetime warranty? what is the RAM speed (measured in megahertz and/or megabytes per second)? and what is the RAM latency (measured in various clock cycle settings). Faster costs more. Lower latency costs more. Longer warranty costs more. Testing and approval costs
more.

But for general performance, faster speed is more important than lower latency, and the actual performance improvement between average latency and fastest latency for my needs is really little more than a few video frames per second. I do not think it is worth the extra cost. And in any case, I can upgrade to faster memory in the future. I do need to save money somewhere...

I priced the parts at some places, and it looks like Monarch Computer had a good deal: motherboard, Athlon64 3200+ retail (comes with the heatsink/fan), 2GB RAM, Far Cry and Half Life 2 games, 4 months of Napster music downloads all for $605 plus $7.89 FedEx Ground shipping. They also pre-test and set up the configuration, and update the motherboard BIOS for me. Perhaps I could do better on price, but I doubt by much.

Total $612.89. I ordered it today (6/10/05).