jmmijo

I would go with an Asus P4P800-VM and a P4-2.4C, just use the onboard graphics as you don't need much for display since it's just storage. As for the SATA RAID, go for the Promise Fastrak S150 SX4. It's a four channel SATA RAID card that will do RAID 5. This would be the best option for your users if you wanted the Parity option along with Mirroring/Striping. However you have to remember that one drive's worth of capacity gets lopped off the top of the entire array so in a four drive RAID 5 config you would have only 750GB of capacity However if you wanted to add another raid card you could do this too.

If you always wondered how Fry's could carry such "CHEAP" combo packs, this is why. Package an ECS/PC Chips mobo and a CPU for under $100 and most of that pricing is for the CPU itself

Hmm, I've not seen that appear but hopefully somebody else will know for sure. It sounds like you have some adware stuff lurking about. Have you tried a scanner like Adaware 6.xx yet ?!? I use it all the time and it works great

For what ever reason, I've had issues with MSI motherboards going out on me. One now has to be sent back for the third time, same problem As for ECS, well since they are the company behind such names as: PC-Chips, Amptron, Fugu Tek and others, you can imagine their main goal is on the cheap I'd recommend the Asus board first then the Abit.

Quote: what about Garrison and Slave? Actually that would be Mr. Garrison and Mr. Slave Of course we couldn't forget about Lemmiwinks now could we

Quote: the Opteron and FX51's / FX' s - are indentical chips as far as i can see - excetp the socket. PS - do not buy a FX chip - since AMD has plan to change the socket in the comming months. they are doing what intel did with the P4 - alot of people bought 423 and then they change to 478. So if u can wait! and dont buy - heck, or even recommend an FX at this time - they are going to turn the FX into the budget chip i recall. Good point unless you really need to run a fast 64-bit *nix flavor Also I thought that AMD's roadmap was to eventually make the currenty Athlon XP's rebadged as Duron's for the entry level, then the Athlon 64's as the mid-range then the FX's as the high-end/enthusiast. My guess is that they may want to consider dropping the Opteron if indeed the FX will have the same archetecture, i.e., support SMP and the multiple Hypertransport connections But it's possible they will want to just rebadge FX cpu's as Opteron's and try to sell them at a higher price

Are all of these machines running the same hardware/software config ?!? If not then check the BIOS settings for the machines that work properly and match these settings against the ones that don't and see if they are the same. As for the LAN/Network monitoring, not sure about this myself. I'm sure somebody else will know more about this

Hmm, can't say I've run into any issues with any of my AMD boxes. My old one was an Asus A7V-333 with a slower XP 2100. I gave this combo to my cousin along with a GeForce 4-4200 graphics card. He's primarily a gamer and has no problems running anything on this config. As for me my Workstation/Server box stays on 24x7 and runs on an Asus A7N8X Deluxe 2 board along with an Athlon XP 2600. I did add a secondary fan for cooling on this however since it stays on all the time. The CPU temps remains pretty low and constant As for Celeron 4's, they are decent for what you pay for them including the fastest 2.8Ghz version. But since Oracle is a DB app I'd probably stick with the P4's as well. Also don't skimp on the ram as this can help out the performance, especially for DB queries

Well technically the GeForce FX is not a GeForce 4 GPU it would have been called the GeForce 5 but I think nVidia decided on a name change for this series of GPU's

But you have to remember that the lion's share of ATi's market is Windows based machines, either OEM's/System Builders and Retail

They are ATi GPU's

I think the nVidia GPU's are needed due to better(?) compatibility with *nix so this is why none of the ATi GPU cards were mentioned Also pricing seems to be an issue too...

Sorry about that, it's just another name for the local video memory on the graphics card Yes I understand the dilema here, I'd say stick with the 5200 since the price is right, but if you can find a 5600 for a little more then it may indeed be worth it, just because the GPU and memory run faster.

That is a good price and this would fit your system nicely. If however you can get a 5600 for a little more, say another $25~35 then this would be good too. Also note, I would recommend staying with a card that has a local frame buffer size of 128MB instead of 64MB

Just for grins, what's a generic/house brand 5600 going for ?!?

Well actually you're system is not really that slow nor would I consider it sub-par I have two machines that I use ATM, one is running an Athlon XP 2600 on an Asus A7N8X Deluxe with 1GB of ram and my older GeForce 4 Ti 4600. The other is my gaming rig running a P4-2.53 on an Aopen AX4C Max II board with 1GB of RAM and an Abit Siluro GeForce FX 5600. Now I wouldn't consider either to be a speed demon by today's standards but hey, remember that an FX series card will run on an AGP4x mobo without any problems an I'd say get one for when/if you do upgrade to an AGP8x board. Too many bells and whistles is what you're gonna get with todays graphics cards. Asus no longer makes what they called a "PURE" graphics card anymore

If you can get a good price on the older GeForce 4/4200, this could save you some money, however since nVidia is trying to sell the FX series of GPU's now, you most likely can get an FX 5200 for about the same price Some users seem to think the 5200 is about on par with the GeForce 4/4400~4600 in performance. Not really sure where it ends up being but I've seen new cards with this GPU for less then $100(USD). If you have more funds then either an FX 5600/5700 would be in order.

Good info, thanks

Well actually it makes sense in that this graphics card is not really a GeForce 4 nor even a GeForce 3. It's more like a GeForce 2 Plus. My guess is that the game makes use of some very intensive hardware capabilities that the NV17 GPU doesn't support, sorry about that I've noted others having the same misgivings about this as you. I guess the game publisher has the right to make a more robust gaming engine that requires a more robust GPU as well ;(

Perhaps it is the monitor shielding after all

Another possibility could be a poor ground for your computer and/or monitor. Have you checked the AC outlet with a ground tester or a VOM to see if there is a break/open in the ground line ?!? Perhaps this particular make/model of flat panel has a poorly designed shield as well...

Well I must say I noticed a bit of a difference when I built a couple of Athlon 64 boxes for clients. Since only XP Pro (32bit) was installed I can only give you a subjective opinion on the speed. However I think that there was a noticable difference with the Athlon 64 box compared to a both a P4 and Athlon XP box of similar speeds. All things being equal, I think that perhaps there is also some differences in both the CPU and the Motherboard chipset that seems to help out here, even on a 32bit OS. The motherboard was the Asus K8V based on the VIA KT800 chipset. I beleive the effeciency of the CPU/Chipset and motherboard design help to increase the performance even on a 32bit OS Of course I didn't get to play around as long as I wanted to but 3D Mark also gave higher scores then comparable boxes with other CPU's. Also note that the Athlon 64/FX share the same heatsink/fan combo as the Opteron does. Nice way of keeping cost's down so you don't have to come out with separate cooling devices for each flavor of CPU

Sounds good to me, also note that your labeling of the PCI slots is not far from the truth in that most motherboards now support busMAStering PCI slots

It sounds like it's a plug-in app for MPG files, do you have anything like a Ulead video/graphics app installed ?!? I can't say I've seen this before but it seems to behave like a capture app of some kind, hmmm.... Did you try looking at task manager for any unknown process ?!?

Yes, any electronic device, especially power supplies can give off extra amounts of EMI/RFI. However, this amount varries from country to country depending on local codes for this kind of emmisions. Another thing I've heard that can cause issues like this are cordless phones. Do you have one by any chance ?!? Some of these can radiate an extreme amount of EMI/RFI Also, have you tried adjusting your refesh rate to see if this helps or changes anything on the display ?!? Also, make sure the display/video cable has a good connection to the graphics card connector. Try disconnecting the cable, at both ends of you have a VGA/DVI connector on your flat panel as well and then try reversing the connector ends and see if this makes any difference.