Originally Posted by Cybog
Yeah I have heard some good things about that XFX Geforce 6600 card. I might buy everything else beforehand and then get the card a little later.
Some questions from a noob:
I've also heard that the AMD's are faster than the P4 speeds, but what does "EE" mean.....? Also, what do you mean by 64 bit...what bit speed do the P4's use? 32? (Confused on the "bit" part)
How do these cooling systems work? Are they like a heatsink you just stick em over the top of your CPU? Is the CPU encased or something? Ive never used anything other than the regular fans.
RAM question - I don't have a clue what all the acronyms mean in plain english. I dont know what the difference is between RAM at all. Also, what does a "cas length of 2" mean...?
Rail Stability? What does this mean?
Remember, I've worked on and built Chevy Chevettes. All you damn kids these days are driving Dodge Vipers and Hummers....haha
As long as the case is ATX, it should work. Being a p4 is in there, I don't see a problem.
1. EE is intel's P4 "Extreme Edition" usually representing the best of their chips. However until lately, the Athlon 64's for the most part have been faster, as they can send double the data per clock. Although Intel now has a similar performing 64bit chip out, it's much more expensive at this time.(it's a P4, but under the 6xx series only) As for the bit thing, bit is refered to data transfer. We have been using the 32bit x86 arch.
since the 486/Pentium 1 days. With this release of Longhorn soon (Next version of windows) all software will translate to 64bit code, to futher take advantage of increase processing from the newer chips. However, im sure it will have backward comp. with 32bit chips, just won't be as fast.
2. Yes, the cooling system in question is a heatsink/fan mix. The heatsink is based on copper (which we all know has the best thermal conductivity ratio), the fan then sits on the heatsink absorbing/drawing out the air to cool the heatsink, and thus cooling the cpu.
3. There are generally three types of ram. SD-RAM(Single Data), DDR(Dual Data), and Rambus. SDRAM is an older standard that was mainly used for Pentium 1-3. DDR is a much faster version of SD-RAM, and that it can loop recieve/sent data, thus theo. halfing the time, or doubling bandwidth. Although Rambus isn't used much anymore, it was a dual module setup. It wasn't very fast, but provided a lot of bandwidth. However with faster version of DDR (like the 400) provide all this bandwidth, but at faster speeds. Cas length is further measurement on how fast the ram can send/access data to/from the system. The lower, the better.
4. Rail stability is refered to how well the current within a voltage rail can stay within "safe" measurement. For example, if you have a 12+ rail, that says it can do 26amps..you have to make sure that under load, that 12 volt rail does not go say under 11.7V or higher then 12.5V..you want it to stay as close to 12 as possible for stability reasons. A crappy power supply will shorten the life span of a computer real quick, and also lower performance.