Yet Another Graphics Card post

I've skipped over the meat of this post and I have a few opinions and advice to bestow upon the. No offense, but if you manage to get 40 bones for a Biostar M6VCF socket 370 I'll pay homage. I'm thinking $3-5 free shipping.

• Strictly for 3d-work (In order)
  
• SGI
• Intel(not boards)
• AMD
  
  I suggest you head over to Ebay and browse for SGI (SILICON GRAPHICS) components, then you can run a TCSEC B1 trusted operating system -- Trusted IRIX. This should run on any of the R10k and R12k systems. This should protect your artwork.
  
  
• Strictly for gaming
  
• AMD(cheaper stock)
• Intel(cheaper overclocked thus better IMHO)
  
  AMD is the cheapest route here and before any AMD fan boys start getting aroused let me state that Intel can hold its own in gamming. Any AMD fan boys want to take the Pepsi challenge on Intel multitasking capabilities, stability and video encoding? You better come heavy, I mean with some tri-head pr0mmy results. ( I prefer having what's best, even if it means a couple invisible FPS less in a game.) Intel systems are the king of video encoding. With gamming as long as you have a good card you'll be fine.
  
• On the topic of chipsets
  
  Intel chipsets are very reliable and stable. When AMD stops playing, I'll start buying from then again. Friends don't let friend buy SIS or VIA chipsets. Intel systems are the video encoding king
  
  I'll say this at the price of being redundant. Most important tool in gaming is the vid card. You can have an old CPU,PSU,Board,RAM and a good card and realistically still play, as long as you are a little above the sys requirements. You can have a 3.4CPU,Dual-channel mobo, DDR RAM and a ghetto GeForce4 and will not be able to realistically play new games (if at all).
  
  In your case if your 3d-art were for a future professional route and not just for hobby time, I'd seriously recommend moving to the socket LGA775 6XX series CPU with 2M caches for video work. This will have you going for a few years. Plus a 4-gig overclock is fairly easy with an all right board and cooling.
  
  
• On the topic of Tom's hardware
  
  Most everyone in the know in the OCing realm has lost their faith in that site over the years. Me over the last three or so years. Seriously, we take those reviews with a grain of salt, maybe a few time to time. They have seriously had some questionable reviews and it is my belief as well as others that corporate--PR kickbacks are involved with the fudging of numbers and fuzzy math. As the true limits of the hardware were pushed and the resultants were revealed, the faith in the site has deteriorated over time. But they have a great spot on Google. Still they are a good source on info but Anandtech is more trustworthy. lol For P-1 overclocking information eons ago Tom's was the place.
  
  http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/19970102/index-07.html
  
  
• On the topic of Nvidia/ATi
  
  Be on the lookout for Nvidia in a few here.
  

And another site that is a must have http://users.erols.com/chare/main.htm
(i'll fix any mistakes later)

Oh dear!

Quote:

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and before any AMD fan boys start getting aroused let me state that Intel can hold its own in gamming

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!mitationRust old chap, I hope you don't mind me pointing out that over here, "gamming" has a somewhat different meaning............with "oral" connotations :D

Mind you, I do recall having to send an American lady colleague the front cover of a packet of "faggots"...............over here they are meatballs in a rich, dark, onion gravy ;)

On a serious note, I thought you gave a nice, succinct analysis.

I still say that for the current kit, an extra 256Mb of RAM is the best you can do. Then plan for the next box following the advice posted already.

:D

I heard them girlies in the UK can fix a mean, warm cup o' joe lol


He/she needs to save up and make that big jump to a new socket and start from scratch IMHO.........at the same time, Ebay and sites are full of refurbs and second hand great stuff. I've sold around 90 things on Ebay, all computer related.............for cheap too! For regular computing this is the time to buy socket478 CPUs /AMDs all with their late steppings and reap all the other benefits to waiting. They are very stable and reliable overclocked; it’s just that game play is expensive to keep up with, so it really sucks for the kids with low budgets. Me I go through boards and chips like crazy, I like to buy the new and sell for 20-30-40% percent off on Ebay. If you do this you can stay on the edge, not cutting edge but on that wave of good hardware for fairly cheap if you think about it.