. . . continued from Hot News Dave is a technical support person for most of his friends and several of his business associates. He regularly advises those people to stay away from the cutting edge and be content with proven components and component combinations, refrain from overclocking, and to remember that a 16x DVD/RW drive on sale for $10 at the local Flea Market is probably a deal to stay away from. At long last now, Dave is building himself a new computer. The best thing about his story is that it points to some wisdom. [Dave] I started out about 30 years ago with a 8080 based Octal based system (Mini Micro Designer, still in a box in the basement with docs), moved to the Atari 8-Bit system (several systems actually; best bang for the buck then and one of them is still around too, somewhere, in the basement), then the Atari ST (make that an STf, an STfm, an STe, then a Mega STe, a TT and a Falcon—again, at the time, each one of them representing the best bang for the buck), to a rudimentary Pentium II (innumerable component upgrades), then a really nice Pentium III, and now the Athlon 64 box I'm building. I have taken the plunge, spent the money and am now assembling it. I still have to do the benchmarking with SiSoft Sandra2005, but according to Tom's Hardware Guide, I should show a considerable improvement in all parameters compared to the old machine. I will be moving from an ASUS P3V4 motherboard (built in 1999: Pentium III/600Mhz CPU with 1GB SDRAM, ATI Rage 128 All-in-Wonder video card) which has served me well for the past five years, to an ASUS A8V-Dlx motherboard (Athlon 64/3000 CPU with 1GB OCZ Premium DDR DRAM, ATI Radeon 9600XT card). Wish me luck. The original SDRAM cost a bundle. I remember paying as much as $185 for a 128MB SDRAM chip. You can now buy twice as much (256MB) premium for $65. But the real kicker is that you can also purchase 1GB of premium DDR for only $165. My old Intel Pentium III CPU cost in the neighborhood of $350 and was the best bang for the buck. Right now an AMD Athlon 64 can be had for less than $200 and it's easily twice as fast as the PIII. CPUs have evolved (along with Moore's Law, which isn't really a law of any kind, Moore's statement being misquoted often) and are beginning to hit the wall presented by the limits of current manufacturing methods. In any case, it's still best bang for the buck that should determine our buying habits.

Video has undergone massive changes. Frame rates have risen dramatically while programmed detail in games has increased exponentially. Speeds and bus widths have increased wildly. The demands that photo and video software place on CPUs and video cards are practically off the scale.

Audio cards are another matter. While Creative Labs has developed marvelous cards (I put a Live Value into the old box) and still makes beautiful high end cards and externals, today's users with 2.1, 4.1 or 5.1 speaker setups don't need the frills offered by the stand-alone card. A good motherboard with on-board audio will more than suffice. Sorry Creative, but even though I could use the Live Value in my new box, I see no reason to tie up a PCI slot for the marginal increase that I may perceive through my Altec 5.1 Plus 2 speaker system. A 'Super Audigy 4 Pro' maybe?

Video has undergone massive changes. Frame rates have risen dramatically while programmed detail in games has increased exponentially. Speeds and bus widths have increased wildly. The demands that photo and video software place on CPUs and video cards are practically off the scale. My main interest lately has been live streaming video, so I have hooked 6 different web cams into my system (and man oh man, is there a difference in web cams out there!). The point here is that the old ATI Rage 128 just can't keep up anymore. When you compare the cost of a good AGP video card to the cost of a great PCI Express (PCIe) video card, AGP wins hands down. Sure the pipeline and speed are better on PCIe, but at what cost and for what gain? PCIe motherboards also don't allow for the same PCI slot expansion as good AGP boards do. If you have nothing to add in except fifteen hundred bucks worth of dual-SLI video cards, then PCIe is the way to go. If you are like me and want to use Legacy products—in my case two 5+1 USB 2.0 cards to give me up to 16 individual USB channels for web cams—a Promise EIDE card and an Adaptec SCSI card, you'll need a motherboard with at least five PCI slots. And don't forget that wireless PCI connector. I purchased the ASUS WiFi card to go with the A8V and even it uses a PCI slot, leaving me only 4 slots for all of the above. Oh wait—I forgot the ASUS Firewire and USB adapters. Gack! I'm almost outta room in my tower.

Seriously though, when I built my first "real" system, I planned for future upgrades and purchased a full tower case with enough drive bays to handle all the hard drives I could possibly want. I went from a 8GB Samsung to a 27GB Maxtor to a 40GB Maxtor to a 80GB Maxtor to a 120GB Western Digital. The Samsung, while still going strong (replaced under warranty once), replaced a 3GB something-or-other that was defective in a Pentium II system. The 27GB Maxtor was replaced by Maxtor and is also working in a Pentium II system. With three drives left (40+80+120), I now have about 210G of storage. Sure, I could replace them all with one drive but I just don't want the aggravation of transferring all that data, reconfiguring programs, and so on.

I upgraded the power supply in 2004 to a 480w ANTEC Blue when I thought I was having problems with the original 350w power supply and would even consider replacing the case with one of the windowed and LED blinged-out towers that are available. But you know what? Nobody makes anything I would even consider. I think I bought something originally that I can continue to live with.

Monitors can be changed at will. I originally had a 15 inch CRT. Then a 17 inch NEC CRT with RGB inputs. Presently it's a 19 inch Samsung 950b, but with the new ATI 9600XT that will handle 2 VGA displays, I think I will have to consider a 21 inch LCD. This could go on forever!? [Dave]

There you have it. The wisdom lies in holding on to a solid, well matched set of components for as long as possible, upgrading the operating system and programs appropriately, but turning your back on most new hardware releases until such time as the upgrade leap is truly big. It's that big leap upward in power and speed which provides the greatest value and the most noticeable improvement. Going from a Pentium III to an Athlon 64 is a massive jump in speed and raw power. Going from a Pentium 2.8GHz CPU to a Pentium 3.2GHz Hyperthreading CPU won't make any difference worth mentioning. Jumping from a cranky old Rage 128 video card to a fast Radeon or nVidia made in the last couple of years is the difference between night and day. Going from a Radeon 9600 AGP card to an Radeon X800 PCIe card means you'll have to change motherboards—an expensive proposition which will make a difference only when playing a few select games. Photoshop won't give a darn.

So everything Dave does on the new computer will be faster and more responsive. Going from his creaky old Rage 128 to a Radeon 9600XT enables installation and enjoyable play of games that barely ran before. An incremental upgrade from an existing Radeon 9000 to a 9800 Pro is almost as good. At the end of the day, he'll retire a Pentium III system that doesn't owe him a dime after 5 years of heavy duty use.

Think about it. Look ahead. Don't buy often—buy smart.

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