A or B ?

[xsrossiter]

I'm in the process of trying to decide what type of system my first homebuilt should be. Next year will be bringing out some notable advances (dual channel DDR/533 FSB Xeons from Intel and Sledgehammers from AMD) so until the dust settles and the prices drop I've decided the following two options might work for me:

A
Get some experience by building a ~$800 system that'll do Office XP, MP3 and scanning chores. When I build the newer smp system in early '04 'A' can become the machine to run old Win 95/98 software.

B
Get some smp experience by building a ~$1200-$1500 system that in addition to the above will handle speech recognition and analog to digital conversions while working on other things. When I build the newer smp system in early '04 'B' can become the server for a SOHO setup and run old Win 95/98 software.

The Tualatin seems to be the chip for either scenario although I'm not sure there will be much chance to upgrade these setups much beyond their initial state.

Would anyone care to state simply (i.e. $800 Tualatin system) or elaborately (i.e. chip, motherboard, disk set-up, etc) how they might approach this situation given that the higher end capabilities (speech, digital conversion) aren't necessities but niceties and the extra $500 - $700 spent on 'B' is not an over riding factor?

[saphalline]

Well now, that sounds like a fun little 'problem' http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif. Interesting choice, the Tualatin, definitely the best budget solution for an SMP server, but a single-chip machine? I would think that a cheap Duron/T-bird would be first on your list in terms of price. Or do you think going Intel-only is best? Also, if this is to be your first home built system, perhaps a single-chip machine would be easier? Eh, up to you.

A
For Tualatins, nothing works better than the i815et chipset (or vendor upgraded i815ep chipsets), with support all the way up to 1.33GHz or whatever the max speed is. One of the best Tualatin mobos around is also fairly cheap - the Asus TUSL2-C.

For a Duron/Athlon cheapo system (just FYI) the KT266A chipset is probably the best all-around candidate, with support all the way through the latest Athlon XP's. You could even go for a cheap KT333 board and have DDR333 RAM support. Try the MSI KT3/Ultra (KT333 chipset) for starters.

B
Tyan and SuperMicro are the motherboard manufacturers that I consistently hear in the SMP croud. Probably means they have high quality mobos, but as I'm not exactly well-versed in this circle, I can't make any specific recommendations. Just make sure that if you go this route, get two CPUs with exactly the same model and stepping versions. It may, in fact, be a good idea to actually buy them both retail as this will ensure that no external tampering or idiot employee will sell you two different CPUs.

Hope this helps a little.

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"No, we do not gnaw on our kitty." - Dr. Evil

[This message has been edited by saphalline (edited 06-19-2002).]