Old Thrashbarg wrote:

and don't cheap out by buying low end ram when 1866 and above makes these apu-s fly.

What does it matter? It's not going to be a gaming system, it just needs to run statistics software. Going with fancy ram to max out the graphics performance is a waste of money on an already tight budget.

The ram is cheap and the gpu takes up majority of the bandwidth so it helps to max that area out to help with the cpu. I learned that lesson with my E350 and A8 3530mx systems. At first one would think that it wouldn't make a difference until one considers the impact the gpu has on the total available bandwidth.

Sure, if there's only a few bucks difference between two sets of RAM, and there's enough room in the budget, you may as well go for the faster one... but some of the higher-end RAM can get a bit pricey, and when you only have $500 to work with, every dollar counts.

The thing to keep in mind here, is that the specs for the software include support for such architectures as the Motorola 68k-series and SGI MIPS. Granted, I wouldn't expect it to be particularly pleasant on such machines, but that's at least a good indicator that it'll be pretty damn fast even on the shittiest system you could slap together nowadays. It does appear to be multithreaded, so there is merit to going with a quad core... but I don't think a few percent performance hit from shared graphics memory would even be noticeable. Especially considering that it isn't doing any intense 3D work, so there's only going to be minimal traffic through the video memory anyhow.

Fantastic replies thank you everyone.

Someone mentioned that the relevant software runs on linux and yes that's correct, and in fact it's probably targeted more at that platform. But I have limited linux knowledge and my brother has none at all, so using it would be way more trouble than it's worth.

So what about something like this?

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI … ht_12248wt_1140

The price is right and it doesn't include any un-required extras like a fancy GPU, etc. I've asked the seller for more details about the motherboard, but otherwise it sounds OK.

It comes with FreeDOS?! But that's fine, I have access to Windows installations through my work.

This is a nice machine, but I think that for the same money you can get more if you build one yourself!

That's really not that great of a deal... it wouldn't be too hard to build something better for about the same price. Those Geforce 6150 motherboards are pretty far outdated and are also prone to failure from bad solder joints. You'd also probably need to count in the cost of a new power supply... they don't mention what PSUs they use, so it's probably some cheap piece of shit.

You may want to look around and see if you can find a refurb/off-lease workstation system. There are quite a few HP xw-series and Dell Precisions showing up on the second-hand market now... I have a Dell Precision T7400 that I got for around $350 (with a 500GB HD and a Vista Ultimate COA), plus another $100 or so for parts from eBay to upgrade it to dual quad-cores and 4GB RAM.

Really surprised to see so much AMD CPU love here.
Compare that to this for example Toms Hardware - Best Gaming CPUs ft Money: Oct 2012
But I also see AMD released something new in November...

F2bnp wrote:

This is a nice machine, but I think that for the same money you can get more if you build one yourself!

I don't have much spare time, so if I can get away with not having to build it from scratch then I will.

Also my favorite computer stores don't seem to be selling hardware of this vintage anymore, so I'd have to mess around looking for each bit on eBay, etc. More time required.

@Old Thrashbarg - I'll have to think about that motherboard issue, I agree with the sentiment here that having a quality motherboard is important.

I'm less concerned about the PSU, I've never had a problem myself and I've only ever used generic rubbish.

gerwin wrote:

Really surprised to see so much AMD CPU love here.
Compare that to this for example Toms Hardware - Best Gaming CPUs ft Money: Oct 2012
But I also see AMD released something new in November...

Yes I read it but I already had an AMD system with a RAID array built so I decided to go for the Vishera Core 8350 CPU and Gigabyte Mobo.

I just received these parts from Newegg this afternoon and started building the machine.

For me it was hard due to looking hard at the newest Intel Core CPU's but in the end it was about not having to recreate the RAID Zero array and then redownloading all of my Steam games 😉

@BadMofo, have you checked out Newegg yet and see if the pricing is right with shipping ?

Maybe even a mid-range Core i5 would work but the pricing maybe too high.

Makes sense, I also bought a bunch of new hardware in 2011, both for the company and myself. Now I am still adding the last of these older model motherboards and laptops, it makes life so much easier when the software is already pre-configured.

Regarding motherboards, I find it odd that during the rise of 64-bit software (enlarged addressing) they often come equipped with only two memory slots.

edit:typo

gerwin wrote:

Regarding motherboards, I find it odd that during the rise of 64-bit software (enlarged addressing) they often come equipped with only two memory slots.

That seems to be more common on most/many of the uATX form factor boards, I only purchase ATX or eATX form factor boards for myself and then carefully select the uATX models that support 4 DIMM slots for my brother as he has a LANbox which only supports this size board.

You can find them in uATX but you pay more for this added feature, generally 😉

Sure, boards may still only have two memory slots, but remember also that DIMM capacities have grown. You can get more memory with two sticks of DDR3 than you could with four sticks of DDR2.

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

Sure, boards may still only have two memory slots, but remember also that DIMM capacities have grown. You can get more memory with two sticks of DDR3 than you could with four sticks of DDR2.

But if one of the memory slots gets broken, then you're basically screwed. I always try to get motherboards with at least 3 separate banks of memory (or 2 banks of dual channel memory, so 4 slots in total in that case).

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

Sure, if there's only a few bucks difference between two sets of RAM, and there's enough room in the budget, you may as well go for the faster one... but some of the higher-end RAM can get a bit pricey, and when you only have $500 to work with, every dollar counts.

The thing to keep in mind here, is that the specs for the software include support for such architectures as the Motorola 68k-series and SGI MIPS. Granted, I wouldn't expect it to be particularly pleasant on such machines, but that's at least a good indicator that it'll be pretty damn fast even on the shittiest system you could slap together nowadays. It does appear to be multithreaded, so there is merit to going with a quad core... but I don't think a few percent performance hit from shared graphics memory would even be noticeable. Especially considering that it isn't doing any intense 3D work, so there's only going to be minimal traffic through the video memory anyhow.

Those days are long gone and software in general now days has so much redundant code it is a wonder that hardware can even keep pace. We all remember the days of Win98 and Win2k that easily managed to run ones daily needs with barely anything more than just 32mb of ram but now days one easily needs 8GB just to be keep with current titles. As for cost I am willing and have cut corners such as buying used power supplies or old cases (not the crappy ones). I try not to keep up with the rich kids and keep my build costs low.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

Earlier this year I put together a very cheap system based on an 2.4Ghz Celeron G530 Sandy bridge. I think at that time it was t […]
Show full quote

Earlier this year I put together a very cheap system based on an 2.4Ghz Celeron G530 Sandy bridge. I think at that time it was the cheapest dual core CPU intel made. I think I paid $40 for it, and it kicks the crap out of my old Core2 system. Low heat and fan noise are very high up on my priority list. I can't remember the exact prices of the entire build, but it was dirt cheap:

$40 for CPU
$40 for microATX Gigabyte motherboard (fully OSX86 compatible)
$25 for RAM
$20 for GeForce 210
$40 for 500mb HDD

I don't think I have been this satisfied with a desktop build in years. I used to be a big spender, but now I'm convinced the trailing edge is the way to go.

Hhhhmmmm seems you got a pretty good deal on hardware the only thing that really lacks in my OPINION is the gpu.

Those days are long gone and software in general now days has so much redundant code it is a wonder that hardware can even keep pace. We all remember the days of Win98 and Win2k that easily managed to run ones daily needs with barely anything more than just 32mb of ram but now days one easily needs 8GB just to be keep with current titles. As for cost I am willing and have cut corners such as buying used power supplies or old cases (not the crappy ones). I try not to keep up with the rich kids and keep my build costs low.

What the fuck are you talking about? I'm guessing you're trying to argue about... something, but it doesn't seem to be in any way related to the post you quoted. 🤣

cdoublejj wrote:

Hhhhmmmm seems you got a pretty good deal on hardware the only thing that really lacks in my OPINION is the gpu.

I admit I'm not into modern PC games, so fast graphics is not a priority. I just needed something cheap (without fans) that was supported by OSX86. Not to mention I use a Flex ATX case, which requires a low profile graphics adapter. I also use a 300W power supply...so I don't want to push my luck.

I don't think that getting a motherboard with just 2 DIMM slots is a big deal. Even if you buy a cutting edge system, but the time you need 4 DIMM slots your system will be horribly obsolete anyway.

I use SPSS, but here is the recipe:

LOTS of RAM and maximum GHz on a 64bit multicore, that is it.

So I got my 8-Core FX-8350 and Gigabyte mobo and installed it into my gaming rig.

After Win 7 redected all the devices and I rebooted everything went great.

I noticed a bit of an improvement in the desktop response, not a whole lot but just feels snappier, of course this is probably subjective 😉

I then ran the Win 7 Experience test and notcied all the numbers going up, the memory went from a 7.2 to 7.5

I then ran CPUz and noticed something odd, I installed the DIMM's into the incorrect slots and thus placed the board into single channel mode.

After powering down and installed correctly things improved again, this time to 7.9 on the memory sub-system test.

This seems to indicate a couple of things, inprovement on the memory controller and that the new Hypertransport 3.0 runs faster too which of course helps with memory transfer rates.

This was tested using DDR3-1600 memory modules from Corsair, these modules were in the older mobo so I didn't get any newer/faster memory modules.

So if you end up getting one of the newer AMD AM3+ motherboards you should see some improvement over the older chipsets as one would expect.