Personal Computer Advancement

I am thinking about buying a new computer these days. My current computer was assembled around September of 2003, about 4.5 years ago. The major components are:

AMD Athlon XP 2500+

This CPU is based on the Barton core manufactured in bulk 0.13µm process. It has 54.3m transistors with 512KB L2 cache. Its rated clock speed is 1.83 GHz (166MHz front side bus (FSB) speed x11), runs on a supply voltage of 1.65V, and has a thermal rating of 68.3W. According to Wikipedia, this CPU was released on Feb. 10, 2003. It uses Socket A. This CPU's multiplier is unlocked; I overlocked it to equal 2800+ at 2 GHz by raising the multiplier to x12 and upping the voltage to 1.68V

ASUS A7N8X Deluxe

This ATX mother board uses the NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 north bridge and NVIDIA nForce2 MCP-T south bridge. It has 1 AGP slot and 5 PCI slots, it has onboard audio and LAN x 2.

CORSAIR XMS DDR 400 (PC 3200) SDRAM 256MB x 2
CORSAIR XMS DDR 400 (PC 3200) SDRAM 512MB x 1

This memory runs asyncronously at 200 MHz while the FSB runs at 166 MHz. There are 3 slots on the mother board and all 3 are taken. PC 3200 means it is rated at a maximum peak transfer rate of 3200 MB/s. The access timing is 2.5-3-3-8 accroding to CPU-Z. Each number refers to the number of cycles it takes to do certain operations in memory access: CAS latency (tCL), RAS to CAS delay (tRCD), RAS Precharge (tRP), and precharge delay (tRAS). where CAS and RAS means column address strobe (or select) and row address strobe. Given a fixed clock speed, the lower the timing, the better the performance. These XMS memory modules come with heat spreader for better cooling. These run on a voltage of 2.5V.

Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 Plus 160 GB
Western Digital Caviar 120 GB Special Edition

These hard drives run at 7200 RPM, uses parallel IDE in ultra ATA mode 5 for maximum 100MB/s transfer rate. They have 8MB Cache. From the manufacturer's specs the Seagate one has a power consumption of 12.5 W and the Western Digital is 12 W when seeking.

Tyan Radeon 9600 Pro

This video card uses ATI RV350 GPU manufactured in 0.13µm technology. This GPU is basically a cheaper version of the R300 by cutting functionality in half. It has 4 pixel pipelines and 2 vertex shaders. It uses AGP 8X interface, has 128 MB DDR RAM with a 128-bit bus width. The graphics processor core runs at 400 MHz and the memory runs at 300 MHz. It supports DirectX 9.0 and OpenGL 2.0.

ENERMAX Noisetaker 470W

This power supply has a knob that adjusts the exhuast fan speed to trade temperature with noise.

Components not included for this computer are the case, floppy drive, sound card, DVD drive, monitor, and uninterruptible power supply (UPS).

The cost for this system back then was:

Item	Price
AMD Athlon XP 2500+	$84.00
CPU heatsink and fan	$34.99
ASUS A7N8X Deluxe	$124.99
CORSAIR XMS DDR 400 (PC 3200) SDRAM 256MB x 2	$138.50
CORSAIR XMS DDR 400 (PC 3200) SDRAM 512MB x 1	$66.00
Tyan Radeon 9600 Pro	$154.95
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 Plus 160 GB	$109.56
Western Digital Caviar 120 GB Special Edition	$110.66
ENERMAX Noisetaker 470W	$78.99
NEC DVD Burner	$66.00
Total	$968.64

Now compare to the computer I am thinking about buying:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Black Edition

This dual-core CPU is manufactured in a 65nm SOI process. The code-name for the core is Brisbane. Its rated clock speed is 2.6GHz (FSB 200MHz x 13) and each core has 512 KB of L2 cache. The supply voltage is 1.25V and the power consumption is rated at 65W. This one was released on Sept. 25, 2007. The Black Edition is different from the other CPUs in that its multiplier is unlocked and the retail box doesn't come with a heat sink and fan assembly. Online resources indicate this CPU can be easily overclocked to 3GHz.

Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H

This microATX motherboard uses AMD's 690G chipset which has an integrated graphics processor (IGP) with HDMI and dual DVI output. It supports HyperTransport 2.0 at 1GHz. The motherboard is for AM2 socket CPUs and comes with integrated audio and gigabit ethernet. It has a PCI-express x16 slot, a PCI-express x4 slot, and 2 PCI slots. It supports 4 serial ATA devices at 3Gb/s max transfer rate. The actual maximum data rate is 300MB/s because it uses 8b/10b encoding so the actual data rate is 80% of the raw bit rate. SATA has 7 conductors in its cable: 1, 4, 7 are ground lines, 2 & 3 is a differential line for transmitting, and 5 & 6 is a differential line for receiving. No clock is sent on the wire so a clock and data recovery circuit is required on both ends. I am surprised that the bit rate is 3 Gb/s. But then they are using low voltage differential signaling (LVDS) with a differential peak-to-peak voltage of 0.5V.

CORSAIR XMS2 2GB DDR2 800 (PC 6400)

These are DDR2 SDRAM. They work the same way as DDR RAM but they run at a faster clock rate of 400 MHz. Like DDR RAM, the memory pumps out data both on the rising and falling edge of the clock. The latency for this memory is 4-4-4-12. The supply voltage for DDR2 is 1.8V so its power consumption should be about half if they run at the same clock frequency (power scales with Vdd squared). Since this memory runs at twice the frequency, the power consumption should be about the same. Looking at the latency number, this DDR2 RAM should perform faster than the one I currently have (24 cycles at 400 MHz vs. 16.5 cycles at 200 MHz).

Western Digital Second Generation Caviar SE16 750GB

This harddrive supports SATA 3Gb/s interface and has 16MB cache. It runs at 7200 RPM and the power consumption is 9.5 W in read/write mode.

SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 3850

This video card uses ATI's R670 GPU manufactured in 55nm technology. This is a slightly underclocked version of the high end 3870. Because of the smaller feature size technology, this card should be able to run with less cooling and so usually it comes as a single slot card, which is nice for my microATX system.

Enermax Liberty 620W

This power supply is ready to supply power to the newest graphics card with a 6pin and a 8pin PCI-express connectors. It has a 120mm fan exhuasting out and the power cables are modular so I don't need to clutter the inside with unused cables.

Zalman CNPS8700NT CPU Cooler

Given that I want to put the computer into a Thermaltake LANBOX Lite case, space is pretty constrained. The space above the CPU has a clearance height of about 100 mm before hitting the power supply. This CPU cooler has a dimension of 120 x 123 x 67(H) mm so it should work. It has a radial design with a 110mm fan in the middle of an array of heatsink fins. Its 4 wire power connector also allows automatic fan speed control that is available on newer mother boards. As a bonus it has blue LED so it will light up the inside of the case.

Thermaltake LANBOX Lite

This is a small form factor (SFF) case for microATX mother boards. It has clear window for the side panel for seeing what's inside. It has quiet fans in the front and in the base and room for two 5.25" external drives and 2 internal harddrives.

Right now the total cost for the new system would be about $940, which is about the same as when I built my current computer, but it would be way more powerful.