verso Posted December 28, 2004 Share Posted December 28, 2004 Chris, Ah! Ok now this makes sense. I remember when I was looking at RAM I asked my friend what the difference was between PC2700 and PC3200. He told me that PC2700 would be fine and purchasing PC3200 would be a waste. I now know why! My motherboard only supports up to 333MHz, right? Thanks for clearing that up for me! Well, I love my computer! Heh. It may not be the best but it's pretty sweet. Specs: ANTEC Performance Plus Metallic Gray File Server Case with the side window (I know, everyone has these. Heh.) AMD Athlon XP 2700+ (2.17GHz) 1GB RAM (two sticks of Crucial 512MB) ASUS A7V8X-X motherboard NVIDIA GeForce FX5900XT video card Turtle Beach/Voyetra 'Santa Cruz' sound card Western Digital 80GB 72000RPM HD Samsung CDRW/DVD combo drive Mitsumi 3 1/2 Floppy I replaced the fans that came with the case though, and bought some quieter ones. Cooler Master ones that light up. Heh. Really I was only looking for fans that could generate enough air flow as the original fans and be a little quieter - but they light up orange too, so what the hell? Heh. My monitor is a Samsung SyncMaster 172X LCD, not bad either. And now with my new Klipsch ProMedia 2.1's ! I wish I never had to leave my computer, lol! What are the specs of your computer? - Steven Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colin Posted December 28, 2004 Share Posted December 28, 2004 Well, sorta, but NOT quite. What he probably meant was that the price premium for the slight difference in processor clock and OVERALL performance was NOT worth it NOT economically practical. Who is it, PC World? Has a new THROUGHPUT speed test, which shows that for real world processing applications, all this fancy stuff does NOT make as much difference as one would suppose. Machines have to cost as much as three to six times more for significant increases in actual performance! But hey, what the hell of I know. My machine was 200 bucks and in three years, I will have to get another one. (Lets see, recordable DVD for movies and storage) Sounds like a nice machine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
illthreat Posted December 28, 2004 Share Posted December 28, 2004 Nice system! Mine is very similar: XP 2700+, 1GB DDR 2700 (kingston, but getting some OCZ) Asus A7N8X Deluxe MB (i love asus mobo) NVidia BFG 6800 GT OC 420MHz/1.20GHz (had a NVidia 4800Ti before this) + with Arctic Cooler NV5 Silencer Maxtor 80GB & Maxtor 160GB, 7200rpm, 8mb cache Asus/Lite On Optical Drives Glad I could help you out! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
illthreat Posted December 28, 2004 Share Posted December 28, 2004 Colin, Check out the AMD 939 chipset. The 3500 is the best bang for buck right now. also have a look at Lite On's 1663 @ http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=27-106-960&depa=1 that drive and combo with 100 blank dvd bundle they have. Great buy @ $100 (drive and 100 blank dvd) take care, chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
verso Posted December 28, 2004 Share Posted December 28, 2004 Chris, Not bad! BFG NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT! That's a beast! Haha. Not too shabby! - Steven Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psg Posted December 28, 2004 Share Posted December 28, 2004 ---------------- On 12/22/2004 9:31:22 AM Colin wrote: pig, don't believe me, go to the Intel site, clock speed does increase processing THROUGHPUT almost expontentially! ---------------- I'll assume that pig is a typo, even though the letters "s" and "i" are not close to eachother on the keyboard. Colin, I could spend all day on intel.com looking for what you say exists. Provide a URL and I'll read it... Otherwise, don't take it personally. A CPU does so many instructions per second. Doubling that speed makes it do twice as many instructions per second (if data can be fed quickly enough) and no more than that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
illthreat Posted December 28, 2004 Share Posted December 28, 2004 psg, I believe he is referring to throughput. Best Regards, Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psg Posted December 28, 2004 Share Posted December 28, 2004 ---------------- On 12/28/2004 4:21:41 PM illthreat wrote: psg, I believe he is referring to throughput. Best Regards, Chris ---------------- Meaning what when talking about a computer? The quantity of data processed per second? Then I would stand by what I said since that is proportionnal to instructions per second. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WMcD Posted December 28, 2004 Share Posted December 28, 2004 Thanks for your input Verso. I think we're answering some theoretical issues which are technically correct, and economically all wrong. My experience has been with a couple of computers at the office. They're about five years old or more from the early days of Win 98. More and more software was loaded, memory hogs, etc. There was a bog down. Then there was an issue of adding more memory, bigger drives, etc. to "solve" the problems which seemed to come from nowhere. Then what to do to upgrade to allow a wireless network. And that is better with XP. Of course all these upgrades are insane considering that you can get a current machine for half the cost of the "upgrades". My current thought is that you buy something which is well above mid grade. Hold on to it for three or four years and don't tack on upgrades unless absolutely mission critical. Take some thought about what it will take to transfer all data onto a new machine. It is inevitable. Gil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
verso Posted December 28, 2004 Share Posted December 28, 2004 Hey Gil! Well, I don't think that economically they are 'all wrong'. Think about it, let's say I buy a new computer from DELL for about $900. In three years I need a new one, another $900 - that's $1,800 in six years. But, this computer I have here is custom built. It cost me about $900 and is far better than any $900 DELL. Heh. But that isn't the point. In about three years or so from now it may need to be upgraded, some components will not need to be upgraded and some components will. I'll end up spending maybe $300. That's not bad, considering I just saved about $600. - Steven Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
illthreat Posted December 28, 2004 Share Posted December 28, 2004 exactly like stephen said. computers now a days aren't as bad as they were 6 years ago. upgrading is much more bareable these days. just have to start with something worthwhile. I built this current machine 22 months ago. And only upgraded to another 160GB hard disk and better graphics card (didn't "need" it). the current trend seems to be about 3 years or better. But these current machines will be fine for the avg. person for years more than that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MAXSTONE44 Posted January 4, 2005 Share Posted January 4, 2005 RAM makes a huge difference but so do hard drives. RAM helps you run more programs at once better and so does the processor. I noticed a HUGE and I mean HUGE difference when I upgraded my hard drive from ATA100 to SATA150, even without a RAID configuration. If your motherboard does not support SATA then just upgrade the RAM as a bigger size hard drive DOES NOT mean better performance unless the RPM and or cache is higher. I would recommend at least 512MB of DDR RAM (double data rate). SDRAM (single data rate) is crap compared to DDR RAM. If your motherboard supports it, get 2 sticks of 256MB of RAM and run them in dual channel mode. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ignorance_is_not_bliss Posted January 6, 2005 Share Posted January 6, 2005 breaking up each question here... ---------------- On 12/8/2004 2:27:10 AM wheelman wrote: I see that always upgrading the ram is a wise choice. ----------------- Yes, RAM upgrades are always helpful, but please realize random access memory is akin to short term memory... if you utilize many programs at one time, or have several running in the background while you work on whatever, the more RAM will be used. the biggest difference is "speed" is from 128 to 256... everything above that, ie. 384, 512, etc; improves performance, but unless you have a server, there's no real point beyond 512, unless this is a gaming puter, then all bets are off. ----------------------- What about the hard drive? What is the benefit of this? ----------------------- The hard drive is storage space. Some claim the more you have, the better off you are. Others, like myself, know how to be a "packrat," with the use of self extracting zip files and folders, deleting unnecessary programs, and streamlining the usage of the space available, for the puter's usage. One point of interest to note is the speed of your HD. They make HD's with a speed of 5,400, 6,900, 7,800, 10,500, and faster...the speed at which your computer retreives data from the hard drive is determined by 2 things... virtual memory available(RAM) and HD speed. You might want to take that into consideration, prior to buying a new HD. -------------------------- Also if I switch to a Macintosh will I beable to wiz right through everything? Will it be pretty much self explanitory being accustomed to a pc? -------------------------- Now we're comparing apples to ibm's, in a sense... Mac's have a completely different set-up from your average Dell, Hp, or other system, in that Mac's are very particular about the types of components usable once you crack the case. Example: Compaq's were a pain in the floppy, because if you wanted to upgrade RAM, you had to replace BOTH ram chips at one time; or if you wanted to upgrade the sound card, you had to upgrade to a PCI slot sound catrd, due to the incompatability of regular sound cards with chipset. Now on a lighter note, I see people speaking of various upgrades, and though the NVidia video card seems to be many folks choice, I would disagree, if only that I fell in love with Radeon cards about 3 years ago, and my dual output 128Mb onboard RAM Radeon 9600 hasn't let me down yet. when it does, I'll pay the extra money to get the new Radeon card. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
illthreat Posted January 6, 2005 Share Posted January 6, 2005 the ati vs. nvidia war will rage on for quite a while. it's personal preferance. chev. / ford toyota / honda biwire / non biwire ati / nvidia etc... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ignorance_is_not_bliss Posted January 6, 2005 Share Posted January 6, 2005 so very true. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colin Posted January 6, 2005 Share Posted January 6, 2005 Sorry, I could not finds the site, thought it was Intel, where you input your processor and its speed and it shows the actual multiple in performance between the two, maybe it is Dellanyway, Microsoft also has a page that shows that for SIMPLE Office and Net browsing more than 384MB RAM has diminishing marginal utility it cost more to get less performance. That doesnt matter as much these days, since I notice that Sams Club has new PCs with 512MB RAM and the faster 60-80GB drives for about $1K. More than I usually spend, but pretty typical for a home PC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
verso Posted January 6, 2005 Share Posted January 6, 2005 "RAM makes a huge difference but so do hard drives. RAM helps you run more programs at once better and so does the processor." What it comes down to is that, really all of the components in a computer are important. Heh. But RAM is especially important, in my opinion. "I noticed a HUGE and I mean HUGE difference when I upgraded my hard drive from ATA100 to SATA150, even without a RAID configuration." SATA drives kick ***. Heh. "If your motherboard supports it, get 2 sticks of 256MB of RAM and run them in dual channel mode." I second that. But even if your motherboard does not support a 'dual channel' mode, don't worry about it. Because running two sticks of the same RAM in 'dual channel' mode will only offer maybe a 5% increase in performance at best. Or so I'm told. "Others, like myself, know how to be a "packrat," with the use of self extracting zip files and folders, deleting unnecessary programs, and streamlining the usage of the space available, for the puter's usage." I agree, well I wouldn't consider myself a 'packrat' but no one really needs a 250GB hard drive, an 80GB hard drive is sufficient, in my opinion. "the ati vs. nvidia war will rage on for quite a while." I'm an NVIDIA man, myself. Heh. - Steven Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JJkizak Posted January 14, 2005 Share Posted January 14, 2005 Ram is only one of the important things in the chain. Processor speed, hard drive speed, ram speed, amount of ram, SATA drives, DMA settings, SCSI drives, network speeds, etc. I do video editing with a P-4 3.4meg 800 with 2 gig of ram on an Intel 875 board. Matrox Parhelia 128meg video card with 4 outputs, three monitors and one tv out. Video rendering is the most demanding operation you can have on a computer and I wish I had dual processors with 8 gig of ram. Some video editors use 16 gig of ram with the Dual Supermicro boards. Rolling titles, still pictures, and tricky composites suck up ram so fast that a lot of the complex areas of the timeline have to be separately prerendered to avi and re-inserted into the timeline so the total render has enough available ram to complete. The processor is going nuts during the render and often heats to the limit, even with a super fan. Overclocking would melt the processor unless liquid nitrogen was used. (Kits are available by the way) Keep in mind that Windows XP paging file only allows 4 gig of ram, Win2K up to 32 gig. Programs running in the background also suck up ram and can be viewed by hitting Ctrl-Alt-Del in the Task manager and you can delete programs that are not being used if you know what they are. A reboot will bring everything back to normal. I will sometimes delete as many as 10 programs in the task manager to free up memory including printer spooling, dual monitor programs (22 megs of ram), Shuttle pro, some sound card stuff, etc. My Sony Vegas editor will open up with about 350 meg of memory usuage on a 1.5 hr clip, then as the render progresses hit about 1.4 gig at the half way point then max out about 2gig very quickly. This is with hyperthreading also. One other thing to mention that with the rapidly oncomming HDV stuff some people are going to 4-stack SCSI raids (1 terabyte) that will transfer a full 160 gigs faster than an eye blink. JJK Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colin Posted January 14, 2005 Share Posted January 14, 2005 With two IE browser sessions and one Word application, my old and cheap PC with 384MB RAM is crankingat 0 to 2% CPU usage! XP pages only 4 gigs, but Win2K up to 32 gig? I thought 2K was the kernel for XP? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JJkizak Posted January 14, 2005 Share Posted January 14, 2005 Yes, XP is 4 gig total and Win2K has a special download update to boost it to 32 gig. You end up typing something into the boot section to get it going. I believe it is available on the Supermicro website. JJK Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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