These are good times

These are good times if you\'re in the market for a new PC.

Newer, faster and cheaper products are coming out all the time. Now you can get near-high-end for the price of middle-end.

Just imagine the kind of performance you\'d get with an Athlon 64 3000+ and a Geforce FX 5900XT for a relatively small amount of money. Amazing.

I still think computers today are slow, stupid, and way too expensive.  Compared to 10 years ago, yea $800 for a high-end system with all the frills is neat, but still...  that\'s 800 damn dollars for a bunch of headaches, installing, conflicts, errors, and waiting waiting waiting....

And $800+ for a decent laptop makes me roll my eyes.  Maybe I\'m a cheapass from the future.

I just invited a whole bunch of jokes from the mac whores didn\'t I? :surprised

Hmm, headaces? Sure it has the potential for it. But I put together my own PC from many different parts. It worked beautifully from the first time I ever pressed the on button.

When I finally get a job, Im going to upgrade this computer..

AMD 3200+, 512 DDR, some nice GPU like the Radeon 9800... *drooooool*

It is a great time to upgrade.  I\'m getting ready to switch out my motherboard, possibly upgrade the CPU, a LOT more ram (it\'s so cheap if you get one with a rebate deal going on).

Maybe even a new ATi video card as well... all for under 400 bucks.

Originally posted by Samwise
Geforce FX 5900XT

I think you MEANT radeon 9800 xt   The FX 5900XT is nvidias attempt to destroy the ATi\'s XT line...The nvidia line of XT cards are dumbed down versions of the normal cards.  So the 5900XT is slower than a normal 5900.  sucks dont it?

  If you DID mean an nvidia card, then the FX5950 would be what you meant

And if youre talking budget, the 9600XT (or pro) kills the 5900XT in DX9 performance.  I haven\'t looked at DX8 performance, but I\'m fairly sure the 9600XT kicks its ass in that department as well.

[§ôµÏG®ïñD]

Monday i shall have a Athlon Xp 3000+ woot.  Then i\'m gonna be getting a new GFX..

Computers, gotta love em

My pc has been updated a few times this month, new motherboard, more mem and now new cpu.

I updated last summer my PC with a new mobo and processor (AMD Athlon 2800+). Last week I bought 512ram, so I\'ve right now 1gb of ram in combo slots (or whatever you call it).

In July i\'ll buy a new HDD (the bigger, the better), a new graphic card and a DVD-burner, double layer if possible.

[§ôµÏG®ïñD]

Dual Channel...  I myself am running 1 gig of mem in dual channel mode. Although i haven\'t noticed much difference. But i didn\'t exactly benchmark before i added the extra Dimm.

Originally posted by -____-
I think you MEANT radeon 9800 xt   The FX 5900XT is nvidias attempt to destroy the ATi\'s XT line...The nvidia line of XT cards are dumbed down versions of the normal cards.  So the 5900XT is slower than a normal 5900.  sucks dont it?

  If you DID mean an nvidia card, then the FX5950 would be what you meant

And if youre talking budget, the 9600XT (or pro) kills the 5900XT in DX9 performance.  I haven\'t looked at DX8 performance, but I\'m fairly sure the 9600XT kicks its ass in that department as well.

Actually no. I meant the 5900XT because:
1) it\'s cheap
2) it\'s very fast for the money

Hence you\'d get a fast system for little money. In all the tests I\'ve seen the 5900XT is anywhere from 33% to 166% faster than the 9600XT except in the HL2 "beta" where they are on par (but since that game hasn\'t been released yet I won\'t talk more about that ). Therefore I don\'t see a single reason to pickup a 9600XT over a 5900XT. The 9600XT is a middle end card, where as the nVidia is basically a lower high-end card for the price of middle-end... it\'s not \'dumbed down\' either, just ever so slighty slower than a normal 5900. It\'s quite a bargain.

[videoholic]

Originally posted by Seed_Of_Evil
I updated last summer my PC with a new mobo and processor (AMD Athlon 2800+). Last week I bought 512ram, so I\'ve right now 1gb of ram in combo slots (or whatever you call it).

In July i\'ll buy a new HDD (the bigger, the better), a new graphic card and a DVD-burner, double layer if possible.

Nice solid graphics computer.  


I would like to build my next PC.  I just don\'t know enough about the motherboard/chip part.  What the best brand is.  Just how far can you upgrade the cip before you need a new mother board? etc..

I am really waiting for 64 bit to be more mainstream.  I just find it stupid to spend a bunch of money on a computer when next year they will be more mainstream.

Originally posted by §ôµÏG®ïñD
Dual Channel...  I myself am running 1 gig of mem in dual channel mode. Although i haven\'t noticed much difference. But i didn\'t exactly benchmark before i added the extra Dimm.

Well, that\'s it, dual channel, and I have noticed, actually, a great change in performance: the system is much more fast now. I\'ve 2 Kingston 512ddr 133mhz.

Originally posted by videoholic
I am really waiting for 64 bit to be more mainstream.  I just find it stupid to spend a bunch of money on a computer when next year they will be more mainstream.

That\'s just the problem with 64bit processors: expensive and hardly any diffrence with 32bit ones, apart from the problems they bring in standard OSs, even with 64bit editions.

[videoholic]

Well there is no difference right now for 64 bit, but once software is written for it I think it will be a huge difference.

[§ôµÏG®ïñD]

Ahh, there is vid, indeed there is.

With a 64bit CPU you don\'t have to split the instructions for longs and only have to split them into 2 instructions for longlongs...
Praticaly EVERY 3D GAME uses math calculations using LongLong ints and 64 bit floating point numbers.
Also the adressing space of a 64 bit processor is twice as big as the adressing space available on a 32 bit processor. what does this gives us? You don\'t have to swap pages as many times as you need to on a 32 bit processor.. which means less swapping because there\'s more space to hold memory pages which means lower time losses due to pagination.
Even though games aren\'t "prepared" for a 64 bit procesor, i can guarantee you that you\'ll get about 30% improvement in speed/loss of heat running quake3 on a 64 bit processor.


So how does this help a OS or application.. Even a single floating point calculation ocupies 64 bits. What the system does is that it breaks it down into the biggest chunk that it\'s possible to insert on a registry, it doesn\'t break it automatically into several 32 bit instructions, it queries the cpu to know how much adressing space is available

So.. if you\'re using a 64 bit processor, the CPU returns 64 bits as an answer to the OS query and the OS breaks down the instruction into several 64 bit chunks...

What winXP 64-bit edition does, is that it takes advantage of those 64 bits directly. the memory pages all have 64 bit adressing space (which means larger pagefiles) with 32 bit pagefiles on a 64 bit processor you have smaller pages but you can fit more into the memory (x2) without having to swap as much as a 32bit cpu.. which gives you aproximately 80% of a 64bit OS performance in what comes to swapping processes, which means a 64bit cpu will perform very well on a 32bit OS.

Well, that\'s it, dual channel, and I have noticed, actually, a great change in performance: the system is much more fast now. I\'ve 2 Kingston 512ddr 133mhz.

I\'m using 2 sticks of Kingston Mem, 1 pc2100 (266) 512meg and 1 pc3200 (400) 512meg. When you run 2 different speed chips they defualt to the lowest one. I\'m getting another 512meg pc3200 tomorrow, so i\'m giving the 266mhz chip to my gf.