I need a faster 'puter

[pokerfan]

Last night I gave WinFF the task of converting a folder of FLVs (flash videos) into AVI files. It's only half finished.

[backwoodsbob]

1. I know people here will hate it but...

bought the kid a custom dell for x-mas last year for just over a grand and it rocks.Only thing he hates is I have the 27 inch flatscreen on mine and he has to deal with the puny little 21

[pokerfan]

2. Why would people hate that?

I don't understand. That you didn't give the kid the big monitor?

[Tektonik]

3. Dell

[pokerfan]

5. People will hate that you chose Dell?

:shrug:

[backwoodsbob]

7. there are some here that HATE dell

dont ask why..never figured it out myself

[Tektonik]

34. It's because of Michael Dell

I admit, I have a Dell, but it's lasted me four years, and I would not be surprised if it lasted another four years.

[Orrex]

35. We bought a Dell in 2000. It's not speedy, but it works just fine

We still use it with no complaints, even though we've upgraded to another system.

[ghostsofgiants]

4. I am almost finished building my new computer.

Just waiting on the video card, as my post office thread earlier would have indicated. It's bitchin'.

Intel Core 2 Quad CPU, 4GB DDR2 1066 RAM, GeForce 8800GT 512MB video card. The wait for the video card is unbearable, haha.

[Chan790]

6. Nice.

How much that set you back...had to be a pretty penny.

[ghostsofgiants]

10. Roughly $800 all told.

I'm using the hard drives and optical drives from my old computer, and my monitor and keyboard and mouse are practically brand new (though I'll likely get another monitor to add to it for Christmas).

[Deja Q]

19. What are the specs of your old hard drive?

By getting a SATA II drive (3GB bandwidth) you might see a huge performance jump... and be able to enable certain features in Vista (likely XP too) that really speed up disk access...

Look for the Soyo Topaz Z monitor at Officemax - 24", sells for $399 but is almost always on sale for $299 - but I'd pay $399 anyway, given the size AND color quality. (Only S-IPV monitors are better (think higher end Dell or Apple, Dell being the lesser expensive model), and they cost TWICE as much for a smaller size screen might I add...)

[ghostsofgiants]

23. I have an old 200GB IDE drive (stores all my music and movies), and a 120GB SATA drive (my C drive).

Probably gonna add a 1TB SATAII at some point in the near future.

And I'll keep that in mind about the monitor. I was leaning towards an LG 24" because I'm loving my LG 20" right now.

[Deja Q]

30. If possible, do some side-by-side comparisons of both monitors.

LG is not a bad brand, but I do know Soyo uses Benq brand panels and repackages them in a no-frills case. I ain't complainin'. :D

You might be better off, performance-wise, using a RAID 0 with two 500GB drives, or rather better a RAID 5 with three 500GB drives... I don't use RAID (a decent SATA controller is 500 dollars; I thought SCSI was overpriced...) but I do use separate physical drives and manually make redundant copies...

Definitely add a hard drive and install the OS onto it; don't bother with those ancient drives. PATA (your 200GB) is old-school and I doubt the 120GB SATA drive is SATA-II with NCQ and the other juicy technologies...

[ghostsofgiants]

32. Word.

That requires money though, so all in due time.

[pokerfan]

11. Yeah, I saw that

What motherboard did you go with?

Mine is a six year old Gateway built around an Intel (Monterrey) Motherboard (Intel® 850 Chipset). The drive is UATA which I'm upgrading to SATA. And I want to add another 1GB of RDRAM while I can still find it.

Other than being slow on some tasks, it still does everything I need it to do.

[ghostsofgiants]

13. Asus P5Q Pro.

Pretty fresh setup if I do say so myself.

[pokerfan]

16. Sweet (n/t)

[Deja Q]

14. Nice

My system is slightly different:

Q6600 CPU (o/c to 3.2GHz, no easy task but at least does not need to be water-cooled)
8GB DDR2 800 RAM (1:1 RAM/FSB ratio for optimal performance)
nVidia GeForce 8800GTX (640MB)

Definitely future-proof at this point. In theory, :rofl:

[ghostsofgiants]

15. Yeah, the Q6600 is what I have. Is it worth the effort to overclock?

I have a bigass heatpipe CPU cooler (Thermalright ULTRA120) so I can definitely handle the temp I think.

[Deja Q]

27. That heat sink puts my Zalman 9700 in its place, and the 9700 is a great model... but I digress:

YES. It is worth it to overclock, if you know what you're doing.

The Q6600 stock FSB is 266MHz. Going to 333MHz (3.0GHz), you very probably won't need to alter ANY voltages - or if you do, only the CPU voltage by 0.3v at worst - more often than not, that isn't necessary to do. And you'll see a BIG difference.

Going to 400MHz, which yields results that can only be beaten by 8 core Xeon chips, requires higher quality RAM (which is specifically rated to do 800MHz, preferably at 4-4-4-12 timings at 2.1V -- Corsair has a terrific 4GB kit (2x2gb) that complies to these specs and is tested/certified to run at 2.1v), and possibly overvolting the north and south bridges ((G)MCH, FSB) too. Given I am using ALL FOUR RAM slots, I had to add .2 to both (G)MCH and FSB -- just about every consumer mobo out there is optimized for only TWO slots being used, not all four... I was lucky, when o/c'ing at 333MHz, I didn't need to up the voltage for the bridges...

Of course, if you do use more than 333MHz, you'll want to down the clock multiplier too. (from 9 to 8, yielding 3.2GHz instead of 3.6, which is too much for ANY air cooler to handle.)

And don't try anything above 400 AT ALL. (Some do, but I don't want to reduce the lifespan of the CPU...)

You can overclock the FSB by 50% and not have ANY problems; even upping the voltage to 1.4V (stock voltage is 1.26 if I recall) won't significantly drop its lifespan, but I wouldn't go any higher at all. Having read up, anything above 1.45v will start to adversely affect the CPU over time (or 1.5v with water-cooling).

Google is your friend here; do a search for "Q6600 400MHz benchmark", or just "Q6600 400MHz" for a glut of information. Take your time, do any overvolting SLOWLY via small upward increments, and you'll be fine.

YMMV, of course. I've done overclocking for years and even then I don't take big risks.


Oh, look for Prime95, PC Wizard 2008, Everest Ultimate, CoreTemp, and CPU-Z for some decent benchmark utils, heat monitors, and stress testers. :D



Note - I've had Prime95 (64-bit) running 5 hours solid with my configuration -- a good sign as, before upping the CPU to 1.40 from 1.38v, I could get it to freeze after 3 hours, and I've played Flight Simulator a couple times too (and even with Prime95, it holds its own FPS immensely well). At full load, I don't get above 60 degrees on any core, and if I do hit 60 it often goes back down to 59 or 58 fairly quickly. Real life usage won't torture the computer like how Prime95 does. (Look for v25, it will test all 4 cores at once. :D )

[wain]

20. Are you running Vista or XP?

XP will only recognize 3gig of your 4.

You're my hero building your own machine. That's the beauty of the PC - you can role your own - not like the MAC (although I have a mini in my network).

Enjoy!

[ghostsofgiants]

24. Yeah, I know. I'll probably upgrade to Vista, but I have XP right now.

I got the RAM in a package, two sticks of 2GB each.

And I'm gonna dual boot with a hacked OSX.

[wain]

29. beauty!

I've got four in a couple of mine for the same reason, although I'll probably load Vista on the MAc using Parallels.

[ghostsofgiants]

31. Actually I just read up on it and it's not so much an XP issue as a 32-bit issue.

So I could just install Windows XP 64-bit if I don't feel compelled to go to Vista. Win!

[democracyindanger]

8. Are you using regular electricity?

Maybe that's the problem. Call the power company and asked to get hooked up with the premium stuff.

[backwoodsbob]

9. exactly

we had all kinds of stuff going bad till we got hooked up to the premium juice.

[pokerfan]

12. Is that like upgrading to digital cable?

[backwoodsbob]

17. even better

if you screw up and stick your finger in the light socket it gives twice the shivers....good stuff

[Chan790]

18. more like...

premium-pricing for the organic free-range tap water. Yeah it costs more, but you can feel secure about the ethics of your water-supply decision.

[democracyindanger]

21. It's even better

If you can't wait for the power company to switch you over, you can get 10000kW jugs of premium electricity at Costco and put it in your CPU tank yourself.

[jobycom]

22. I found a great way to speed up my old computer.

Toss it off a fourth floor roof. It'll be going bofo fast just before it hits.

[Chan790]

25. Actually...

it'll reach a terminal velocity rather quickly...so it'll be just as fast from the 20th floor or the 3rd.

[ghostsofgiants]

26. But it has longer up time from the 20th floor.

[pokerfan]

28. Not quite that quickly

I guessing terminal velocity has to be at least 120mph. Takes at least five seconds to reach that velocity. Five seconds @ an average velocity of 60mph (90 ft/s) is about 450 feet.

[jobycom]

33. Nah, that's wrong.

If you drop a Microsoft system from the twentieth floor, Windows will lock up and leave the whole damn thing frozen in mid air around the tenth floor.

[Orrex]

36. No sex thread!

Oops--misunderstood the subject line. Sorry!