Personal computing discussed

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Casper
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Fri Jan 25, 2002 7:55 am

hi... im bying a new computer and becouse of my limited buget im wonder what is better to bye.. a computer with a dual procesor od scsi hard drives ?? for now ive desided to get the matrox G550 and a Intel procesor (1.5 or better) with 512 mb (sdram or ddrram, any opinions on that considering the limited bugget). i dont work any 3D programs and dont play much games :wink: ... i need a computer for desktop publishing and graphic design.. so any sugestions are welcome
 
Bruce
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Fri Jan 25, 2002 9:55 am

Based on your criteria: SCSI. I doubt you can get an SMP Intel solution at at greater than 1.5GHz. Or have I misread your post?

As a former SCSI bigot I'd suggest you're better off with SMP than SCSI if you're on a budget.

Bruce
 
DIREWOLF75
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Fri Jan 25, 2002 10:10 am

SCSI will nearly always give you a bigger raise in speed than dual CPUs simply because HDDs are nearly always the slowest part of a given system.

From what you say you are going to work with, neither sounds likely to benefit as much as they cost.

Why Intel btw? Only thing Intel has going for them is better thermal characteristics/protection(P3/P3 and P4).
I would say get an Athlon XP 2000 with a Soltek/ECS/Asus/Iwill motherboard and some HIGH quality RAM and save yourself alot of money.

Personally i would get SCSI if i could, but getting that would cost as much as a whole new system will cost for me. So i guess i have to just get myself the one of the new IBM GXP 120 speedwonder HDD. =)


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: DIREWOLF75 on 2002-01-25 09:11 ]</font>
 
Bruce
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Fri Jan 25, 2002 11:04 am

SCSI will nearly always give you a bigger raise in speed than dual CPUs simply because HDDs are nearly always the slowest part of a given system.


Agree - but not at equivalent price. Factor in a good controller and 10k RPM drives and you're talking big money.

Bruce
 
Casper
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Fri Jan 25, 2002 11:08 am

thanks for the replys :wink:
firs ... at work we got 2 new systems with atlon procesors and Ultra ATA 100 HD ... and when working with a larger files (lika 100mb) tha system realy sucks ;(
ive got Pentium3 800mhz wirh 512 sdram, 2 8.5 scsi hd and a matrox G450 and the system work way better that the atlons (1.2GHz)which have 512 ram matroh G550 ... i know about the heating problem athlon has.. and where i leave its a problem getting the right cooler for the athlon so i figured its better to pay a little more for a reliable procesor...
 
nrobison
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Fri Jan 25, 2002 11:44 am

Casper,
The Matrox card probably has more to do with your more pleasurable experience at home than at work than the processor. Because the "feel" (as in responsiveness) of your computer is of primary importance in graphics work (why Macs, with their large cache, still exist?) both SCSI and multiple processors are valuable. If you buy 1.2 or so Ghz AMD processors then high-end heating is not an issue, and you can have BOTH SCSI and 2 cpus for the price of one or the other in an Intel machine...and I fear you would be very disappointed if you spent a month's pay on a Xeon dual box.
Schiller: "Against human stupidity even the gods contend in vain"
Nietzsche: "Against BOREDOM even the gods content in vain"
 
Casper
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Sun Jan 27, 2002 3:48 pm

hi :wink:
thanks again... ofcourese I'd like to get a faster procesor for less money, so I guess Ill get AMD Athlon procesor, the heating problem that thay have was worrying me, and that the better AMD sistems are realy slow here with larger files, othervise ... when working with smaller files the AMD sistem is great .. could it be that I have SCSI discs on my PC and the AMD sistems here have AMA 100 (7200 rpm I think .. maybe 5400rpm ???)
anyway.. nrobison.. what do you think about MACs ??? after all they are more used in graphics desing than PCs .., do dthay realy worht their money ?? and are they that much more stable ?? btw anyone here do graphic design (for some advertising agency) ??
 
DIREWOLF75
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Sun Jan 27, 2002 4:52 pm

Macs are DEFINETLY more stable than any windows based PC.

I can nearly guarantee that the reason your Athlon system at work feels slower is due to slower HDDs, if those HDDs are 5400rpm then they really SUCK and shouldn´t be there at all. Perhaps you should suggest a RAID system for those HDDS at work? That would at least speed it up some.

If you will be getting an Athlon get the lowest grade XP, that will give you a little less heat.
You would NOT however get less heat if you bought a Intel P4 system, they actually produce more heat, and when they overheat they simply clockthrottle until cool enough, giving you poor performance meanwhile.
 
VooBass
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Sun Jan 27, 2002 7:34 pm

DIREWOLF75 Re: Macs are DEFINETLY more stable than any windows based PC.

In my experience over the last 8 years in a variety of print/design studios and as an owner of numerous Macs, including G4s, and PCs, I would say the exact opposite is true. PCs have been a Godsend in recent years and Macs continue to disappoint. Given that OS9 is now such a relic how could one expect stability anyways (and running Photoshop, XPress and Illustrator in Classic mode in OS10.1 is too painfully slow to be practical. And amazingly, the new XPress 5 doesn't even support OSX. Insane) Due to this and many other disappointments with Macs we have committed to never again buying another Mac.
 
nrobison
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Mon Jan 28, 2002 12:28 pm

Ach. Another MAC/PC slapstick which I'm sorry to have started. I am an engineer, my wife a professional designer. We've both used each platform and concede affection for each in different areas. A dual AMD system will feel MUCH better than the more expensive G4 for graphics work. Period. The much greater capacity of the x86 system to, well, compute outweighs some subtleties of larger packet size in the real world of futzing with photos, curved vectors, and obscure fonts. Thanks for the specific question. Good luck.
Schiller: "Against human stupidity even the gods contend in vain"

Nietzsche: "Against BOREDOM even the gods content in vain"
 
Casper
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Tue Jan 29, 2002 6:01 am

:wink:
hey ... what do you think about Intel Itanium procesors ... are they better than Pentium$ procesors ?? can they work on a i845 motherboard ?? :wink:
 
DIREWOLF75
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Tue Jan 29, 2002 9:30 am

LOL! Casper.
 
Casper
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Tue Jan 29, 2002 11:01 am

I dont know what is Intel Itanium ...
and I dont know much about hardwere .. im just a stupid designer ;-Pp
 
nrobison
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Tue Jan 29, 2002 3:06 pm

http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=45000183 is a good Itanium article. Itanium is the code for Intel's proto-64 bit chip. Only a few large servers have tested them, they're about $8000 each, and they perform very poorly on all current software. :cry: Oh, Intel/HP spent more than Macedonia's 5-year GNP developing the thing. Perhaps you were thinking Xeon? Costs about as much, but it works a bit better.
Schiller: "Against human stupidity even the gods contend in vain"

Nietzsche: "Against BOREDOM even the gods content in vain"
 
Steel
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Tue Jan 29, 2002 3:15 pm

I just did some basic checking on Pricewatch and this is what I came up with:
(all prices USD)
Dual setup w/IDE -
Supermicro P4DCE+ Dual Xeon board: $425
2x 1.5GHz Xeon: $233 each
2x 256MB ECC DRDRAM: $94 each
100GB WD1000JB w/8MB cache: $250
Total: $1329

Single setup w/SCSI -
Asus P4B266 P4 DDR board: $157
1.5GHz Pentium 4: $173
512MB DDR SDRAM: $145
Adaptec 29160 SCSI card: $226
Seagate Cheetah X15-36LP: $495
Total: $1196

So it's actually cheaper to go single proc with SCSI, but I don't think you would see much of a speed boost going with the SCSI drive. I've been using dual proccessor machines for a while and it's pretty nice not to have much of a slowdown when running multiple apps. So my advice would be to go dual, especially if you run several proccessor hungry apps at the same time.

For the people who are going to tell me the Western Digital 8MB cache drives can't begin to compare with the 15K SCSI drives: Yes, the 15K drives are faster, but you get a lot more space for the money. And the speed isn't that bad either. Check out these reviews from Storage Review (for as long as they last anyway.):

http://www.storagereview.com/articles/2 ... -SE_1.html

http://www.storagereview.com/articles/2 ... 0JB_1.html

The WD drives give those 10K SCSI drives a run for their money.
 
Trinary
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Tue Jan 29, 2002 5:26 pm

Personally, I'd go with a dual Athlon MP rig (you can always upgrade chips since AMD, unlike Intel, doesn't change the socket interface every other week), IDE RAID 5 using Adaptec 2400a, with 128 MB PC133 CAS 2 ECC memory from Crucial, and use 4 Western Digital 1200JB 120 GB drives w/8 MB cache, and have 1 GB of RAM. The storage will cost you $1475 or so, but you'll end up with 360 GB usable space, and RAID 5 fault tolerance.
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