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On the left, my computer from 2005 to 2008. On the right, my computer from 2008 onwards. The more things change, the more they stay the same...
The unnamed old computer had 1 GB of DDR, 420 GB of drive space, and a 2.2 GHz single-core processor. It ran 32-bit XP, as everyone else did at that time. The computer on the right, which I am naming "The Monolith", has 4 GB of DDR2, 1.5 TB of drive space, and a 2.4 GHz quad-core. It runs Vista x64. Displays were 17" LCD + 15" CRT, and 20.1" LCD + 24" LCD respectively.
On to the naming of my machine. Never named a computer before. It seems silly. But on a whim I decided that Monolith is a nice name. It sounds cool, and the system is grayish and kinda stone-looking. It's simple, smooth, minimalistic. And it's kinda a hulking brute of a tower. Finally, it pays tribute to The Best FPS Game Designers Ever, Monolith Productions. They're responsible for such unpopular but expertly-made games as Aliens vs Predator 2, No One Lives Forever 2, and Tron 2.0. More recently, they made FEAR. Their games look beautiful at the time of release and for several years after, are either very funny or very scary, and have great interfaces and often the ability to permanently add to and increase some of your stats and abilities for the duration of a game. Forget Bungie. And fuck "we have so much storyline that during the course of a game, you don't see enough to understand what's happening" Valve. Monolith, people.
More info on the performance of my machine will be released in a later journal. As some of you may have read, I had some unexpected but extremely easily fixed issues when I went to install 64-bit Vista.
Nalgene bottle in the right picture was a gift from
abraxis :3
The unnamed old computer had 1 GB of DDR, 420 GB of drive space, and a 2.2 GHz single-core processor. It ran 32-bit XP, as everyone else did at that time. The computer on the right, which I am naming "The Monolith", has 4 GB of DDR2, 1.5 TB of drive space, and a 2.4 GHz quad-core. It runs Vista x64. Displays were 17" LCD + 15" CRT, and 20.1" LCD + 24" LCD respectively.
On to the naming of my machine. Never named a computer before. It seems silly. But on a whim I decided that Monolith is a nice name. It sounds cool, and the system is grayish and kinda stone-looking. It's simple, smooth, minimalistic. And it's kinda a hulking brute of a tower. Finally, it pays tribute to The Best FPS Game Designers Ever, Monolith Productions. They're responsible for such unpopular but expertly-made games as Aliens vs Predator 2, No One Lives Forever 2, and Tron 2.0. More recently, they made FEAR. Their games look beautiful at the time of release and for several years after, are either very funny or very scary, and have great interfaces and often the ability to permanently add to and increase some of your stats and abilities for the duration of a game. Forget Bungie. And fuck "we have so much storyline that during the course of a game, you don't see enough to understand what's happening" Valve. Monolith, people.
More info on the performance of my machine will be released in a later journal. As some of you may have read, I had some unexpected but extremely easily fixed issues when I went to install 64-bit Vista.
Nalgene bottle in the right picture was a gift from
abraxis :3
Category All / All
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 1280 x 480px
File Size 156.9 kB
It's actually 4 hard drives (120, 300, 320 and 750 GB). About 100 GB are standard-def movies, ~200 GB are high-def movies, another ~100 GB is used for various TV shows and video clips I haven't burned to DVD (altogether I have approximately 2000 GB of TV show!), and the rest is assorted files, games, and free space.
I'll put up a 2D file map (size corresponding to file size) at some point to demonstrate :3
I'll put up a 2D file map (size corresponding to file size) at some point to demonstrate :3
:P Bah, it's not that bad. I do all my 'net browsing and chatting and document composition on my laptop, which isn't nearly as bright. The desktop is only for games and movies, which have a nice tendency to have a lot of darker areas. Besides, if I sat further away, I'd have to use my glasses.
Playable as in "on my first time through the game on the hardest difficulty, with only scopes and laser sights, I'm able to survive firefights".
It's not smooth, but it is gorgeous, and entirely playable. Is there an easy way to check the framerate for a concrete number in this game?
It's not smooth, but it is gorgeous, and entirely playable. Is there an easy way to check the framerate for a concrete number in this game?
Love the setup you have. It's all sleek and shiny. I also see the wii and silver PS2. I'm still trying to get a new monitor(college is killing that idea)
something that doesn't make me pull my desk out at a angle because the back of the CRT. And possibly a monitor where dark and black are different enough that I can see the details. It kills a movie if you can't see much of anything(minority report is the example here).
Drifting off topic. I have to ask, where did the foxes go?
something that doesn't make me pull my desk out at a angle because the back of the CRT. And possibly a monitor where dark and black are different enough that I can see the details. It kills a movie if you can't see much of anything(minority report is the example here).
Drifting off topic. I have to ask, where did the foxes go?
Heh. My system is from 2000/2001, and is still what I run. However, replaced ME with 2000 Pro when it crashed, and got a new monitor (replaced an 18" viewable CRT with a 20.1" widescreen LCD monitor), got a better video card, and added a CDRW drive. Aside from regular replacings of mouse/keyboard, the rest is original.
Also, I tend to associate Monolith (as a name) with 2001: A Space Odyssey (and the rest of the series by Arthur C. Clarke).
Also, I tend to associate Monolith (as a name) with 2001: A Space Odyssey (and the rest of the series by Arthur C. Clarke).
Yeah, 2001 was also part of the inspiration for the name. Sort of. In a recent review for Crysis, Yahtzee said that his computer resembles the monolith from 2001 and was built by the proud Dwarfs of Middle Earth, and yet has trouble running the game. As does mine, and I like the mental imagery; thus it is The Monolith.
Lord in Heaven. All I got is this laptop. And I bought it used. I don't play any games, though. Looks as though those whom require the most processing power these days are the gamers. All for which I use this thing is Photoshoppe. Time was graphic designers were those whom needed the processing power. I also just use an old hi-fi for a sound system. (It's quadrophonic!)
I do have two displays, though. Because, well, why not?
I do have two displays, though. Because, well, why not?
Rather than reiterate the reasons why I'm using Vista, I'll just link you to the spot where I clarified it the other day: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/.....9/#cid:2209048
Have fun with your <2.8 GB of RAM, I'm rocking it with 4+
Have fun with your <2.8 GB of RAM, I'm rocking it with 4+
BAWWWWWWWWW. Vista runs rock-solid on a decent system, and I like the new features too. I have Ubuntu, and games run like shit using WINE, while under Vista I run them perfectly (I.E. TF2 max settings@1680x1050 16xAA). My bet is you've never even used Vista, you're just jumping on the bandwagon and saying it sucks because "it's cool to hate on M$, yo"
I don't see how you're comparing it to ME. I had ME for a couple of years (unfortunately) and it crashed probably every other hour. Like I said, Vista hasn't locked up or crashed once, and it has near-perfect compatibility with older games (I was able to run Diablo 2 out of the box, which came out about 8 years ago)
I always ask my self why people spend so much money on all this new computer stuff. Whats the point of it? Every day things don't even really use more than one core of a CPU, let alone all 4. And last I heard 64-bit OS systems are still rather worthless; Vista in it self, is worthless (No offense to you if you like it, I just think it's gaudy. XP at least looked like a stupid fisher price toy).
Until recently, I was still using an old Athlon XP 3200+, with 2 gigs of DDR400, a GeForce 6800GT OC AGP 8X, I just recently upgraded to an AMD Athlon 64 3200, Socket 939, and a PCIe motherboard, and a GeForce 8600. It still uses 2 gigs of ol' DDR400 ram, and using it, I feel a little bit of a difference; but nothing profound, that would make one stop and say "Oh my god, it's so FAST!! *insta-boner*"
Is the point in all this upgrading just to feel that miniscule difference???
Until recently, I was still using an old Athlon XP 3200+, with 2 gigs of DDR400, a GeForce 6800GT OC AGP 8X, I just recently upgraded to an AMD Athlon 64 3200, Socket 939, and a PCIe motherboard, and a GeForce 8600. It still uses 2 gigs of ol' DDR400 ram, and using it, I feel a little bit of a difference; but nothing profound, that would make one stop and say "Oh my god, it's so FAST!! *insta-boner*"
Is the point in all this upgrading just to feel that miniscule difference???
I didn't spend an insane amount of money on this. The parts were good, but not over-the-top. Overall it was about $1400-1500 for the stuff in the case. It's not cheap, but as a 3-year investment, I think it's worth it.
My everyday things DO use 2, 3 and 4 cores. High-def video playback? 2-4 cores. Old games? One core, with the other doing Windows processes. New games which actually need the speed? 2-4 cores. Full-screened Flash? 4 cores, evenly distributed. That's the sorta stuff I do with this computer. It's not for word processing and Firefox, it's for games and movies and other media at >1080p resolution.
64-bit OSes are not worthless. If you want to use more than 2.8 GB of RAM with Windows, you'll want one. Even with tweaking you'll never get more than 3.8 or 4 GB of RAM out of a 32-bit installation. In my case, I got bumped up to 4 GB even, and over the next couple years, before I replace this, I can definitely see myself moving up to 6 or 8.
Nor do I think Vista is worthless. It has its merits, else certain power-users would not choose to use it. I use it, Dragoneer uses it, my mate uses it, and plenty of tech-saavy people use it. If you can put up with spending $15 more on slightly better hardware to deal with its slight overhead, Vista is absolutely worth it.
Here's what your problem is. You upgraded from an Athlon 3200 to an Athlon 3200. Whether it's XP or 64 doesn't make much difference. To really feel a difference, you'd need something faster or multi-core. RAM-wise you should still be pretty good... graphics-card wise, keep in mind, you went from a higher-end range (_800) to a mid-range (_600). Just because the number is higher doesn't mean the card is faster.
This thing is fucking fast compared to what I had. We both had about the same thing... Athlon 3200 or 3500, I have the slight advantage. DDR400, 1 or 2 GB, you had a bit of an edge. I had an X800 XT graphics card, you had a 6800, let's call those about even. Depending on the program or game I'm running, this thing is up to 10 times faster. It's just mind-boggling.
My everyday things DO use 2, 3 and 4 cores. High-def video playback? 2-4 cores. Old games? One core, with the other doing Windows processes. New games which actually need the speed? 2-4 cores. Full-screened Flash? 4 cores, evenly distributed. That's the sorta stuff I do with this computer. It's not for word processing and Firefox, it's for games and movies and other media at >1080p resolution.
64-bit OSes are not worthless. If you want to use more than 2.8 GB of RAM with Windows, you'll want one. Even with tweaking you'll never get more than 3.8 or 4 GB of RAM out of a 32-bit installation. In my case, I got bumped up to 4 GB even, and over the next couple years, before I replace this, I can definitely see myself moving up to 6 or 8.
Nor do I think Vista is worthless. It has its merits, else certain power-users would not choose to use it. I use it, Dragoneer uses it, my mate uses it, and plenty of tech-saavy people use it. If you can put up with spending $15 more on slightly better hardware to deal with its slight overhead, Vista is absolutely worth it.
Here's what your problem is. You upgraded from an Athlon 3200 to an Athlon 3200. Whether it's XP or 64 doesn't make much difference. To really feel a difference, you'd need something faster or multi-core. RAM-wise you should still be pretty good... graphics-card wise, keep in mind, you went from a higher-end range (_800) to a mid-range (_600). Just because the number is higher doesn't mean the card is faster.
This thing is fucking fast compared to what I had. We both had about the same thing... Athlon 3200 or 3500, I have the slight advantage. DDR400, 1 or 2 GB, you had a bit of an edge. I had an X800 XT graphics card, you had a 6800, let's call those about even. Depending on the program or game I'm running, this thing is up to 10 times faster. It's just mind-boggling.
So true.. I have my system now set up as " Tri-Boot" meaning i have three operating systems on it. Windows 32-Bit XP Professional can only see 3.25 gigs of ram, while my Vista Ultimate 64-Bit can see all 6 gigs. ( The third operating system is still under experimental bug fixes, Macintoshs' OSx Leopard. Yes , Mac OS on a PC ! XP It has been done with some reconfiguration to the OS and Bios settings.
Now you should over clock your CPU, RAM, and Video GPU. ( thay can all be overclocked to gain even more performance. :)
Now you should over clock your CPU, RAM, and Video GPU. ( thay can all be overclocked to gain even more performance. :)
After a month of ownership I feel I can better answer this question for all respects.
CPU: Games such as Oblivion, nearly 2 years old, are able to take advantage of all 4 cores. It doesn't require full use of them, and might be able to squeeze into just 2 cores, but this gives more breathing room which is much needed in games such as Crysis and Unreal Tournament 3. In those games, where the CPU utilization is over 50%, having half the core count would leave me CPU-bound. Seeing as I can get games from November 2007 which can push this thing pretty well, I think the remaining speed margin will absolutely be necessary to keep the CPU from holding me back over the next year or two. And as far as the speed of the cores goes, I wouldn't want to go any lower (faster would be sweet) because not everything is multi-threaded, including some older games. When I play those, I'd rather they run on what would've been an exceptionally fast system, not just a somewhat fast one.
RAM: It might be due to Vista's potential for utilizing more resources, but I've broken the 3 GB barrier with this thing while playing games. Now, given that most of my games are 32-bit and can't themselves take more than ~3 GB of RAM, and the OS itself is quite content with <1 GB, for now at least the 4 GB is sufficient. I don't do anything which takes a lot of RAM and still allows me to multi-task easily (huge-ass Photoshop files for example), so I don't need more than 4 GB right now. Right now.
GPU: Absolutely necessary, and always my #1 limiting factor. Because I play at native resolution on my 24" display, my computer has to push 2.3 million pixels every frame--not an easy task on gorgeous apps like UT3 and Call of Duty 4 and Crysis! I have to sacrifice the ability to do anti-aliasing, and often a bit of the possible 60 fps, to play at this resolution. RAM and CPU being under-utilized, it's ze graphics card which is holding me back for new games. That having been said, for older games, I can crank everything and have it look great on them.
Monitor: Also a must-have for me. I love high-def, and I want to do it right the first time around--that means 1080p content whenever possible. 24" desktop displays are the smallest way to get that for a desktop PC, and their added height (120 pixels) means they sacrifice nothing compared to smaller brothers (20.1 desktop displays) when showing off 4:3 content. ANYWAY, the consequence of wanting to enjoy 1080p for my movies is that I have to do my games this way to enjoy the benefits of native resolution. Hence the necessity of my GPU as indicated above.
And Vista x64? It's given me very little trouble overall. About the same amount of trouble as I had with the 32-bit installation. The same amount or less compared to new XP installations when the platform wasn't 6 years old--you know, like in 2003. There are occasional unexplained application closings with some games, so far being limited to stuff by Valve (though only during the process of getting to the main menu) and Oblivion, but yanno, I had those in Vista x86. Necessary? To utilize all 4 GB of RAM, yeah. Which as I indicated before, will be important in the next year or less.
So yeah, take or leave my advice as you will, but yanno, there's a reason that people are still buying >$1000 towers rather than $400, monitor/printer/speakers-included bargain PCs.
CPU: Games such as Oblivion, nearly 2 years old, are able to take advantage of all 4 cores. It doesn't require full use of them, and might be able to squeeze into just 2 cores, but this gives more breathing room which is much needed in games such as Crysis and Unreal Tournament 3. In those games, where the CPU utilization is over 50%, having half the core count would leave me CPU-bound. Seeing as I can get games from November 2007 which can push this thing pretty well, I think the remaining speed margin will absolutely be necessary to keep the CPU from holding me back over the next year or two. And as far as the speed of the cores goes, I wouldn't want to go any lower (faster would be sweet) because not everything is multi-threaded, including some older games. When I play those, I'd rather they run on what would've been an exceptionally fast system, not just a somewhat fast one.
RAM: It might be due to Vista's potential for utilizing more resources, but I've broken the 3 GB barrier with this thing while playing games. Now, given that most of my games are 32-bit and can't themselves take more than ~3 GB of RAM, and the OS itself is quite content with <1 GB, for now at least the 4 GB is sufficient. I don't do anything which takes a lot of RAM and still allows me to multi-task easily (huge-ass Photoshop files for example), so I don't need more than 4 GB right now. Right now.
GPU: Absolutely necessary, and always my #1 limiting factor. Because I play at native resolution on my 24" display, my computer has to push 2.3 million pixels every frame--not an easy task on gorgeous apps like UT3 and Call of Duty 4 and Crysis! I have to sacrifice the ability to do anti-aliasing, and often a bit of the possible 60 fps, to play at this resolution. RAM and CPU being under-utilized, it's ze graphics card which is holding me back for new games. That having been said, for older games, I can crank everything and have it look great on them.
Monitor: Also a must-have for me. I love high-def, and I want to do it right the first time around--that means 1080p content whenever possible. 24" desktop displays are the smallest way to get that for a desktop PC, and their added height (120 pixels) means they sacrifice nothing compared to smaller brothers (20.1 desktop displays) when showing off 4:3 content. ANYWAY, the consequence of wanting to enjoy 1080p for my movies is that I have to do my games this way to enjoy the benefits of native resolution. Hence the necessity of my GPU as indicated above.
And Vista x64? It's given me very little trouble overall. About the same amount of trouble as I had with the 32-bit installation. The same amount or less compared to new XP installations when the platform wasn't 6 years old--you know, like in 2003. There are occasional unexplained application closings with some games, so far being limited to stuff by Valve (though only during the process of getting to the main menu) and Oblivion, but yanno, I had those in Vista x86. Necessary? To utilize all 4 GB of RAM, yeah. Which as I indicated before, will be important in the next year or less.
So yeah, take or leave my advice as you will, but yanno, there's a reason that people are still buying >$1000 towers rather than $400, monitor/printer/speakers-included bargain PCs.
in the world of computers, it's basically, you get what you pay for. You pay $1500 for a computer and build it, you get your self a kick ass system. You go to Wal-Mart and plop down $450 on an Everex, you get what you pay for. A piece of crap.
Money has always been a limiting factor for me. From my understanding, and what little I know about you from reading your journals, and various things I pick up from you- You're a full time student I'm going to bet. So stuff like that comes easy to you, and is nessesary. Like I said last month when we discussed this before; I have an old AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 939 socket, 1GB DDR400 RAM, and a PCIe nVidia GeForce 8600GT.
This machine was sold to me, as it is now, for $75.00. So for what I paid, I think I got pretty good bang for my buck. It plays all my old games pretty well. It's kind of like, it's old and outdated, but for what it cost me, it's still 100 times better than anything I could ever find at a store.
I only keep up with currently computer stuff so much. The current ram cut off is what? 16GB? Hard drives are where? In the TB's now?
I'm a rather outdated dragon. That's the best way to put it. I would love to get my hands on a copy of Vista, I'm still under Windows XP 32-bit.
Anyway, I think that gives you a little bit of an idea where my mind set comes from. Money is a very limiting factor when it comes to making upgrades.
Dunno if you ever will, but it would be awsome to talk to you sometime, I have all my contact stuff on my FA page. Would be cool to get advice from you and stuff, since you REALLY seem to know your stuff.
Money has always been a limiting factor for me. From my understanding, and what little I know about you from reading your journals, and various things I pick up from you- You're a full time student I'm going to bet. So stuff like that comes easy to you, and is nessesary. Like I said last month when we discussed this before; I have an old AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 939 socket, 1GB DDR400 RAM, and a PCIe nVidia GeForce 8600GT.
This machine was sold to me, as it is now, for $75.00. So for what I paid, I think I got pretty good bang for my buck. It plays all my old games pretty well. It's kind of like, it's old and outdated, but for what it cost me, it's still 100 times better than anything I could ever find at a store.
I only keep up with currently computer stuff so much. The current ram cut off is what? 16GB? Hard drives are where? In the TB's now?
I'm a rather outdated dragon. That's the best way to put it. I would love to get my hands on a copy of Vista, I'm still under Windows XP 32-bit.
Anyway, I think that gives you a little bit of an idea where my mind set comes from. Money is a very limiting factor when it comes to making upgrades.
Dunno if you ever will, but it would be awsome to talk to you sometime, I have all my contact stuff on my FA page. Would be cool to get advice from you and stuff, since you REALLY seem to know your stuff.
Oh, I can totally understand people not being able to upgrade their systems all the time due to budgetary constraints. It's just that originally you seemed to be questioning whether there was really any benefit from the "minuscule difference" of the upgrade. 'cuz yeah, there's a huge difference... if I were dipping into the realm where I pay 3 times as much for a CPU which is 1/6th faster, then you may slap me and ask if it's worth it =P
I'm not that super knowledgeable about this stuff. I've read numerous articles over the years, try to keep up with things (especially when it's PC-building time) and I have the experience from using the old and new hardware. Others know more I'm sure. But you can contact me whenever you want advice (though don't be surprised if I don't answer much this week, 'cuz of work, or next week, 'cuz of Brawl ;p).
I'm not that super knowledgeable about this stuff. I've read numerous articles over the years, try to keep up with things (especially when it's PC-building time) and I have the experience from using the old and new hardware. Others know more I'm sure. But you can contact me whenever you want advice (though don't be surprised if I don't answer much this week, 'cuz of work, or next week, 'cuz of Brawl ;p).
Oh I know. I was trying to figure out if it;s worth it or not, which apparently it is. See, I've not read in to how multi-core CPU's work, or how DDR2 or DDR3 works. so I don't have a real great understanding of it, which lead me to think "Why is it worth it?". After reading a little, and talking to you, I see the point to it now.
I'll drop you a line later tonight or so. I do custom car stereo installs, and I have a couple I need to get done tonight.
I'll drop you a line later tonight or so. I do custom car stereo installs, and I have a couple I need to get done tonight.
I've had to learn to be cheap. I surf Craigs list a lot, I do favors and people owe me later on, etc. For instance, my 46" Television set, cost me $50 from Chicago Craigs List.
My truck? Cost me $100, because it needed a new fuel pump.
My IBM ThinkPad T42 laptop? Free.
I always look for a bargain
Craigs list is awsome for that. If you look at the right time, you'll find anything like, from crazy wife found out husband was cheating on her, so she puts up husbands $4,000 entertainment center for $200. And...I'm not joking. That's how I ended up going from a 20" wal mart box brand TV to a Hitachi HD Big screen (rear projection) and a full 7.1 Yamaha Surround Sound System with Polk audio rear speakers, bose sub and bose front channel speakers. <3
My truck? Cost me $100, because it needed a new fuel pump.
My IBM ThinkPad T42 laptop? Free.
I always look for a bargain
Craigs list is awsome for that. If you look at the right time, you'll find anything like, from crazy wife found out husband was cheating on her, so she puts up husbands $4,000 entertainment center for $200. And...I'm not joking. That's how I ended up going from a 20" wal mart box brand TV to a Hitachi HD Big screen (rear projection) and a full 7.1 Yamaha Surround Sound System with Polk audio rear speakers, bose sub and bose front channel speakers. <3
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