Brian,
Thanks for the excellent report of your choices and use. I agree that
you do need the power you chose. For, me, I have had perfect service
from my trio of E8400 C2D's (now 1yr old) that run 24/7. Once I got all
the "user-caused" glitches worked out, these three procs now simply own
me! I am seriously thinking of adding a 4th identical platform to my LAN
just because they run so well. I have yet to find anything they will NOT
do quickly and easily.
My gaming is limited to FlightSim 2K and the last three Tomb Raider
episodes. I use nVidia 9600 GT's (2) and one ATI4750. All three PC's
have 2GB of DDR3 RAM; and, use 160GB SATA drives from Seagate.
May not be a Power-Ranger any longer, but these 3 units just really run
so sweet. I am very very happy. (Thanks List for suggestions).
Best,
Duncan
Brian Weeden wrote:
I bought a Q6600 for $250 in March 2008. I consider that to be a dirt cheap
price to get a processor that will meet my foreseeable needs for 3-4 years.
I bought a Radeon 4850 for $180 in Oct 2008 and it has suited me just fine.
The last game I played - Batman Arkham Asylum - ran very smooth. And yes, I
am running a 24" LCD. I've considered getting another 4850 and doing SLI,
but I don't really see a need at this point and I'm not sure I"m going to
get much value as opposed to waiting another 6 months and getting a whole
new card. The next major game I will be playing a lot - Dragon Age:Origins
- will probably run just fine on my current setup.
However, I am still running a pair of Seagate SATA drives that I've had for
years (250 GB boot, 80 GB data). So my upgrade this winter will be Windows
7 64-bit, another 4 GB of RAM (because I multitask a lot and run VMs), and a
SSD boot drive. But I have no incentive to change my CPU.
---------------------------
Brian Weeden
Technical Advisor
Secure World Foundation <http://www.secureworldfoundation.org>
Montreal Office
+1 (514) 466-2756 Canada
+1 (202) 683-8534 US
On Sat, Oct 24, 2009 at 1:48 PM, Stan Zaske <[email protected]> wrote:
With gaming it depends on the resolution you play at. With a 30" monitor
you're going to need some decent horsepower and even with my 24" there are
times I wish for something better than my 4850 (5850 coming up as soon as
price takes the 1st drop). I'm confused, you speak of an Intel quad core
processor you bought 2 years ago being dirt cheap? Did you get it used
because new and cheap don't equate to Intel processors. LOL
Brian Weeden wrote:
Hard drives have been the major system bottleneck for most computer users
for years now. I'm surprised that it's taken this long for that fact to
settle in AND for companies to realize that's the future growth area.
Video cards? Eh...unless you are a freak you can get by. I play most new
games and get by just fine spending $200 every couple of years.
Processor? The quad core intel I bought 2 years ago was dirt cheap and I
have yet to saturate all 4 processors.
---------------------------
Brian Weeden
Technical Advisor
Secure World Foundation <http://www.secureworldfoundation.org>
Montreal Office
+1 (514) 466-2756 Canada
+1 (202) 683-8534 US
On Sat, Oct 24, 2009 at 12:55 PM, Stan Zaske <[email protected]> wrote:
Yep, Vista and Win7 are both very hardrive intensive compared to XP.
Better
pony up the dough and get a solid state drive with the "barefoot"
controller. LOL
Steve Tomporowski wrote:
I've noticed this 'problem' on both Vista and Win7. It seems like the
system puts it's file manager to sleep, so that if you try to do a disk
action, you get a substantial delay. For instance, I'll be playing a
game,
then I jump to email, when I try to drag and drop, there is a delay, I
get
the circle, then finally it moves the message. Of course, the next
message
goes quickly. The same with getting disk directories. I'll click on a
drive, get the 1st half of folders, then the circle and then the moving
bar,
then it finally gives me all the folders. Of course, after that point,
everything works quickly. My power settings are for always on, so it's
not
a power down. Anyone else seen this?
Thanks....Steve
__________ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus
signature database 4537 (20091023) __________
The message was checked by ESET Smart Security.
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