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Geek Culture / New Computer, (At Last)

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MSon
20
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Joined: 13th Jul 2004
Location: Earth, (I Think).
Posted: 14th Jan 2008 12:32
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My last PC died on me end of last year at the wrong time as usual, so now i've got a new system

Dual2Core 2.2Ghz
4GB Memory
1GB NVIDIA Graphics Card
250GB HDD
HVR-1300 Freeview Card

Runs like a dream now, the only time it runs slower is when its accessing a hardrive, so im wondering if i where to use a SATA Hardrive instead of my current IDE Drive, how much quicker would it be?

PS: A quick thankyou to the DarkBasic people from last years convension from where i won the grapics card...
Works perfectly

Everyone Be Cool, You, Be Cool.
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Veron
17
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Joined: 22nd Nov 2006
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Posted: 14th Jan 2008 12:40
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Nice PC man, good to hear that you got it upgraded.

Quote: "1GB NVIDIA Graphics Card"


1GB? wtf? What model is it?

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MSon
20
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Joined: 13th Jul 2004
Location: Earth, (I Think).
Posted: 14th Jan 2008 13:00 Edited at: 14th Jan 2008 13:13
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GeForce 7950 GX2

Its basicly 2 512MB cards stuck together

I was playing Ghost Recon last night on it, with a resolution of 1280x1024 with all settings at max, whilst doing a full scan with norton and it was fine, but 4GB memory might have somethink to do with that

Everyone Be Cool, You, Be Cool.
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Guyra
19
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Joined: 10th Nov 2005
Location: Norway
Posted: 14th Jan 2008 13:14
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Quote: "Dual2Core 2.2Ghz"

You mean, Core2Duo, right?

Anyways, nice machine, man! Congratulations on it.
Could do with some more RAM, myself.
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MSon
20
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Joined: 13th Jul 2004
Location: Earth, (I Think).
Posted: 14th Jan 2008 13:26 Edited at: 14th Jan 2008 13:28
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Quote: "You mean, Core2Duo, right?"

Right

if you look on Micro Direct, you can buy 2GB Memory from about £20, which is a pritty good offer

Everyone Be Cool, You, Be Cool.
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Raven
19
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Joined: 23rd Mar 2005
Location: Hertfordshire, England
Posted: 14th Jan 2008 13:32
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Under Vista

ATA-6 133Mbit/sec gets rated 4.6
SATA2 300Mbit/sec gets rated 5.9

The system I have at the moment was fairly cheap to put together
£250 in all

AMD Series-7 Motherboard (760FX) - £35
AMD Athlon X2 3800+ (2.0GHz) - £35
Kingston 667MHz 2x512MB ECC (1GB) - £26
ATi Radeon HD 2600 XT x16 PCI-e (256MB) - £60
Western Digital SATA-II HDD (320GB) - £40
Samsung DVD±RW SATA-II (48x24x16x) - £20
Cube Case w/300watt PSU - £45

That runs just about everything with maxed out graphics at atleast 60fps. Only game I think of that it struggles with is Crysis Maxed out, but tbh unless you're running it in DirectX10... Medium and High graphics don't actually look different enough to warrent the performance difference.

I was for a while using a slighly different motherboard (AMD nFORCE 403 with NVIDIA 6100 Shared 256MB)

Ratings Vista gave before:

Processor: 4.2
Memory: 3.8
Graphics: 3.0
Gaming Graphics: 3.2
Primary Hard Disk: 4.8

After the upgrade of motherboard and graphics card:

Processor: 4.8
Memory: 4.5
Graphics: 5.9
Gaming Graphics: 5.5
Primary Hard Disk: 5.7

I've yet to really tinker, but possibly more amazingly is that all of this is running on a 300watt PSU. With my old X1600 on my other system anything other than a 450watt PSU would cause it to reboot with power spikes. Particularly when playing games. So it's a damn sight cheaper to run.

Was trying to put together a system cheaper than buying a modern console with the same sort of performance. I think I broke about even with the retail price, but I'll get 17.5% of that back in April

Gotta love tax-back.

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MSon
20
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Joined: 13th Jul 2004
Location: Earth, (I Think).
Posted: 14th Jan 2008 13:44 Edited at: 14th Jan 2008 13:50
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Quote: "all running on a 300watt PSU"


my graphics card alone recommends a 600w PSU, but i opted for 750w which cost about £45, Not including running costs which will be over twice yours

Although who cares, (Other than my parent who pay the bill)

Tonight i reinstall darkbasic, and run some of my old projects to check how quicker it is there

Everyone Be Cool, You, Be Cool.
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Mnemonix
21
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Joined: 2nd Dec 2002
Location: Skaro
Posted: 14th Jan 2008 13:49
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Nice win MSon, you get the graphics card, I get the books XD.

Was a good convention though, are you going this year?

TheSturgeon(playing me at chess) : I will use my powers of the horse and pwnzor you.
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GatorHex
19
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Location: Gunchester, UK
Posted: 14th Jan 2008 13:58 Edited at: 14th Jan 2008 14:54
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The easiest way to improve the speed of your computer is to overclock the the 2.2Ghz core 2 duo to 2.75Ghz. (250x11x2.66)

When buying a hard drive you look at spin speed.

If you have an old IDE with 5400 spin speed v SATA 7200 spin speed you will notice an improvement. However IDE/PATA 7200 v SATA 7200 will both be the same. SATA v SATA2 is just more bandwidth if the drive don't spin faster it will be the same speed.

SATA Raptors and SCSI run crazy fast spin speeds 10,000-15,000 but cost crazy money. If you want to do it on the cheap with IDE or SATA use a Raid 3 or 5 array. 3 hard drives will provide 2x 7200 speed and failure redundency.

I take it you bought a 64bit OS to run 5Gb of memory. You need to look at buying 64 bit specific software to get the best speed out of a 64bit OS. Cheap memory is bad. Always go for matched quality stuff like Corsair XMS2. Running in match pairs means you can use dual channel mode to make it run faster.

http://www.kumkie.com/free-software/3d-benchmark-tool

I wonder how your 2.2 Core 2 Duo compairs to mine? I'm only using Vista 32bit Home and 160watts too!


DinoHunter (still no nVidia compo voucher!), CPU/GPU Benchmark, DarkFish Encryption DLL, War MMOG (WIP), 3D Model Viewer
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MSon
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Posted: 14th Jan 2008 14:44 Edited at: 14th Jan 2008 15:04
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GatorHex
Thanks as im looking at getting a faster HDD if possable, (Preferable not for to much money), for memory im using 2x2GB Samsung stick which are working fine other than only registering as 3GB in windows, but thats my motherboard.

Mnemonix
Did you actually read every page of them books, i dont think so as it would have taken you a long time.

I'll be going convension this year, started saving up already as last year i didn't so didn't manage to pay until the last day possable

Hopefully see you there.

Everyone Be Cool, You, Be Cool.
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bitJericho
22
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Joined: 9th Oct 2002
Location: United States
Posted: 14th Jan 2008 16:12 Edited at: 14th Jan 2008 16:12
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Quote: "other than only registering as 3GB in windows, but thats my motherboard."


That's actually your 32bit os.


Want free hosting? Click the sig, go to hosting link on right nav. Password is "tgc".
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andrey d
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Joined: 30th Jun 2007
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Posted: 15th Jan 2008 08:25
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Quote: "GeForce 7950 GX2

Its basicly 2 512MB cards stuck together"

It basically runs at 1.3 times the speed of a 7900 GTX, since it's not true SLI. The specs look good but the actual performance leaves a lot to be desired.
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MSon
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Posted: 15th Jan 2008 11:00 Edited at: 15th Jan 2008 11:10
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the OS, well it will have to do until i can get a new version, as for the graphics card, its all working and no problems with speed so i dont mind.

I did a basic 3D test in Darkbasic last night to check FPS Rate, and it was telling me i had nearly 4000fps??? on my old computer i never got over about 300 so it's a definate improvement.

Everyone Be Cool, You, Be Cool.
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Phaelax
DBPro Master
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Joined: 16th Apr 2003
Location: Metropia
Posted: 18th Jan 2008 05:17 Edited at: 18th Jan 2008 05:19
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GatorHex
Considering we both have the same graphics card apparently, here's a good comparison for us to see how an extra 400MHz can improve performance.



I'm not sure why it says I only have 2GB of ram, I technically have 4GB; Windows shows 3.25GB.


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