Re: New PC (maybe OT)

On 29 Mar, 14:49, Daniel James <wastebas...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Thanks very much for the detailed reply.


.. but not games?


No - after a misspent youth playing games on the ZX Spectrum (showing
my age!) I've managed to stay away from games since then. I just know
how much time I would end up wasting...


If you don't play games (or use some sorts of CAD/Modelling software)
you don't really need to worry about graphics hardware -- onboard
graphics will probably be enough, and that makes spec'ing a PC (and
paying for it!) easier.

My professional work is sort of related to the CAD/Modelling area as
it happens, but that's not the focus of where I do my development
work. I tend to work on fairly noddy examples for development purposes
and I've found that even with my 5 year old graphics card (which was
pretty cheap even then) that the graphics side of things isn't a
problem. The graphics is Open GL-based on the whole - I don't know if
that changes anything?


There's no sign yet of XP disappearing from the retail channels for
shrink-wrapped OSes. It's getting harder to find on new pre-built PCs.

OK. I thought I'd read the other day that it will be withdrawn from
sale within the next few months.


What I can't get a feel for is the level I need
to start at to get something 'decent' (whatever that means!).

That can be tricky. What's the spec of the new PC at work that you're
comparing with your home system? Do you want more, less, or about the
same performance as that?

Well my work PC is rather over the top for what I actually need. I
don't have the details to hand but its a fairly high end Dell
professional system with 2 x twin-core CPU, 8GB RAM, SCSI drives etc.
running 64-bit Server 2003. It was a hand-me-down from the
consultants who actually run our software on big models so it's not
all *that* new, maybe a couple of years at least. So maybe the
processor speed won't be that great compared to what's on offer now?
I'll have to check next week for more details.

Maybe a better comparison would be my current home machine which is:

Abit NF7-S (with on-board audio)
Athlon XP 2600+CPU
NVIDIA GeForce FX5200 graphics card
WD SATA main HD
2 x other IDE HDs

Even now, this isn't bad for most of what I do with it. But it does
feel sluggish for development work so I think at least a faster CPU
and at least twin core will help there.


The main advantages of building the PC yourself are ..
[snipped lots of good reasons for homebuilding!]

OK I'm convinced.


You may also find that pre-built systems come with Vista, whether you
want it or not.

Even more convinced!


Here's a suggestion:

Go for an AMD processor [...]

That's interesting. The impression I had been getting was that the
pendulum had swung back back to Intel these days. When I built my last
two machines it was definitely AMD that was getting the
recommendations in places like here, whereas I'm mainly seeing Intel
now. However, your suggestion makes sense given that I am on a bit of
a budget. One thing that used to be the case was that AMD supporting
mobos tended to suffer from stability problems more than Intel ones.
Have those sort of issues gone away now? (Actually, having said that,
my NF7 has been rock solid.)

[... lots more useful advice..]

Does that help?

Fantastic! Thanks very much for your reply.

~
Bob
.

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