Dual Core Greatness

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endlesszeal

Senior Member
Well I just finished building a low-budget rig for my brother. He thought an aged P4 at 2.8 with HT, 1GB, DVD+/-R and 160GB h.d.d tower at Fry's was a good deal for $510. I convinced him otherwise and throw in another $70 for a vastly more superior system. =)

Anyway, the rig consists of:

AMD X2 3800+ AM2
Biostar Tforce w/6100 AM2
1GB PQI Turbo DDR2 800 (5-5-5-15)
NEC 3550A
320 GB Seagate SATA II w/16mb (the new 10 series with perpendicular technology)
Cooler Master Centrion
Forton Saga 400 watt PSU

Why is it so much better?
1) Well for that extra $70 he has a system that is dual core and is overclockable if he ever wanted it. I gave him a good bump from 2.0ghz to 2.4ghz with no voltage changes and the temps are the same as stock.
2) His hard drive space doubled and is SATA now for better cooling.
3) Has faster RAM; most systems are only coming with 533mhz DDR2 or maybe 667 if you're lucky. The timing kinda stinks, but the extra mhz helps it and it doesnt effect it too bad. And it comes with heatspread.
4) A lot better onboard video than Intels old chipsets.
5) 7.1 surround vs stereo (5.1 is good enough).
6) Better chassis and power supply because its dual-rail with 18A and 16A respectively. The chassis is a lot better breathing too with room for side 80 intake and 120 mm exhaust (are planned to be installed). It already has 1 120mm intake that cools the hard drives and chipsets.

I think for 580 taxed and shipped is a pretty good deal for this particular system. With an extra 1GB, Im confident it'll crush anything that comes from Dell at the same price range and up to the $2000+. Only when you get to the gaming systems that have RAID/Raptor setups will it lose. And of course the graphics is laughable, but so are Dell's unless you opt to get the $500 cards.
 
Yeah, all that muscle is useless with no card. Nice budget build though.

Just get last years latest greatest card. They will play any of the newer games but are half, and sometimes less than half the price. I just can't spend $900 on a graphics card..
 
thanks guys..i hope he'll be happy with what that extra $70 bucks got him. im pretty jealous now because its a lot faster than mine.. i just compressed a 7gb movie and took roughy 8 minutes while it would take mine 15-16 minutes.. and now i can virus scan and do other stuff and feel little to no bogging... the only major downside is the hard drive. damn those new 10 series from seagate are loud when they seek. reminds me of the old maxtor..

anyway, i dont think he'll be getting a graphic cards, even though last years 500 cards are going for 200-250 like that ATi X850XT.. and i disagree with all that muscle and its useless.. why drop even 100 on a card when youre not even going to game at all?? it plays movies, rips stuff, surfs the net, etc etc... if he ever wanted to watch HD stuff, a $30 6200 turbo would even suffice.. id tell him to wait until directx 10 hits with vista and then get a card.. i mean, my 6600gt is now considered miniumal for gaming and the new 7600gt are beasty.. and thats only a generation jump, not a whole huge verison jump.. besides the older cards/some newer ones dont even support friggin hdcp.
 
It would fly away to "nothing to do land".

If you consider simple things like playing Flash games, updating your MySpace account, chatting and playing your favorite MMORPG productive, then yeah... Windows is for you.

Others need a bit more power out of their systems. Kinda funny that everyone likes to strut their "dual core 64 bit processor" when they only use a fraction of its power.

Ah well, at least Gerbil in a Microwave still works.
 
I have a dual core system and a gig of ram and a geForce 256m 7600gt.. I bog it down often..^_^

World of Warcraft eats resources like candy.
 
I have a dual core system and a gig of ram and a geForce 256m 7600gt.. I bog it down often..^_^

World of Warcraft eats resources like candy.

Running code not optimized for your specific arch and processor will do that. Combined with Windows' less than adequate SMP capabilities, it's not too surprising.

It doesn't help that WOW eats resources like a Ford GT drinks gas either.
 
So are you feeding the starving children with your computer?
Or are you operating a server?

If either of those, great. If neither, than wtf could you be doing thats so fantastic? I dont play WoW, go on myspace, play flash games, jam pencils into my eyes, or use huge dual core 64bit processors. Up until last week I was running a dell laptop with a PIII. Sorry I cant find an operating system to be morally superior to another, like some. While I run into Unix-based computers all the time, I'm still not going to change what my PC has because I'd never use its potential anyways.
 
So are you feeding the starving children with your computer?
Or are you operating a server?

If either of those, great. If neither, than wtf could you be doing thats so fantastic? I dont play WoW, go on myspace, play flash games, jam pencils into my eyes, or use huge dual core 64bit processors. Up until last week I was running a dell laptop with a PIII. Sorry I cant find an operating system to be morally superior to another, like some. While I run into Unix-based computers all the time, I'm still not going to change what my PC has because I'd never use its potential anyways.

I don't find operating systems "morally superior" to one another... moreso I find some OSes to be technologically superior to others.

What do I use my systems for? Well, I do have a server sitting in the corner. But for what I need a unix for... seamless global access to my systems, both command line and GUI apps. That's a start. VNC, Citrix and GoToMyPC do not cut it. Number crunchers, simulators, the endless amount of scripting you can do with a unix shell, a level of configuration that Windows will never have, and oh yeah... access to source code is also a nice bonus.

I prefer that type of power on my computers. Most do not need it. I do.
 
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