puzzle for the day

Tahrey1043 · Post by **Tahrey1043** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 8:50 pm

figure THIS out
http://www.intel.com/products/processor ... s_040323a&

why does it have to be so complex

back in the day you'd have a processor whose name was a number, and if you were lucky, it had a second number signifying what megahertz it ran at.

(this spawned btw by me randomly realising that the speed - gigahertz? - race (i guess youd now call it) had become widely irrelevant and i didnt any longer know how fast a typical CPU was, whereas back in the day it was ALL about the Mhz... can someone PLEASE tell me if we've hit the magical 4 Ghz yet?)

Gareth_GT_Hatch · Post by **Gareth_GT_Hatch** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 9:36 pm

you can buy a computer from some company that has overclocked a 3.4Ghz (poss 3.6Ghz) to 4GHz. It has water cooling!

half the case is the fooooking radiator!

What annoys me is the fact that AMD (like cyrix before them) have gone for MHz "ratings" rather than actual clock speeds, like mine is an AMD athlon 2800+ but it runs at 2.25GHz (but is as good as a 2.8Ghz P4 or something)

And I dont like intel so I dont tend to pay any attention to all the rubbish and jargon they keep churning out.

Processors dont seem too important anymore anyway, its graphics cards now that are the key component (for gamers at least). With the right graphics card a computer like mine (which I put together more than 12 months ago) is still up to the job. Unfortunately it currently doesnt have the right video card so HL2 doesnt run as well as it should.

carmadaaron · Post by **carmadaaron** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 10:24 pm

crikey! water cooling?

Gareth_GT_Hatch · Post by **Gareth_GT_Hatch** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 10:50 pm

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-5347518.html

Tahrey1043 · Post by **Tahrey1043** » Wed Dec 22, 2004 12:18 am

luckily i was just out at the pub and there was a bargain pages or something like that which featured several adverts for computer companies

its the weirdest thing

i could spend Â£169 (a hundred and sixty nine! that's USED computer money) and get a 2.2ghz AMD sempron (amd what now?) with all the basic essential equip including optical drive.... or about Â£2000 and get something that has more options... and a 3.6ghz chip. thats not an enormous difference now. about 63%, or, approximately the difference between me clocking my p120 laptop back to 75mhz (which i did a couple days ago to save battery)... or a 486/66 and 486/40. so, not a huge range despite the price difference!

i.e. really not getting the modern setup, but at least i have an answer now.

i wonder what's left to really tax modern CPUs. I mean, even high quality multiple-pass DVD encoding cant be too much of a chore for a 4ghz'er.. Hmm.

and if my 1600mhz duron (and that's a real 1600) could mix it with the big boys if i threw the latest GeForce into it.

Gareth_GT_Hatch · Post by **Gareth_GT_Hatch** » Wed Dec 22, 2004 7:19 am

Tahrey1043 wrote: and if my 1600mhz duron (and that's a real 1600) could mix it with the big boys if i threw the latest GeForce into it.

depends what motherboard its on i suppose. The computer I had before the one I have now is similar to that (1200MHz athlon) and it was missing a few of the features needed for the latest video cards, namely agp 8X.

Although having said that theres another one now called "PCI Express" which is twice as fast as agp 8X (or something like that) so its probably a good thing that i havent upgraded for a while (So much new stuff coming out i need to give it a while to settle down.)

dxg · Post by **dxg** » Wed Dec 22, 2004 9:48 am

Gareth_GT_Hatch wrote:you can buy a computer from some company that has overclocked a 3.4Ghz (poss 3.6Ghz) to 4GHz. It has water cooling! half the case is the fooooking radiator!

Those aluminimum Apple G5 towers have water cooling. Not water cooling in the "lots of hoses all over the place with a separate pump and radiator" way, but in a "really big heak sink that actually contains the fan, radiator and pump all in one unit" kind of way.

I'll see if I can dig out a picture. It's quite elegant. Of course, the fact that the temperature monitoring hardware doesn't work reliably is a whole other matter...

Btw, Tahrey, I've just given up on the whole buying by mhz thing. I used to wait until the speed increase would be three times what I currently had, then buy. These days, I just wait three years, then buy the fastest thing I can afford.

Deek.

dxg · Post by **dxg** » Wed Dec 22, 2004 1:23 pm

Better pics of the cooling system are here:
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/G5.ars/6

Si_GTi · Post by **Si_GTi** » Wed Dec 22, 2004 1:26 pm

dxg wrote:These days, I just wait three years, then buy the fastest thing I can afford.

Deek.

Agreed. I've had mine for six years now, and although I've been upgrading various components over the years, the motherboard and chipset are in need of being replaced, simply because, like Gareth_GT_Hatch says, the technology has moved on. I still have only 2 USB (1.1) ports, and have to rely on a PCI network adaptor instead of an inbuilt on on the motherboard... and moving up to a new machine means my graphics card will suddenly work a lot faster on AGP 8x (its currenlty running at 4x).

However, unless you are using your PC for resource-heavy applications like games or graphics editing, there isn't so much of a need to upgrade beyond a capable 1GHz chipset with 512MB RAM... does just fine for 'net surfing and music playing IMO. Thats pretty much what I have at the moment, boosted by the aforementioned graphics card.

Anyway... in February or thereabouts, I'll be doing as Deek mentioned, buying the fastest machine I can afford - most likely Athlon 64 based - and then working with that for probably the next 3-4 years...

13twelve · Post by **13twelve** » Wed Dec 22, 2004 2:19 pm

i keep looking at the micro systems on scan and microdirect and thinking thats the way i want to go

my giant beige tower at home doesnt do it for me

if laptops werent so extertonatly expensive for high spec'd ones - i'd go that route

cos i do do graphics editing and gaming

still, the vaio range of desktop type machines intrigues me

Gareth_GT_Hatch · Post by **Gareth_GT_Hatch** » Wed Dec 22, 2004 5:04 pm

Si_GTi wrote:
dxg wrote:These days, I just wait three years, then buy the fastest thing I can afford.

Deek.
Agreed. I've had mine for six years now, and although I've been upgrading various components over the years, the motherboard and chipset are in need of being replaced, simply because, like Gareth_GT_Hatch says, the technology has moved on. I still have only 2 USB (1.1) ports, and have to rely on a PCI network adaptor instead of an inbuilt on on the motherboard... and moving up to a new machine means my graphics card will suddenly work a lot faster on AGP 8x (its currenlty running at 4x).

However, unless you are using your PC for resource-heavy applications like games or graphics editing, there isn't so much of a need to upgrade beyond a capable 1GHz chipset with 512MB RAM... does just fine for 'net surfing and music playing IMO. Thats pretty much what I have at the moment, boosted by the aforementioned graphics card.

Anyway... in February or thereabouts, I'll be doing as Deek mentioned, buying the fastest machine I can afford - most likely Athlon 64 based - and then working with that for probably the next 3-4 years...

Its worth waiting a bit longer where the athlon 64 is concerned I think. They dont have DDR memory support like intels do. Apparently the memory controller is integrated into the chip to make it faster, but for some reason AMD didnt think they would bother with DDR memory. I dont know how long we have to wait but it may be a while. But then you can never beat the technology race I suppose. ie itll probabtly not make much difference in the long run.

Tahrey1043 · Post by **Tahrey1043** » Wed Dec 22, 2004 5:16 pm

that's what the surprise with the Â£169 system was --- there was a guy offering me a second hand PC on the works intranet for Â£140 -- a celeron 733. thought it was a fairly good deal and would be powerful enough for my mum to surf and word process on (a step up from the old 600mhz job... currently running at 540 because it's chip is burnt out and overheats at any higher setting even with a decent fan..)

then look in a random copy of bargain pages that's on the table in the pub and find something for thirty quid more.. that's three times as fast and has more memory and disc. and a years warranty. damn. (and we don't even *need* memory/disc, as a fair few things can be transferred, including monitor)

took me by surprise - i looked in there, the fastest PC on sale i could find was 3.6... last i checked about a year ago it was 3.4... and a year before that i think it was 3.04...? pace has really slackened off seeing as a 1.4ghz was sh*t-hot about 12-18 months before that!

think i'll wait a year or 2 and find whatever i can get that runs very smooth and quiet (preferably silent), holds 500gb and a gig of ram, has a dual layer dvd burner, good 3d chipset, 5.1 and optical sound output, wireless network and an IR front panel, and is reasonably small with a good quality LCD. Kind of like a distributed, chunky laptop with a better keyboard / pointer. oh and it'd be nice if all the parts were still 98SE compatible

the cpu i'd almost ignore, maybe stipulate that it must be at least 3ghz (so it's a similar leap to it, as it was from the 850mhz) but forget the branding

the future's gonna be coolâ„¢