Subject:
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Re: Shopping for a new PC...
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.geek
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Date:
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Thu, 4 May 2000 03:00:42 GMT
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Reply-To:
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mattdm@NOSPAMmattdm.org
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Viewed:
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152 times
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Bram Lambrecht <BramL@JUNO.com> wrote:
> > Dual PIII 600
> > 512MB RAM
> > 18GB 10,000rpm SCSI drive
> > 3DFX Voodoo3 16MB
> > DVD drive (need video decompression card to watch movies though)
> > Viewsonic 19" Monitor
> > (+ other essential stuff like keyboard, 3-button mouse, etc.
> > and, rh linux is preinstalled.)
vs
> Hmm, for $3700, I can get
> AMD Athlon 1 Gz
> 384 MB 100 MHz SDRAM
> 30 GB 7200 rpm Ultra ATA drive
> 32MB NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS Graphics Accelerator
> 16x/40x DVD drive
> 8x/4x/32x CD-RW
> 19" Monitor
> (+Win98, MS Office 2000, and essentials.)
> from Gateway.
> What would be the main differences between these machines, especially in
> terms of performance? What's the better deal?
Dual PIII 600 vs Athlon 1Ghz is probably a toss-up. With most things, the
1Ghz Athlon will be faster, but rendering is a great best-case application
for SMP, so the two PIIIs might be faster for some of what you're doing. And
really, they're both pretty damn fast. :)
For 3D stuff, there's no such thing as "enough RAM". 384 is quite a bit, but
33% more is nothing to sneeze at. This is probably a bigger factor than the
CPU, actually.
The drive system is where you'll really see the difference between these two
configs. A 10krpm SCSI drive vs 7.2krpm IDE is like night and day. (Or day
and night, depending on your perspective.) The programming group here at BU
did some testing, and found SCSI-based disk systems to perform about twice
as well as the IDE equivalent under moderate-to-heavy load. (Sorry I don't
have exact numbers or references for that; you'll have to take my word for
it. *grin*) For most people, I recommend IDE, but for power users, SCSI is
worth it. It's also nice because more than one device on the chain can talk
at once -- if you add a second drive to an IDE controller, you see a
performance hit.
The nvidia card is definitely better than the voodoo3, although both are
game-oriented and aren't designed for top-of-the-line serious OpenGL.
(And really, if you're doing rendering, that doesn't matter much anyway.)
--
Matthew Miller ---> mattdm@mattdm.org
Quotes 'R' Us ---> http://quotes-r-us.org/
Boston University Linux ---> http://linux.bu.edu/
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Shopping for a new PC...
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| (...) But I do some programming and stuff too, so I don't want a Mac. (...) I was more inclined to get a Windows machine and put on a copy of Linux, but as I'm going into engineering, maybe I'll get more into Linux... (...) I use Corel Photopaint 8, (...) (25 years ago, 4-May-00, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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