How good is your PC?
 

Just nosying to see if anyone has a really decent PC around these parts, so if you ain't that techy you should probably close your ears/eyes right about now.

My studio computer: Asus K8N-DL mobo, 2 AMDx2 64 Opteron 270 processors (quadcore @ 2GHz per core), 8GB PC3200 DDR400 ecc registered RAM, BFG Geforce 8800GTX GPU (overclocked edition), E-MU 1820m soundcard, 600w Coolermaster iGreen PSU, CM stacker 832 alluminium case. 32-inch LCD monitor (well TV, but it's used as a monitor). Behringer Truth 2031A Monitor Speakers (No crappy pc speakers for me). Logitech Mx5000 Keyboard and Mouse (with bluetooth "dongle"). It all functions flawlessly on Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit. :cool:

It's a geek's/gamer's dream. Cost me an arm and a leg though, but I built it myself, saved myself quite a bit of £. I'm a music producer/student and believe it or not, I can actually use up the CPU pretty easily, the RAM I have in spades, even on a 64-bit OS. I say it runs flawlessly, I only have one problem; the soundcard drivers are pretty naff because they're only beta drivers, but once they release the final ones it will be flawless. I've heard a lot of crap about Vista, but if you have a machine that has multiple cores (esp. more than 2), you ain't going to get the performance out of XP. I've tested this thing on XP and Vista 64-bit and it's Vista that multithreads the best, it spreads the load even and is as solid as a rock. XP has a hard time multithreading and doesn't use the RAM as efficiently as Vista does. I had way more blue screens in win98, followed by XP and Vista has been the most solid OS I've ever used. Seriously, at least with a quadcore it is. You'll probs be okay if you have a single or dual-core with XP.

Still I need more power; If I can fit water cooling in this thing I am going to clock the Opterons to 3 or 4 GHz (3Ghz they'll do easily) which will be at least 12Ghz of theoretical power. I just need M$ to make more RAM available and this thing will be a real monster. Considering it's only the second PC I've built I'm quite pleased with it.

Yes I'm a real geek, but I need to be for what I do.;) So let's talk PCs...:D

John

Re: How good is your PC?
 

i wouldnt know where to start with my pc johnny, i switch it on, it does what i tell it to do, then i turn it off, simple as.... ;)

Re: How good is your PC?
 

I agree Flashy - I never understand why men need to know WHY & HOW something works.
I remember my brother dismantling our old valve radio (in the days before TV) in order to 'find out how it works' - he was panicking because he couldn't put it back together before mum & dad got home

If it aint broke - dont mend it :D

Re: How good is your PC?
 

Nice set up you got there, Built my own a while ago.

Think it ended up as this lot.

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600, Socket 775, 2.4 GHz, 1066MHz FSB, Conroe Core, 4MB Cache,

640MB XFX 8800GTS XT PCI-E (x16), Mem 1700MHz, GPU 530MHz, 96 Streams, 2 x Dual Link DVI/HDTV

600w Seasonic S12-600 SLi Ready Silent PSU 2xPCI-E 4xSATA 120mm Fan ATX1.3/2.01

Asus P5B Deluxe/WiFi-AP iP965, S775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 533/667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX

2GB (2x1GB) CorsairTwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800), 240 Pins, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 4-4-4-12, EPP

320Gb HGST (IBM/Hitachi) HDT725032VLA360 Deskstar T7K500, SATA300, 7200rpm, 16MB Cache, 8.5 ms, NCQ

Antec Nine Hundred/Ultimate Gamer Case no PSU

Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro - P4 up to 4.4GHz - S775 Dual Core / Core2Duo Ready

Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound for CPU and Chipset Coolers

Sony AW-G170ASV Silver 18x DVD±RW x12 Ram Dual Layer DVD-Writer OEM

Re: How good is your PC?
 

mines good, it gets me on the internet, i can play games on it, thats all i need to know;)

Re: How good is your PC?
 

Er which one i have 5 at the min:D

Re: How good is your PC?
 

I'm intruiged by the if M$ would make more comment on RAM? care to expand?

Also , I'm afraid your experience of Vista doesn't tally with teh majority of people I know. Even an Microsoft devout bloke I know agrees that Vista has some serious flaws in core functionality. (e.g. try getting Vista to connect to a WPA1 network), file deletion and general network file handling has some MAJOR flaws in it. For a flagship OS to have such problems is to br frank, scary.

I'd also like to understand how you feel the system is flawless when you say you do music production andteh soundcard drivers are buggy? Surely your whole purpose of music production relies on the sound subsystem working to perfection?

Impressive spec list though :D

Re: How good is your PC?
 

er "Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound for CPU and Chipset Coolers"
not something i would put in a pc specs list

Re: How good is your PC?
 

Copied and pasted from a previous thred.:D

One thing I am annoyed at is apparantly I need Vista to take full advantage of DX10 games.:(

Re: How good is your PC?
 

and you then need another 2 gig of ram for it to run properly again :D

Re: How good is your PC?
 

Hi,

What I meant about the RAM is allowing more RAM to be used by the OS. At the moment I've got 8GB RAM, but only 4GB can be used by vista, 2GB of this can be used by my music production software. If I had a 32-bit OS then only 2GB could be used by windows. This is why I'd like microsoft to basically have no limit on RAM, I can't see why not in a 64-bit system, especially when the board has a capacity of around 24GB of RAM. You'd think Vista would be future-proof, but a lot of people I know already have more than 4GB. Seems a little odd to me. If they had a max of say 8 or 16GB. I'd be able to reserve 2GB for each core. Plus my music software would use more RAM (and it uses RAM to load virtual instruments & audio recordings; so more is better).

The system is flawless in that it's stable. The problem with the soundcard drivers is that everytime you make the sytem use the audio card drivers (media player or any program that requires the sound drivers to process sound), the drivers tend to make the sound go to one side i.e sound just comes out of either the left speaker or the right speaker (or none for that matter). If you get the sound to come out of both speakers and never "restart" the process (you leave the media player/program open) then it comes out of both speakers indefinitely. The quality and latency of the audio is perfect and with all the power, it allows me to use higher sample rates, meaning higher quality audio (although the human ear can't notice the quality difference anyway). I find my experiences with
Vista pretty strange, as it works pretty much flawless for every single process I use it for, people have been having real issues with it, yet I haven't, only soundcard drivers. They have nothing to do with M$ or Vista.

XP is pretty much solid as a rock too, it's just it doesn't seem to work as well as Vista on this particular system (all my other PCs have XP as it works better for them). I hope they do resolve the other issues with vista though. I think i'm one of the only people that are satisfied with it :eek:

John

Re: How good is your PC?
 

Can I just ask, are you using a 32 bit program on 64 bit OS? thats why you are limited to 4 gig address space. Is there a 64 bit version of the software?

I like your protection of the OS with regard to the driver software. You bought a flagship OS on a flagship PC and it doesn't work as well as a 10 year old PC running win 95 :D (i.e. sound works fine!!!! )

Re: How good is your PC?
 

At the moment, the software is 32-bit and there's no 64-bit version (otherwise I'd have it already). It's coded in Delphi and Delphi haven't released a 64-bit coding environment as of yet. The developers say they're going to make a 64-bit version asap, Dephi say the tools/software should be available early 2008. There's nothing I can do but wait for a 64-bit version really :(

If I use the onboard sound then technically the sound already does work fine, there's nothing wrong with the sound when used that way, it's pretty obvious that there's no point in blaming M$ or vista for the slackness of a seperate company. I have had words with this company (E-MU/creative) telling them about this and telling them how unsataisfied I am with their service, but I'm just the "little man". I did have it running with 64-bit XP drivers previous to the beta Vista drivers and it had exactly the same problem as the beta drivers (my guess is that they are using modified XP drivers as beta drivers; that's how cheap they are). If I could, I'd use the onboard sound to prevent all these problems, the only thing being I need ASIO sound drivers and the connections on my soundcard to record instruments, plus the connections on my monitor speakers are either XLR or balanced 1/4 inch stereo jacks. The onboard sound device only has 1 1/8 inch jack; I need at least 3 1/4 inch stereo jacks. This is why I'm forced to put up with this crap.

All this being said, I do have several other computers I can produce music on. They're all XP driven and they work flawless. My best one is a dual-core Athlon 64-bit with 1GB RAM w/ GeForce 7 series GT, E-MU 1212m soundcard, which is my last studio computer. It's pretty rapid when it comes to loading times/latency, it just can't process as much instruments/audio as the quadcore can. ;)

Regards,

John

Re: How good is your PC?
 

I 'll let you know when Delphi is updated as I know a couple of Delphi Guru's

32 bit is your real problem. (he says when he was brought up with 8 bit and even a couple of 4 bit ones :eek: )

I'm happy that there is at least one person that isn't having problems with Vista as your the exception that proves the rule! :D

Re: How good is your PC?
 

i know our comp is a good one but i couldnt tell you much about it its a samsung laptop thats all i need to know lol

Re: How good is your PC?
 

heh, Kathleen, your laptop is probably more like a quick Mondeo, Infinitus is talking about 911 turbo / Bugatti Veron sort of arena :D

Re: How good is your PC?
 

Put it this way; It ain't exactly something you can go and buy from PC World :D

John

Re: How good is your PC?
 

as per my comment :D

Nice PC, if I could be arsed I'd do similar, as it is I don't _need_ anywhere near that amout of power so this nice shiny laptop will do me fine.

Did you know for example teh Hubble telescope still uses a 486?

Re: How good is your PC?
 

:) Yes, and supposedly we went to the moon using less processing power than a calculator :confused:

To dispell a few myths, the PC isn't actually fast as such, it's only as fast as my single core, which is the same clock speed and fbs as this, plus they both have DDR400 pc3200 RAM. If I showed it to you working you'd be forgiven for thinking it was a single core. It's only when I use dozens of processor-intensive applications running simultaneously that I see it shine. Wheras a normal computer would just crawl into a hole and die via blue-screen this just says "give me more, I can handle it" :D It occasionally does wow me and I think that it's ultra fast, but then the next day it's slow. It's pretty fickle with regards to performance. I suppose it would be really good for astronomers, physicists and any professional who needs to calculate God knows how many things at the same time.

For everyday use it's a bit of a waste of power. I'd be happy with a quick laptop too. A good laptop is the only thing I don't have. :eek:

John

Re: How good is your PC?
 

I've not updated my PC in years as I have no need for great power anymore, not even in terms of gaming hence I have bought a laptop with no dedicated graphics card.

I needed a smaller laptop for Uni so decided on a macbook 'cause they're nice and small, pretty powerful for my needs (which nowadays is essentially Browser/Msn).

2.16Ghz Core 2 Duo Processor
1Gig of ram (I Suppose I could upgrade to 2.. but I don't really need it unless I decide to start multimedia editing)
120Gb HD (Too small. I think I might get an external)

OSX seems so incredibly quick on it. I've yet to get round to installing Linux on it for a test run!

Re: How good is your PC?
 

My pc is no good can i have yours

Re: How good is your PC?
 

i wouldnt say your p.c runs flawless infinitus, there are some nasty flaws with
os/v64, which may contribute to the bluescreening/memorydump
... ive noticed that when a new programme or vst is installed that does not even require special drivers ..such as dll files, on the first few tries the p.c may bluescreen or malfunction because quite simply when the
new vst or prog is opened, the core will search through every
file and pre-read them .... however if there are similar files already established
which open up no problem that have similar names (i.e. 123.dll), this may
confuse the core and it will try to fuse one with the other resulting in a
kryten like mind blow... (hence the p.c,s mental breakdown) this can be rectified more than most just by opening up the file until it stops crashing
and settles in when the p.c finally clicks and writes the correct pathway and busroute in the regedit .... correkt moy if eim rong but p.c.s operate the same
way as a biological machine (like us) exept they are far easier to understand
if one thinks of them this way.... the mainboard is the c.n.s., the hard drive
stores all data (sub concious) the memory brings the info to the surface screen temporary and remians there until different info is required (conscious)
the psu is self explanetary .... hardware cannot run without software and vice
versa.... (all silicon chips contain written operating instructions and software
requires hardware to read it) if you dont understand how a computer works or
how it thinks then you will never ever fully understand the workings of a human mind, which is infinitely more complex( hence my distrust of so called psycologists who cant even
defrag a remedial p.c.!) the more your hardrive is filled up doesnt mean
to say it has more chance of failure than a drive with very little info on, granted the latter may bring up the info slightly quicker but it doesnt
make a difference as far as performance is concerned, that is down to the
cpu and the clocking speed/ memory setup..... the wrong combination of
components can have devastating effects even on the latest modern machines, and replacing/upgrading components may cause more problems than before they were fitted due to incorrect diagnosis in the first place because different problems can display the same syptoms, you
will be surprised how many p.c retailers will fleece its customers into overpriced un-needed components when it may just require a single written file or a quick deletion of a file in the registry! going back to the o/s
i recently tried 3 differnt ones on the same p.c setup, i tried windows 98se
because xp and vista couldnt read wps files i needed for a re-print and boy
was it sooooooo annoyingly slow! then xp pro sp1 which i found adequate
enough to do the tasks without latency dragging or blanking <nerdterm
(thats when you click on something and it does nothing the first few tries)
however when it came to vista i expected something really special and hi-tec
especially for the price (329 retail 130 oem... you can build a complete rig for
the cost of this overpriced software!) but the more i used it the more i realised that bill gates is a robbing capitalist pig .... to round this post off into
something understood by the layman (and woman) if you strip the programme
down to the essentials and remove the make-up and designer shades of hype
i found that, for me buying vista was a bad investment for the following reasons... too many compatability issues which would entail me having to
spend a fortune on correcting when the p.c. has perfectly matched components which is flawless on other o/s,s security issues with the loading
of dll files and drivers which the vista gustapo refuse to allow in, and all the time wasted transferring files internally or to another external drive due to its on
board commentry of estimating how long its gonna take to transfer the files
instead of simply just doing it....when time is short and you have to go through this illogical ritual i think of brick-screen, its definately not for people
with a short fuse... to be frank i still consider it an incomplete beta which was
put on the market when it was still a foetus, which is the trouble today with
software capitalists, sell it now..fix it later. if you have a cracking p.c. running flawless with your favourite programmes on xp then you will be dissappointed forking out the price of a small country for the privilige
of a migrane and a few burst bloodvessels ...be warned... if you need
a p.c. for your vocation then stick with the reliable xp.... also.. on the compatability problems with drivers for hardware i feel that mastergates should have
contributed more by writing a code which would ensure that everthing that ran fine on xp could simply run exactly the same on vista even if it was half
the bite-size, but he expects other manufacturers to re-write the codes for him
which reeks of meglomanic ignorance, after all its HIS fault why there are
compatability issues because he changed the darn codes rendering even
the very best hardware and software useless....money for old rope...
i suppose it wont matter a few years down the line thats why im going to wait
until the war is over, because on the scale of probability when vista is running
perfect, there will be a newer o/s with many more problems for us to intergrate into an already stressful lifestyle... anyone for an aneurism?

Re: How good is your PC?
 

Goodness me, ever heard of formatting?

I have an answer to your problems.....

:D

Re: How good is your PC?
 

was that a way of saying it didn't work?

Re: How good is your PC?
 

He didn't like it :D