Processor or RAM?

[Pzman]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Maximus:

Funny thing is, Rob, is that you can buy a rig like we're talking about here for about $1300. What would a 1.33GHz Mac cost? $5000?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Mac s have a better mother bord Max thats why.

PCs are cheep junk. And a 1.3 Ghz G4 cube is only $14,000 Candian I have know idea how much it is American.

[ 07-11-2001: Message edited by: Panzerman ]

[offtaskagain]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by WARHAMMER:

Just to throw one more log on the fire:

I have a 866mhz compaq, with 128ram, but only

an 11mb video card. Could the video card be

causing my slow downs and quick freezes??

Thanks in advance

Warhammer

:cool:<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

It more than likely is the culprit. Who the hell makes an 11mb card anyways?

[imported_WARHAMMER]

Thanks Panzerwerfer42!

Yea really!! I'm finding a few holes

in the "special deal" I received. FYI, my

system was a package deal from Curcuit City

(monitor,printer,etc) for @$822.00 after all

the rebates. I still think my system has the

balls to host an on-line game though.

Thanks man!

[offtaskagain]

Honestly, who makes that card? I've never heard of odd amounts of RAM in any form.

[Gen-x87H]

Mac s have a better mother bord Max thats why.

PCs are cheep junk. And a 1.3 Ghz G4 cube is only $14,000 Candian I have know idea how much it is American."

Oh please. The MBs in Macs are usually made by Motorola. They are nothing special. ASUS, Tyan, Gigabyte all make quality MBs. Macs are usually more expensive because that is what people seem to be willing to pay for them.

I did not know the G4 was hitting 1.3Ghz. Last I heard it was at 750Mhz. Short pipeline seems to be hurting it. 7 stages ouchy!

Gen

[imported_WARHAMMER]

Panzerwerfer42,

No idea at all. I got my info from an

Compaq customer service rep after they cleaned up hard drive for me!

[WWB]

Various responses:

1) Yes, 1.5ghz Celerons might require liquid nitrogen cooling solutions. But it is still pretty cool that a chip designed to run at 533 mhz can push that kind of speed. And you are right GenX, in this day and age, OCing is not worth the risks any more. The speed gains are insignificant compared to those you could make 1 to 2 years back.

2) WARHAMMER: That 11 mb 'Video' card you have is actually an imbedded video processor of some sort and is sharing system memory. Neither of which is a good thing. Unfortunately, in many cases motherboards with such processors lack AGP slots, which means your choices in graphics cards are going to be both slow and expensive.

3) Col Deadmarsh: OCing the video card is not reccomended for those who are not very attuned to their hardware. If you really want to do so, you need the coolbits registry hack which I currently lack the URL to find.

Also note that it does not really play nicely with CM; my text gets odd flaws from time to time which I am sure are caused by overclocking. And it is really not worth it if all you play is CM, the GeForceMX is prefectly adequate and CM is not frame-rate dependant anyways. Now if you Counter-Strike, it is a different story.

4) Mac vs. PC thing (especially Rob and Max): Get over it. Macs are more expensive, but not intrinsically better. Nor are PCs intrinsically better than Macs because they are cheaper and more customizable. And those clock cycle comparisons are meaningless unless one is comparing similar CPUs anyways.

That is all I have to say, you can continue on.

WWB

[Col Deadmarsh]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by WARHAMMER:

Just to throw one more log on the fire:

I have a 866mhz compaq, with 128ram, but only

an 11mb video card. Could the video card be

causing my slow downs and quick freezes??

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Um...I'm going with...yes.

I didn't even know they made an 11 mb video card. I would suggest you go out and buy at least a 32 mb card right away. With your system you're sure to see a marked improvement.

[Nutball]

Well, Chris, the more RAM you get the less loading, and pausing you'll have.

[imported_WARHAMMER]

Thanks Colonel & WWB-99,

I'll get some research done on the

topic. I bought the system this year, so I'll

find a way to boost my fire power as they say. Thanks for your help

Warhammer

[Chris Jenkins]

In the last few days I have gone from:

3D Prophet to 3D Prophet II MX

128MB RAM to 384MB RAM

.28 DPI 15" monitor to .25DPI 17" monitor

dying CPU fan to a brand new one

and even got Rowan's Battle of Britain.

Talk about improvement! CM is smoother, but I am sure that BOB would not look nearly as good.

[Col Deadmarsh]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Chris Jenkins:

In the last few days I have gone from:

3D Prophet to 3D Prophet II MX

128MB RAM to 384MB RAM

.28 DPI 15" monitor to .25DPI 17" monitor

dying CPU fan to a brand new one

and even got Rowan's Battle of Britain.

Talk about improvement! CM is smoother, but I am sure that BOB would not look nearly as good.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

You know what...I had bought European Air War about 5 months ago and have yet to play it because this game keeps sucking up my time. I'll bet it cranks though on my new 1.33 gig system.

[Treeburst155]

Just for fun I opened IE explorer and my email program and played a few turns of CM, all with System Monitor keeping track of free physical memory. With 256 MB of RAM I never dipped below 103 MB free while playing the game. I've got vcache set at a max of 32MB which has something to do with it I'm sure. My point is that 256 MB is more than enough for CM.

Treeburst155 out.

[ 07-15-2001: Message edited by: Treeburst155 ]

[phil stanbridge]

Don't forget here that Widows 98, and maybe even ME do not utilise more than 256mb RAM. NT and 2000 yes, more memory the better, but the "home" o/s cannot.

[Vanir Ausf B]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by phil stanbridge:

Don't forget here that Widows 98, and maybe even ME do not utilise more than 256mb RAM. NT and 2000 yes, more memory the better, but the "home" o/s cannot.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I'm not sure about ME, but Win 98 uses up to 512 MB.

[WWB]

All versions of Win9x can handle up to 512mb of RAM. How well they handle it is a different story. . . .

WWB

[Fishu]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by WARHAMMER:

Just to throw one more log on the fire:

I have a 866mhz compaq, with 128ram, but only

an 11mb video card. Could the video card be

causing my slow downs and quick freezes??

Thanks in advance

Warhammer

:cool:<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Definately does.

[karch]

*** This is not me arguing... just clearing some points. I use Macs and PC for work and personal use. ***

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Gen-x87H:

Mac s have a better mother bord Max thats why.

PCs are cheep junk. And a 1.3 Ghz G4 cube is only $14,000 Candian I have know idea how much it is American."

Oh please. The MBs in Macs are usually made by Motorola. They are nothing special. ASUS, Tyan, Gigabyte all make quality MBs. Macs are usually more expensive because that is what people seem to be willing to pay for them.

I did not know the G4 was hitting 1.3Ghz. Last I heard it was at 750Mhz. Short pipeline seems to be hurting it. 7 stages ouchy!

Gen<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Apple designs all it's own motherboards, I have no idea who makes them. Motorola only supplies the chips (along with IBM). Apple's MBs are pretty good, but I have to admit, seeing Linux memory and data tests on PC MBs and Mac MBs, the PC MBs come out on top most of the time. But it's really hard to measure. OSs aren't perfect and they make a bigger difference on how they manage info. As for being more expensive, it's partly that people will pay more, partly because Apple designs it's own MB, OS, hardware and puts a lot of effort designing what it's computers will look like. Most Mac users appreciate that.

The Power PC chip is only around 700+ right now with around 900MHz or 1GHz this summer. Too bad really, but shorter pipes compared to longer pipes is much more complex than simple clock speed. There are some great articles at http://www.theregister.co.uk/ and other places that deeper pipes allow for faster clock speeds, but kill efficiency. That's why a 900Mhz P3 is noticably faster than a 900MHz P4, and why a 700MHz G4, let alone a G3 compares quite well to the latest high clock speed Pentiums.

Yes they are faster for most things, but not by much, and not nearly as much as the clock speed would indicate. It seems it would be better to get the absolute fastest speed with the shallowest pipe to get the most powerful CPU, but Intel got it right (for selling CPUs) when it put EVERYTHING into MHz instead of power per clock cycle. It's really fascinating and complicated why the PPC chips still stand up so well in certain areas compared to the GHz+ PC chips.

Cheers.

[WWB]

One point about clock speed in general: it is no longer the bottleneck. Quite simply, modern machines are running much faster than the disk and RAM can feed them numbers to crunch anyways. Moreover, very little software can take advantage of much more than 800mhz. The major exceptions being FPSs, Flight Sims and 3d rendering. Even then, most of those packages will run perfectly fine on an 800mhz machine with an appropriate graphics card.

You are much better off buying a well balanced 900mhz (plenty of RAM, fast disk, great monitor, etc.) machine and spending the money you save on broadband instead of going for that 1.75ghz P4.

WWB