Jeff Heidman Posted January 17, 2001 Share Posted January 17, 2001 Sorry, I just couldn't resist. I have nothing against Macs, I just thought that Jobs was a riot as he breathlessly anounced that Macs were going to have all these wonderful technologies that were not exactly cutting edge. GeForce2 MX standard in the top 3 models? AGP 4X? Every time he anounced one of these the crowd cheered and oohed and awed like he jsut anounced that your G4 would turn water into wine or something. I do not doubt that there is good reason for MAcs cult following. I just thought that the Expo was rather funny, especially after some other Mac faithful told me about how Jobs anounced all this technology that was "2-3 years ahead of anything in the PC world". Then I watched the Expo myself. Jeff Heidman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark IV Posted January 17, 2001 Share Posted January 17, 2001 I am an OEM supplier of Dell products (with our systems) and I would not recommend them, based on their customer/tech service support. Our customers have a special OEM tech line and registration numbers... same old runaround, press "x" for ignore, then who the hell are you? tech support. Don't do it. I personally have a Micron Millenia Max XP on order right now, but Micron's customer support already has me thinking about cancelling. No answers, no confirmations, press "x" to go in a circle and get corporate happy talk. Still a great machine by all accounts, but gawd help ya if you ever need them. A good premium runner-up (features and price) that I may end up doing business with is http://www.xicomputer.com . They also have an on-line direct roll-your-own config and are very highly rated, though less well-known than Micron or Dell. I figure order the 128Mb DDR RAM setup and get my plug-ins locally.... [This message has been edited by Mark IV (edited 01-17-2001).] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elementalwarre Posted January 18, 2001 Share Posted January 18, 2001 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jeff Heidman: I just thought that the Expo was rather funny, especially after some other Mac faithful told me about how Jobs anounced all this technology that was "2-3 years ahead of anything in the PC world". Then I watched the Expo myself. Jeff Heidman<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> 2-3 years ahead? (scratches head, -really- puzzled look) various mac things are good, but i dunno about 2-3 years ahead well...maybe the mac guys who said that don't get out much Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elementalwarre Posted January 18, 2001 Share Posted January 18, 2001 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by GriffinCheng+: Please note that the 'clock speed' is now a myth, it no longer determines how fast a system performs. Additional note, I have tried a number of tcp games between my P2-450 and PB and PB *always* do the calc and have better performance. It is just a little G3-400 w/ 64MB RAM plus a lamely ATI MobileRage 128 (and it is also on a number of Pentium notebooks) where my P2-450 has 128MB RAM, Wide SCSI-2 HDD plus a o/c GeForce DDR. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> warning, pedantry ahead: i wouldn't call clock speed a myth any more than 64-bit's a myth. it's just that neither tidbit's enough by itself to figure out system throughput, and which tidbits you care about depend on what you do anyway CM's looking for which system has faster main processor floating-point performance since that's a big bottleneck when figuring out a turn's action. that means the video card's irrelevant - it's figuring out unit vectors, visibility levels, shot results, etc that takes time, so what matters is the system's performance on CPU-intensive floating point ops powerpc chips have always had better floating point performance compared to intel(-compatible) chips at the same speed. even though g3's really a 603 design on steroids, it still rips through floating point calcs. g4's even better; it can be 4x or more faster than g3 for some FP or vector operations Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Heidman Posted January 18, 2001 Share Posted January 18, 2001 The problem with saying that a Mac is faster than an Intel at like processor speeds is that the processor speeds are never, ever alike. A fast Intel is now running at 1.2-1.4 GHz. A fast G4 runs at 733 MHz, and costs more. That discrepancy is actually smaller right now than it has been in quite some time. I would like to see a comaprison of processing power per dollar. Jeff Heidman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Pattison Posted January 18, 2001 Share Posted January 18, 2001 Well, for once I agree with Cav Scout. Find a local supplier that builds and repairs computers on site. That way when you mess up trying to trick up your machine, you'll have some place to get fixed quickly. The other thing that I'd recommend is to buy a computer that can be upgraded. That way you can buy an average machine, save some bucks, and upgrade when the prices of the newest chips fall. Given that the time between generations of CPU chips and graphics boards is about 12-14 months, having an upgrade plan at the time of purchase had years to the life of your computer and be easier on the wallet than paying premium prices for premium hardware. For example, the computer I'm currently using is two years old. It started out as P2 350Mhz with 8 Mb Video card and 128 Mb RAM which I got for about $1800. Certainly not the fastest machine at the time, but right down the middle. Last year, I had it upgraded to PIII 600Mhz(new motherboard) and added 128 Mb RAM to give it 256Mb for $960. This year, I added a GeForce 2 Ultra for $460. In the current configuration, this machine is probably going to be good enough to run the lastest releases for about two years before I have to replace the motherboard again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elementalwarre Posted January 19, 2001 Share Posted January 19, 2001 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jeff Heidman: The problem with saying that a Mac is faster than an Intel at like processor speeds is that the processor speeds are never, ever alike. A fast Intel is now running at 1.2-1.4 GHz. A fast G4 runs at 733 MHz, and costs more. That discrepancy is actually smaller right now than it has been in quite some time. I would like to see a comaprison of processing power per dollar. Jeff Heidman<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> no argument in those terms. i was just pointing out why griffin's g3/400 is picked vs his p2/450 although, you might be surprised what terms steve jobs can negotiate for chip prices. he's a -fierce- negotiator Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JigVictor07 Posted January 19, 2001 Share Posted January 19, 2001 Hi, www.anandtech.com and www.sharkyextreme.com have good guides about buying either a high-end or a value gaming PC. I read their reviews before I upgraded my comp. I now have a TBird 1000Mhz, Asus A7V MoBo, 256 MB RAM, Elsa GeForce2 MX and IBM Deskstar 75GXP 30GB HD. SoundBlaster Live! is about 1.5 years old and good enough for me. And CD-RW is a very good addition to the package. Maybe you check the above mentioned sites and then go to the stores that can build you one like those recommended. Hope this helps, JV Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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