Mollox Posted September 23, 2005 Report Share Posted September 23, 2005 Reading a lot into PC performance, components etc and the whole obsession with overclocking and can’t help wondering why?? What DO people with such high end machines actually do with all this perceived power? Or could it be that a whole industry has created itself out of people’s obsession with numbers on digital readouts rather than tangible on screen performance? The reason I ask is that I can’t help trying to compare the spec of my dated PC with what’s available today. I use my pc predominantly for browsing/email but it also gets a regular photoshop workout with a lot of high res image work and seems to cope just fine. Why is this surprising? Well because it’s a p3 600! Basically, back in ’99 I ticked all the best boxes and gave Dell just over £2k for what was at the time a mega system. I’m not suggesting its anything other than dated and old school now but its surprising how well its coping. All I’ve done since new is replace Win98 with XP Pro, added a new HD and popped in some more RAM. Specs are: Intel Pentium 3 600 512mb PC100 RAM Maxtor 80gb IDE HD w/8 mb Cache IBM Deathstar 37gig IDE HD CD/DVD CD Writer 128mb nvidia Graphics of some description (tnt2?) Soundblaster Live surround system Dell 19in CRT Monster Running XP Pro All of which is comical compared to today’s specs yet its nippy and very adequate for all but the most intensive Photoshop applications. It multi-tasks well too. So what’s going on? Is overclocking yet another way of keeping suppliers in business and proving Moore’s Law? Are today’s PCs really 6 x faster in the real world? Right now, the only thing that’s making me want to build a new PC is the fact I love technology and the belief that video editing in Premiere will probably kill my machine. I don’t play that many PC games anymore (bloody Xbox) and while I’m below the minimum specs I can still play monster games from a couple of years back no problem. It just doesn’t add up really…. Will building an AMD 3700+ syterm with 2gb RAM etc or a dual core based machine change my life in anyway? I smell a rat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mollox Posted September 23, 2005 Author Report Share Posted September 23, 2005 Oh yeah and it has feck all cooling and is fairly noisy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omi Posted September 23, 2005 Report Share Posted September 23, 2005 You would perceive it as being VERY rapid. You've become accustomed to your existing speeds, which are perfectly adequate, I'm sure. The best analogy I can think of is that you're driving a 15 year old BMW 5-series... - It still has all the toys, runs like a dream, performs well whether you're motorway cruising or throwing it about in the twisties, because the basic components are all very good. If you were having problems and crashes on your PC it would be likee the same car that only got a service every two years. An up-to-date PC with all the toys is like a new M5. Still does a lot of things the same, but advantages in technology have brought better handling and chassis from a big, heavy car. Aerodynamics are improved for efficiency and materials for noise suppression... It still does everything the same, only better. Overclocking is simply the "M" button on the steering wheel. - Increase power-draw, increase performance, increase temperature. Reconfigure the timing and it'll fly, but at the expense of efficiency, economy etc. I know lots of people who work every Sunday so they can afford the very latest graphics card, but drive a Metro. On the other hand, I know people who work their nuts off for the most powerful car they can get their hands on, but don't particularly care about electronics as long as they can browse the web and watch TV. Was that any good? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mollox Posted September 23, 2005 Author Report Share Posted September 23, 2005 Not bad! Now get back in the other PC post Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chav Posted September 23, 2005 Report Share Posted September 23, 2005 [ QUOTE ] What DO people with such high end machines actually do with all this perceived power? [/ QUOTE ] Compile time for a typical game can be several minutes.... Also tend to have 1000's of assets including images, sound fx, meshes, animation data etc which all need converting/compressing/packing for each test build. So the faster the PC, the less time have to sit waiting around whilst it builds and uploads to the device etc. Dual-core chips rock btw. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris_B Posted September 23, 2005 Report Share Posted September 23, 2005 [ QUOTE ] Reading a lot into PC performance, components etc and the whole obsession with overclocking and can’t help wondering why?? What DO people with such high end machines actually do with all this perceived power? [/ QUOTE ] Well Half-Life 2 ain't bad in 1900x1200 widescreen mode with all the graphical options cranked up to the max. The serious answer is that software developers have been allowed to get further away from the metal to an extent. In Ye Olde Days of computer programming, anything compute intensive was likely to be written in assembler for speed, where these days stuff's written in C/C++. Add feature bloat and you have apps that require a lot more grunt to run; you may be bale to run PS 7 on your PC, but try CS2 and you'll see why big machines are nice to have. To extend Omi's analogy, modern cars with higher hp engines expend a lot of that energy driving brighter headlights, AC, satnav, loud soundsystems etc. An engine from a ten year old car wouldn't have much power left for forward motion after losses from the ancilliarys of a modern car. I run CS2 on my PC, and Bridge runs at a reasonable speed, where on my old machine I could leave it thumbnailing a folder of a few hundred RAWs and go watch a film, my new box can do that in the background while I surf the web, write documents or even rip CDs to MP3 or burn CDs and DVDs, thanks to the joy of dual-core processing and quad SATA hard drives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mollox Posted September 23, 2005 Author Report Share Posted September 23, 2005 Yes, but do you have a girlfriend? Ok, ok point taken I'll build a new PC... ....or is it worth waiting a year and getting something optimised for Vista? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omi Posted September 23, 2005 Report Share Posted September 23, 2005 No, upgrade now and wait until Vista is established and had a lot of it's creases ironed out. Plus, hardware will be cheaper by then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris_B Posted September 23, 2005 Report Share Posted September 23, 2005 [ QUOTE ] Yes, but do you have a girlfriend? [/ QUOTE ] Sadly not, the wife won't allow it... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparky Posted September 23, 2005 Report Share Posted September 23, 2005 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparky Posted September 23, 2005 Report Share Posted September 23, 2005 [ QUOTE ] ....or is it worth waiting a year and getting something optimised for Vista? [/ QUOTE ] No Vista isn't ready yet to be able to determine true machine requirements. I can say however, that the difference from XP to Vista, is similar in size to the jump made from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95. It really is a decent OS and I'm well impressed with the beta so far. But will be a while yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mollox Posted September 23, 2005 Author Report Share Posted September 23, 2005 [ QUOTE ] [ QUOTE ] Yes, but do you have a girlfriend? [/ QUOTE ] Sadly not, the wife won't allow it... [/ QUOTE ] Very good (i was only kidding btw ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thorburn Posted September 24, 2005 Report Share Posted September 24, 2005 For a little while (a couple weeks) I had the fastest PC on the planet in 3D Mark 2001. Its fun fiddling around and seeing what you can get out of it in much the same way people tune cars. Why do people NEED to up there RS6 from 400-odd bhp to 500+? They don't but its fun to do it anyway! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Please sign in to comment
You will be able to leave a comment after signing in
Sign In Now