If you had $3,200 to splurge on a super rig to be used essentially for video encoding, image editing & 3D rendering work, what would its specs be in terms of:
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I’m placing my bets on dual core processors. If you haven’t read up on these delightful little slabs of silicon, you owe it to yourself to do so before you plunk down your money for a dual CPU system. I’m leaning toward the Intel version for cost reasons. You may prefer to opt for AMD, which *could* have a number of advantages over the initial Intel releases.
The logical HDDs for such a system would be SATA with NCQ; such drives are currently available from Maxtor and Seagate. I think the nod here goes to Maxtor.
you could buy a cheap dell for ~350 bux and throw a hell of a party…
well you did say dream machine! 🙂
i haven’t spec’ed or priced the intel emt64’s on an intel board yet, but if i had 3200 bux to build a machine right now (just built one about a year ago) that’s where i’d start doing homework. drivers will be problematic for a bit yet with windows64, so stick with brand name accesories that you’ve confirmed are supporting win64 quickly. i’d be suprised if ati, matrox and nvidia didn’t rush out cards and drivers, and creative labs for sound. also go with brand name memory that intel specifically recommends for the board. a lot of it.
Here is one of the AMD advantages I spoke of: <http://news.designtechnica.com/article7194.html> I don’t know how soon intel plans to release a 64 bit dual (or multi) core chip, but odds are that it will be soon.
Any specific links that are part of your ‘must read’ list dishing out the advantages of dual-cores as opposed to dual-processors would be gr8ly appreciated!
Are you asking for a recommendation? You can find mobo reviews on that site and a number of others. SLI is of no interest to me personally, so I haven’t checked into it.
On the HD front, you may want to opt for drives that support NCQ, particularly if you go dual core. Currently the only SATA versions that I know of come from Matrox and Seagate, with Matrox holding the advantage.
The UK’s Independent Television Commission has decided that Apple’s claim that the G5 is the"the world’s fastest, most powerful personal computer" does not meet their standards for truth in advertising. ARSTECHNICA
For example, instead of using Adobe Premiere on both the Apple and x86 platforms they used Final Cut Pro on the Apple platform and Adobe Premiere on the x86. Not surprising the results differ, in Apples favor. Apparently Apple conveniently ignores the very basic principle of benchmarking; you should be comparing "apples to apples" (quotes mine), or at least make an effort to do so. This not only invalidates their scores but it makes Apple look particularly amateurish; clearly they dont know the first thing about fair benchmarking, or simply went out of their way to have the new PowerPC come out on top. HARDWARE ANALYSIS
LOL! I have toyed with a hApple but conversion costs weigh against it, besides I am more fearful about being an early adopter of other spec.
BTW – really mega thanks for the links
Sooo… I am very easily confused. The choices available are huge.
Should I go economy? By a discounted bit of kit – maybe even a cheap linux box too?
Conclusions thus far: – avoid early adoption of hardware (SLI?) – stick to single core CPU at least until dual core or more matures – couple a’ platters with a view to 2 more in a year or so – good monitor (seen the VP191 apparently early adopters had slowish refresh rates upped in new spec, note to self: make sure that VP191 is new spec at lo price rather than old spec at hi price) – XP64??? Now I ponder: 1 GB of fast RAM or 2 GB of slightly slower RAM?
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