The opinionated ramblings and muses of a weary web victim.
I pensioned off the P4/3.0 and dragged my system into the 90's
Published on June 8, 2009 By Jafo In Personal Computing

The old box served well for over half a decade ..... but eventually life was passing me by.... particularly during the FULL boot time being around 10 minutes....

It was [in its day] a fairly decent machine...P4/3.0 in an ASUS P4P800e Deluxe mobo with 2 gig [4x500] ram and eventually about the 'fastest' AGP card still around....a HD3850 with 512 GDDR3...all in an old Lian Li P60, powered by a TruePower 550 Watt PSU.

Then I got hacked....ending up as a mule server for email spam [I think] ... along with my having a Win 7 RC to experiment with prompted me to 'do it' sooner, rather than later.

So, off I went to my fave Comp shop armed with a list...

...and a credit card.

Just a little time later.... I had a boot full of boxes and not much money left.

Thursday last it was....as I get it all home and eagerly started poking and prodding and lots of RTFM-ing.

Friday, and out came the drill and jigsaw to cut a hole into the MoBo tray of the Case ..... so the after-market cooler would fit.... bugger of a bloody big thing it was, too.

By Saturday arvo I was sitting at the dining table with fingers in my ears as I switched it on...no OS, etc....no Keyboard or Mouse .... just to see if lights would come on....and there'd be NO smoke......

They did...and there wasn't.

Sunday...was OS time...so in went Win7 RC1 [32 bit].

Took 4/5ths of eff-all time to install and there it was in all its quasi-Vista 'splendour'.

About the only way to describe it all  [other than black - as in the box] was/is "fucking fast".

I ain't got the MoBo drivers all in [Win7 compatibility]...and haven't rebooted yet since the Graphic Card driver install....

Can't even see it in real detail/scale as it's currently on a 17" CRT ....

...and I'm learning all about what won't always work as expected [like Sysmetrix]...but darn it's good...

The 'bits' I already have....to migrate across to the new machine ar the bits that plug in .... The DiNovo Edge KB ...the MS Explorer mouse ...the ASUS M221u LCD....scanners....printers....Logitech G15 wheel and pedals...etc.

What I got....

Lian Li PC-A6010 case [black]

Antec TruePower Quattro 1000w PSU

ASUS P6T-se  X58 i7 MoBo

Intel i7 920 2.66Ghz LGA1366 CPU

OCZ 6G-Triple [3x2G] PC12800 Gold Ram

CoolerMaster V8 CPU Cooler [that bloodey big thing]

Vantec EZ2 Sata hot-swap racks x2

1TB Seagate Sata2 7200 HD x2 [for backup/data]

250G Seagate Sata2 7200 HD x2 [for OS]

ACR-105 Multi card reader

LG Sata DVD-RW x2

XFX 1G GTX285 Black Edition [vid]

 

When Win7 is finally released I'll opt for the 64bit ver...and possibly double the ram....

Funniest thing is....I thought sysmetrix wasn't working....looking at CPU load and ram usage.....till I looked closer....


Comments (Page 11)
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on Aug 18, 2009

Guess that's another bet yrag has won... the bookies don't stand a chance, do they!!


Already contacted him as to where to send the money.....

All that cash on a glorified adding machine - what an obscenity

Ain't that the fuckin' truth.

At least he didn't spend it on wine, women and a wild night out.

In a perfect world, he could do both.....

In the final analyze I think Jafo is the computer nemesis..... who else could get the OS to install on C drive and  the MBR loads up at Grandma's house.....

on Aug 18, 2009

NEVER EVER install it while you have more than one Harddrive attached to the system.

Odd. Running three drives, zero issues with both the beta and RC of 7.

on Aug 18, 2009

Looks like the 'pain' was due to an earlier install...of Win 7 RC 64bit on another [removable] drive...which popped its bootloader onto the 1TB 'H' drive....then, when installing the new Win 7 RTM 64bit it added itself to the same bootloader thus showing two Win 7s on boot.

'simplest' way was to partition 'away' from the bootloader area and create my own 'hidden' part to leave the crap on.

Now I don't end up with a silly 200gig Image file on each backup....just a 'normal' one...

I think it's now 'safe' to say I have it all the way I want it....even WinAMP's vol control goes both ways with the scrollwheel of the mouse....

It's the little things....

on Aug 18, 2009

it's now 'safe' to say I have it all the way I want it

 

.....the end of the world is at hand

on Aug 18, 2009

Already contacted him as to where to send the money.....

So when does it arrive... um, that was to my place, wasn't it?

In a perfect world, he could do both.....

but find a woman (women) who pays for the wine... and the wild night out.

 

It's the little things....

Like NOT having 200 gig backup files... x2.

on Aug 23, 2009

System is surprisingly stable.

There are only two issues...PowerDesk Pro 7 sometimes becomes unresponsive when accessing network drives and/or large folders.

and

Kaspersky [still beta] complains it has 'ceased running...please restart, etc' when it is undertaking a full system scan .....and it's dumps are effing huge.

I still haven't added the other 6 gig of ram yet....am wondering what sort of 'hit' I'll take on my 'C' with hyberfil and pagefile.....they'll be even bigger.....and the drive is only 60 gig.

on Nov 08, 2009

I still haven't added the other 6 gig of ram yet....am wondering what sort of 'hit' I'll take on my 'C' with hyberfil and pagefile.....they'll be even bigger.....and the drive is only 60 gig.

Yep....installed the other six once I'd got back from my trip OS.

Now I can have 'several' big Virtual Machines running and still not notice a resource hit.

I thought it was all pretty good getting 106fps ave. with the Benchmark demo of Resident Evil 5 in DX10....

...but then I got back into one of my fave games... SimBin's GTR2....downloading the 2009 mod of the F1 season....and one of the 'old' fun tracks from GP Legends...[Spa 67] and managed between 220 and 280fps at full definition....and even over 100fps on the grid with 22 others [typically a resource-hungry time].

It's a safe bet to say that Win 7, 64bit or otherwise doesn't hurt your game-playing one little bit...

on Dec 30, 2009

Dl'd the Demo of 'Crysis' last night.... to see what it's like.

Appears to be badly coded for workable frame-rates....Res Evil 5 looks just as 'good' but so far appears to be upwards of 4 times faster.

Default average settings give me about 50 to 60 fps.

Pretty hopeless, considering....

on Dec 30, 2009

Res Evil 5 looks just as 'good' but so far appears to be upwards of 4 times faster.

Bloody ridiculous, ain't it!!  The average user/gamer doesn't have/can't get/will never afford a rig capable of running these ultra high-speed games... yet the gaming co's still keep pumping them out.  Makes no sense, does it!!

It would be alright if the majority could actually access these extreme speeds, but it can't, so these ultra, rapid rate games pale into insignificance when only a small minority can.  I mean, your rig is no slouch (beats mine hands down... and mine ain't exactly slow, either) yet there you are complaing it isn't up to par for Res Evil 5 at default settings.  Sorta makes the game redundant if you can't play it (hardware restrictions) to its full potential.

I recently priced parts for an i7 based rig with a GTX295 and 12 gigs of RAM... came up with $3879.95 (AUD) as the best possible price.  Not exactly affordable for the average person, is it!!!  And how many gamers are gonna be able to come up with that kind of cash after paying out for the latest and greatest games??  Not too many, me thinks.

Like I said, given the high prices on the top-end hardware they were designed for, it makes little sense to keep producing faster and faster games.

on Dec 30, 2009

yet there you are complaing it isn't up to par for Res Evil 5 at default settings.

No...it pisses it in with RE5...no problems at all.

The issue is with Crysis [demo] ...which has much on 'high'...not 'very high'....but at 1680x1050 [native screen res] it's typically 50 to 60 fps.

High-end driving sims...even with 3rd party tracks and vehicle mods can be anywhere between 200 and 300 fps at the same res....

on Dec 31, 2009

No...it pisses it in with RE5...no problems at all.

OK, I misunderstood!  I understood RE5 at default (res/hardware) settings was sluggish.

The issue is with Crysis [demo] ...which has much on 'high'...not 'very high'....but at 1680x1050 [native screen res] it's typically 50 to 60 fps.

I guess this supports what I was saying about high-end games... sort of.  Cryisis was/is touted as one of these 'ultra' games, and yours is not the first case I've read of where a player has had issues with frame rates at native resolutions... and that dropping the res defeats the purpose/enjoyment of the game.

A friend of my sister rushed out to get Crysis when it was first released... not thinking for one moment that he might have issues running it on his machine.  It's not that his rig is a slouch (AMD Phenom 9650 @ 2.3/ATI 4870 1gb/6gb DDR2 1066 RAM), but rather that Crysis is far too advanced/fast/graphically intensive for his (slightly better than) average machine. 

Advances in the gaming industry are great.. probably welcomed by some (with high-end machines), but if I were a game dev/distributor, I'd want my products to be usable/playable at optimum performance by the widest audience possible.

Hmmm, could it be a conspiracy between the game devs and the hardware devs... to produce games that encourage... er, force gamers to continually upgrade their rigs?  The trouble with that, in most cases, is that the latest and greatest hardware is out of the affordable reach of average users/gamers. 

When a GTX295 comes in anywhere between $570 and $1070 AUD (depending on rating/retailer/manufacturer), and an i7 975 anywhere between $1300 and $1813 AUD (depending on rating/retailer/manufacturer), just to enable optimum play in the latest and greatest games, you're talking bigger biccies than the average home PC owner/user/gamer could even dream about, much less afford.

And at the end of the day, though, is any of this hardware really worth the price being levied?  Or is a handful of individuals getting filthy rich from the past-times/addictions/perceived needs of game/PC enthusiasts?  

Oh, and while I'm at it, question-wise, what is the meaning of life??

 

on Dec 31, 2009

The demo of Crysis....is 2007...whereas the PC ver of RE5 is 2009...as in the last few months....they are a 'world' apart.

I expect there would be mods for the full ver of Crysis to help with lower spec gear....but I must admit that gameplay at 50-odd fps is still just fine.

I got similar low fps with GP4...but that was/is an ancient game....certainly not native to Win7 or 64 bit, etc.....it was DX7 back then....

on Dec 31, 2009

starkers

Oh, and while I'm at it, question-wise, what is the meaning of life?? 

42.

on Jan 04, 2010

starkers

A friend of my sister rushed out to get Crysis when it was first released... not thinking for one moment that he might have issues running it on his machine.  It's not that his rig is a slouch (AMD Phenom 9650 @ 2.3/ATI 4870 1gb/6gb DDR2 1066 RAM), but rather that Crysis is far too advanced/fast/graphically intensive for his (slightly better than) average machine.

 

Pretty fantastic that he missed the part of the hype that Crysis was a nextgeneration engine game which requires great hardware.

 

starkers

When a GTX295 comes in anywhere between $570 and $1070 AUD (depending on rating/retailer/manufacturer), and an i7 975 anywhere between $1300 and $1813 AUD (depending on rating/retailer/manufacturer), just to enable optimum play in the latest and greatest games, you're talking bigger biccies than the average home PC owner/user/gamer could even dream about, much less afford.

And at the end of the day, though, is any of this hardware really worth the price being levied?  Or is a handful of individuals getting filthy rich from the past-times/addictions/perceived needs of game/PC enthusiasts? 

 

The average gamer isn't supposed NOR expected to buy a GTX 295 or a i7-975 (or 965 for that matter!)

Those parts are made for prestige so the companies can say that they got the fastest card/cpu in the world. Only hardwaresites and some enthusiasts buy them. The GTX 260/280 and i7-920/940 are for normal people.

on Jan 04, 2010

The crazy toy for a crazy gold boy.

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