Building a new computer.

[Martin]

Amd X2 or Conroe? What handles our picture files better, this will be for photo processing and games.

I just put a e6600 core 2 duo system together for my son and boy does that thing overclock well, tried some photoshop work with it and definitely faster than my Athlon 2500. I have never tried a fast amd64 x2 though, most of the benchmarks show the Core 2 Duo to have the advantage but what is the hands on experience?

Here is what I am looking at.

Core 2 Duo E6600
4 gigs ram
Asus P5b Deluxe MB
Raptor 150 gig 16mb cache
eVga 7900 GTO nvidia graphics
I have a couple of 320 gig hard drive that I will put into it also.

Martin

[MGlennn]

Don't know much about PC computers Martin but it sounds like a screamer :eek: :eek:

Hope it speeds up Tetris some for you so you won't score so high ;) ;) ;) ;)

[Jonathan]

Martin. I have heard recently that Conroe gets the edge as far as being better. There Core 2's are fanominal! This is coming from an AMD guy. Make sure you get ddr2 ram;) system looks nice. I like you video card choice.
here is a good review for you http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=297

check out newegg.com and tigerdirect. btw I am no computer guru so take my thoughts with a grain of salt.

[Rudi]

Jeez, I'm glad I don't have to worry about all that PC stuff. cool;

Martin, at the moment Intel have the upper hand. I would go with the Intel chip. Who know what will happen down the road, but by then you will probably be building a new computer anyway... :)

[Martin]

Thanks, I really want to go with Amd but I think I would have to wait at least six months for there 65 nano stuff to come up to speed and Intel is there right now.

I take it you run a Mac Rudi, I would love to have a mac pro with dual woodcrests running at 3.0 ghz, just checked out the apple store and it would cost my about 200 percent more to switch over, I would get more though but the mac pro ram is very expensive.

Martin

[Rudi]

Well, the Mac Pro dual 2.66GHz is just as good, and you can buy additional RAM through a third party (Apple RAM is for when you're rich :)).

I have done this with my dual G5 and the MacBook - bought the extra RAM elsewhere. That brings the price down to a very reasonable level. Coupled with the included software that you get with a new Mac, the: "Macs are more expensive" line wears a little thin...

If you're seriously thinking about a Mac, give it a little more thought! Everyone that I know, who switched, is very happy with their decision.

Whichever way you go, good luck! :)

[Jonathan]

Martin, you might want to pm harrison over on NC about mac's(wealth of mac info). He isent very open-minded about pc's so keep that in mind

[Rudi]

Martin, you might want to pm harrison over on NC about mac's(wealth of mac info). He isent very open-minded about pc's so keep that in mind

Most people see PCs for what they are, once they've used a Mac... ;) cool;

[Jonathan]

Most people see PCs for what they are, once they've used a Mac... ;) cool;

Makes sense. I have always been a bang for your buck guy and havent had a chance to purchase one...yet seriously considered. I use a mac for research and love everything about it but admittedly it is a steep learning curve for me.(interface wise)

[Rudi]

Makes sense. I have always been a bang for your buck guy and havent had a chance to purchase one...yet seriously considered. I use a mac for research and love everything about it but admittedly it is a steep learning curve for me.(interface wise)

What software do you use for your research???

Seriously, it is a personal thing. Some people just cannot get away from the Windows way of doing things. I have found the opposite - I now use my computers as appliances - they do a job for me - NOT the other way around! (I found I was always tweaking my PC to keep it working properly, not so with the Mac).

Nowadays, with the Intel Macs capable of running Windows natively, you are really buying two (three if you count Linux) machines for the price of one when you buy a Mac! (and no, I don't work for Apple, so that will be it from me until they send me a cheque... :D)

[Jonathan]

What software do you use for your research???

Seriously, it is a personal thing. Some people just cannot get away from the Windows way of doing things. I have found the opposite - I now use my computers as appliances - they do a job for me - NOT the other way around! (I found I was always tweaking my PC to keep it working properly, not so with the Mac).

Nowadays, with the Intel Macs capable of running Windows natively, you are really buying two (three if you count Linux) machines for the price of one when you buy a Mac! (and no, I don't work for Apple, so that will be it from me until they send me a cheque... :D)


Rudi I use 3D-modeling programs like Rasmol. I believe the programs are pretty much the same on PC's i get caught up in the copy/paste(simple stuff). Web differences etc. details details I do like mac and can see why you do

[Roger]

Amd X2 or Conroe? What handles our picture files better, this will be for photo processing and games.

I just put a e6600 core 2 duo system together for my son and boy does that thing overclock well, tried some photoshop work with it and definitely faster than my Athlon 2500. I have never tried a fast amd64 x2 though, most of the benchmarks show the Core 2 Duo to have the advantage but what is the hands on experience?

Here is what I am looking at.

Core 2 Duo E6600
4 gigs ram
Asus P5b Deluxe MB
Raptor 150 gig 16mb cache
eVga 7900 GTO nvidia graphics
I have a couple of 320 gig hard drive that I will put into it also.

Martin


Well here are some benchmarks.

http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2802&p=1

My own thoughts are that I would go Core Duo. I use them in a Medical Field on a dail basics and they are fast.

Lots of memory well help but for hard drives I think i would still go with SCSI for durability. a little more money but built to last, and fast.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822332004

Just get a raid controller card.

[Martin]

Okay I basically went with what I said, its running at 3.0 gig and is snappy, doesn't make every thing instantaneous though but is a faster than the old system I did get two Rapter 150's though but haven't raided them, not sure if I will, everything I have read says no advantage on a desktop.

I thought about scsi and have it on my older dual processor computer that I use for Linux but its just too expensive to justify these days and my 29160 controller would have to be updated and that's big bucks.

The new 300 gig 15K seagates are way faster than anything else out there but there 800 US.
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200609/ST3300655LW_2.html

Thanks for the input.

Martin

[Schucz]

Amd X2 or Conroe? What handles our picture files better, this will be for photo processing and games.

I just put a e6600 core 2 duo system together for my son and boy does that thing overclock well, tried some photoshop work with it and definitely faster than my Athlon 2500. I have never tried a fast amd64 x2 though, most of the benchmarks show the Core 2 Duo to have the advantage but what is the hands on experience?

Here is what I am looking at.

Core 2 Duo E6600
4 gigs ram
Asus P5b Deluxe MB
Raptor 150 gig 16mb cache
eVga 7900 GTO nvidia graphics
I have a couple of 320 gig hard drive that I will put into it also.

Martin
There's nothing wrong with what you listed (other than I prefer ATI over nVidia card).

Speed wise, the Core 2 duos are slightly faster than the AMD X2s, but AMD's memory bus is better than the Core 2's. So all that means is that it will be marginally faster when pumping back and forth to the RAM.

Either way you go, it will be fast. Most games don't take advantage of dual core, and many, many older ones are almost unplayably buggy on dual core. If you plan to play older games (anything > 1 or 2 old), you'll need one of the two programs that sets affinity for the games to one core (AMD has a program for this, for Intel there is a program out there that does the same job).

4GB of RAM is a lot, so that will be nice.

[Desert Rat]

Well, if you could have waited you could have looked at a Quad core from Intel.. 4 cores on the ship instead of two..

The Dual Core 2 system you built will work very nicely with anything that is multi threaded capable.. i.e. Photoshop supports and can take advantage of the multi threading capabilities...

[gluwater]

Sounds like you have a pretty smokin machine there Martin. I have a Raptor in mine and it is much faster than my other HD's. All the benchmarks I have seen show they are faster or as fast as most other HD's even when they are in a Raid configuration. So I don't think you should worry yourself about using Raid with them. One thing I did notice was that you have 4 gigs of RAM. According to Adobe unless you have a 64 bit processor running with a 64 bit OS you cannot access anything over 2 gigs, 3 gigs if you set a switch in the boot.ini file with Win XP Pro Service Pack 2.

Optimize performance or Photoshop CS2 on Windows (http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/332271.html) scroll down about half way for the "Allocating memory above 2 GB with 64-bit processors" section.

You may want to look into that to see if you can squeeze some more performance out of your system.

If you do set the switch let us know if you see any performance difference.

[Rudi]

It's funny how computer technology marches forward, isn't it? I now have 2GB of RAM in my LAPTOP machine, it's the first computer that I have owned where I broke (or reached) the 2GB barrier (for RAM).

2GB seems about right these days, most of the time at least a Gig is sitting there doing nothing, but it is available when needed. The laptop certainly runs well! (Could be the lack of Windows! :p :D)

[pcho]

Amd X2 or Conroe? What handles our picture files better, this will be for photo processing and games.

I just put a e6600 core 2 duo system together for my son and boy does that thing overclock well, tried some photoshop work with it and definitely faster than my Athlon 2500. I have never tried a fast amd64 x2 though, most of the benchmarks show the Core 2 Duo to have the advantage but what is the hands on experience?

Here is what I am looking at.

Core 2 Duo E6600
4 gigs ram
Asus P5b Deluxe MB
Raptor 150 gig 16mb cache
eVga 7900 GTO nvidia graphics
I have a couple of 320 gig hard drive that I will put into it also.

Martin

Since I purchased my 1dsmk2 I have been struggling with my 4 year old P4 1.8 esp when I am working with layers and the file size could be up to 300mb. So I decided (after receiving blessing from my lovely wife) to purchased a new PC. It is a dual opteron 252 with 4 x 74 gig raptor drives, 4 x 300 maxtor drives and 8 gig of ram (getting ready for Vista) and now I can convert 4 gig of raw files and still with work with CS2 without and speed reduction. I did this over 12 months ago so the processor is pretty old technology now :) but at that time it was much faster than any intel chipset.

My 4 data drives can be hot swap from the front and I can just keep changing the drives without opening the case and I can tell you it is very handy. If I want to look at my old files I just take one of my old drives and put it in.

Just for the novelty, my friend took 8 hours UV sleeving all the cables in the computer. What a nice friend

Here is what it looks like:

Perry


http://www.thepatienteye.com/albums/webforum/Opteron1.jpg

http://www.thepatienteye.com/albums/webforum/Opteron2.jpg

Here is my dog guarding my equip all the time. I was spending so much time in my study that my wife said perry you might as well put your new computer in the bed room so that I can keep her company during the night :)
http://www.thepatienteye.com/albums/webforum/opteron3.jpg

[Martin]

Nice system! I never tried out Opterons, I have a dual Athlon system that has been running great for years that is my main linux box bought the c2d but I am sure I will be back to Amd next go around, the rate I upgrade they should be at sixteen cores by then.

Martin