Rich3077
July 29th, 2006, 04:44 AM
A few years ago I was able to build my dream machine, 2 X P3 800 with 512 RAM running XP. In its day it was the shiznet. While SMP did not make Windows blazing fast it made it much more stable.. as I still had a processor free to kill any misbehaving application eating 100% of CPU cycles. I actually did not need to reboot often. Intel killed my love of SMP when it took out SMP ability of regular P4's as now I could no longer afford it.
So I went back to AMD. My current motherboard is just a cheapie MSI micro ATX board.. but damn.. for the first time upgrading my CPU is actually feasable as it supports pretty much any socket 939 CPU. What I am running now is a single core 3400+ with 1 gig RAM
and this should do well in Linux for a couple of years.
The last time I looked at the dual core chips with 1 meg cache per core the one I wanted was just under $800. Today I found the same or simular chip ( dont remember for sure ) for under $400 here
http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=M&Product_Code=120243&AFFIL=pricewatch&NR=1
My current RAM is 4 X 256 sticks. I can replace two of the 256 sticks with 1 Gig sticks and end up with a heafty 2.5 gigs RAM. All of this for about $600.
Yeah I know its an overkill but it should future proof my machine for a few years.
Now back when I had my SMP rig I had never really tried Linux. I loved SMP under Windows.. but I am not really sure it would even be to my advantage under Linux. I cannot imagine my machine, or any other machine running much faster than I already am. So should I consider upgrading? Or is this want only because I just came from Windows and needed the latest hardware to reduce my hourglass time and lag in games?
Hmmm Damn I would love to have the upgrades.. its the geek in me, however I am not made of money so I must put a lot of thought into a $600 upgrade.
Opinions anyone?
Peace
Rich
So I went back to AMD. My current motherboard is just a cheapie MSI micro ATX board.. but damn.. for the first time upgrading my CPU is actually feasable as it supports pretty much any socket 939 CPU. What I am running now is a single core 3400+ with 1 gig RAM
and this should do well in Linux for a couple of years.
The last time I looked at the dual core chips with 1 meg cache per core the one I wanted was just under $800. Today I found the same or simular chip ( dont remember for sure ) for under $400 here
http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=M&Product_Code=120243&AFFIL=pricewatch&NR=1
My current RAM is 4 X 256 sticks. I can replace two of the 256 sticks with 1 Gig sticks and end up with a heafty 2.5 gigs RAM. All of this for about $600.
Yeah I know its an overkill but it should future proof my machine for a few years.
Now back when I had my SMP rig I had never really tried Linux. I loved SMP under Windows.. but I am not really sure it would even be to my advantage under Linux. I cannot imagine my machine, or any other machine running much faster than I already am. So should I consider upgrading? Or is this want only because I just came from Windows and needed the latest hardware to reduce my hourglass time and lag in games?
Hmmm Damn I would love to have the upgrades.. its the geek in me, however I am not made of money so I must put a lot of thought into a $600 upgrade.
Opinions anyone?
Peace
Rich