- Jun 17, 2009
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I teach therefore have a little time for building now. Next opportunity is New Year but perhaps a whole year away. However, if there are big changes in CPUs and mobos coming I'd consider waiting. An example of a mobo change is the arrival (on shipping mobos) of USB3. More about the needs I'd build to support are below.
If I do not build I continue to put up with a WinXP Home socket478 P4 3.4 with 3Gig RAM, which does OK at all these tasks (but my perception of that is skewed by not having tried out a faster platform.) This is an Intel 875DPZ late-2003 mobo. Some flaky behavior on this system might be the graphics card, a EVGAnVidia 7600 AGP. Directories in WinExplorer take a long time to appear. Perhaps the memory, too.
I have really wrung a lot out of this machine over the years!
Using the template suggested:
APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: summer 2009
BUDGET RANGE: about $1500 but somewhat flexible
SYSTEM USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT: Photoshop, Lightroom, Flash experimentation, Sims3 (my daughter's game) website development (low tech stuff), Lesson development, and last-- games like TotalWar, which I play only occasionally.
PARTS NOT REQUIRED: mouse, monitor, speakers, OS (I have a legal Vista business DVD)
PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: newegg.com, or Amazon
PARTS PREFERENCES: Intel processors, large case for easy updates and maintenance.
OVERCLOCKING: Naaah. One appropriate graphics card is fine.
MONITOR RESOLUTION: 1920x1200 -- a Gateway 24" that rotates. I love doing web research with pages in portrait.
ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: I would like a quiet PC but that's hard to do with the required fans. This machine will be placed in the living room. It will NOT ever have to do duty as a home theater unit. Probably won't bother with RAID, although a NAS box seems like a good idea for the future so my two Mac users in the house can back up over Ethernet -- and I would do that, too.
There are still enough issues with everyday use of Vista 64 that I'd stay with Vista 32 even though having huge memory would make Photoshop move better.
So, again, it seems that the issues are the Intel roadmap and the arrival of USB3.
Intel:
From my reading on the THW forums so far I'd buy the i-920. I see this as a bit of future-proofing because as the processors moved along perhaps I'd buy a faster unit for that socket. Is the whole i-series all in the same socket so I could do this in a few years?
USB3:
There's always eSATA right in the front of the case, and I might be putting two small eSATA hard drives in enclosures for my digital photography workflow so will find the time to get those connections into an easy place on this "desktop".
My old P4 would become a print server for a Canon photo printer.
Ideas? Reactions? Futures worth waiting for?
jonathan7007
If I do not build I continue to put up with a WinXP Home socket478 P4 3.4 with 3Gig RAM, which does OK at all these tasks (but my perception of that is skewed by not having tried out a faster platform.) This is an Intel 875DPZ late-2003 mobo. Some flaky behavior on this system might be the graphics card, a EVGAnVidia 7600 AGP. Directories in WinExplorer take a long time to appear. Perhaps the memory, too.
I have really wrung a lot out of this machine over the years!
Using the template suggested:
APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: summer 2009
BUDGET RANGE: about $1500 but somewhat flexible
SYSTEM USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT: Photoshop, Lightroom, Flash experimentation, Sims3 (my daughter's game) website development (low tech stuff), Lesson development, and last-- games like TotalWar, which I play only occasionally.
PARTS NOT REQUIRED: mouse, monitor, speakers, OS (I have a legal Vista business DVD)
PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: newegg.com, or Amazon
PARTS PREFERENCES: Intel processors, large case for easy updates and maintenance.
OVERCLOCKING: Naaah. One appropriate graphics card is fine.
MONITOR RESOLUTION: 1920x1200 -- a Gateway 24" that rotates. I love doing web research with pages in portrait.
ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: I would like a quiet PC but that's hard to do with the required fans. This machine will be placed in the living room. It will NOT ever have to do duty as a home theater unit. Probably won't bother with RAID, although a NAS box seems like a good idea for the future so my two Mac users in the house can back up over Ethernet -- and I would do that, too.
There are still enough issues with everyday use of Vista 64 that I'd stay with Vista 32 even though having huge memory would make Photoshop move better.
So, again, it seems that the issues are the Intel roadmap and the arrival of USB3.
Intel:
From my reading on the THW forums so far I'd buy the i-920. I see this as a bit of future-proofing because as the processors moved along perhaps I'd buy a faster unit for that socket. Is the whole i-series all in the same socket so I could do this in a few years?
USB3:
There's always eSATA right in the front of the case, and I might be putting two small eSATA hard drives in enclosures for my digital photography workflow so will find the time to get those connections into an easy place on this "desktop".
My old P4 would become a print server for a Canon photo printer.
Ideas? Reactions? Futures worth waiting for?
jonathan7007
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