[ai0tron]

well i upgraded it anyway. Some of you may have noticed that i sold all my audio equpment except for the HD600's and my DIY headphones with DENON drivers. Well i did it to upgrade my computer, i know some of you are cringing but it had to be done, my other comp busted and being a computer art major I kind of need one. So what is it? Well it's almost worth the loss of audiophile heaven but not quite. Although, my audiophile heaven really didnt have enough bass.

here she is:

17" Samsung LCD
Dual AMD 1.2 gig
Tyan Thunder Dual palamino motherboard w/integrated lan
64 bit pci slots, AGP pro
1 gig DDR ram
geforce 3
Maxtor UDMA 66 7200 rpm
Ricoh DVD, CDR, CDRW combo drive. 12x write, 32x cd read, 8x DVD read

although the geforce 3 is FAST. It kinda sucks because the output is really crappy in 3d studio max. I dont think it is dropping too many polygons but it is displaying them improperly. In fact some complex models look downright ugly. There are all kinds of dissapearing edges, intersecting faces etc. Just some advice to anyone using max.

 

[coolvij]

Oh.......wow.

Very nice setup.

(I'm about to cry...partly cuz my comp just pales in comparison....partly cuz I'm no longer at ...... sniff sniff.....1-1-1-1 posts

)

 

[Xander]

Soon enough coolvij, and you'll be at 2222 posts.

 

[Duncan]

That is one kick-ass system AI - Dual processor too... VERY nice

One question though... maybe it was a monetary constraint, in which case i'll be quiet straight away... but your hard drive - Maxtor UDMA 66 7200rpm - maybe i'm not the worlds most clued up computer hardware expert, but... could you have gone for a RAID based hard drive for not much more cash?

That gives you about twice as much bandwidth compared to standard EIDE drives...

Please don't take that as a criticism... as i say... kick ass system... just, i'm curious

(btw... I have a Maxtor HD too - 5400rpm ATA 100 - which one is faster between yours, and mine for data transfer? - slower spindle speed but faster transfer rate versus - the opposite?!?)

 

[Xander]

RAID can be utilized with either IDE or SCSI interfaces, and would only allow him to use multiple drives as mirrors of one drive, or multiple drives as one physical drive. It wouldent give him any more speed, or bandwidth so to speak.

First of all, a UDMA66, and ATA100 drive as it stands wont reach their peak rated speeds. Drive speed ratings are over emphasized much as the frequency response of a headphone is.

ai0tron's drive is UDMA 66, 7200RPM. Yours is ATA100, 5400RPM. Neither of these drives are really going to utilize their peak rated transfer rate.. Ever, atleast, not using a file system, and not spread throughout the platter's surfaces. Since ATA100 and UDMA66 is pretty much irrelevent, ai0tron's drive would be able to sustain a faster transfer rate for a longer period of time because the access time is shorter. Assuming that it really is.. All we've got to go on here are spindle speeds. ai0tron's probably is faster, though, in the access time respect. And maximum sustainable transfer rate.

In other words, your controllers can transfer data at their rated speed, and its possible that without a file system they can read a narrow string of bits at their rated speed on one area of the platters for like, 100 milliseconds, lol. But the actual drive is bottlenecking the controller since it cant read/write data as fast as the controller can handle it. Usually..

If you look into the most monsterous fastest bleeding edge SCSI drives, you'll be shocked to see sustainable transfer rates in the 35-50MB range.

 

[Braver]

very nice comp

prolly cost a bunch too!

as for the graphics card tho, I would've picked a Matrox. when I ordered the comp I'm on now, they were out of the better Matrox cards, so I still took a TNT2 Ultra instead of a Geforce 2mx. Geforce is fast, but not beautyfull. really a gamers card.

 

[Xander]

blech! Geforce2 MX sucks.

Go look at some screenshots taken using a Geforce3, then tell me theyre not beautiful!

 

[Braver]

yeah, the G3 should be lots better than the G2 (if only for the price). still a gamers card tho.

 

[mcbiff]

ai0tron: You should've gone for a Quadro instead of that GF3 if 3dsmax is your primary concern.

 

[dhwilkin]

Isn't the Quadro just an equivalent GeForce w/ some additional registry settings turned on? Oh, and not to rain on your parade ai0tron, but keep an eye on that Ricoh. I had two of those. The first arrived broken, and the second had a cd laser malfunction w/in two months. Otherwise, very nice system.

 

[dngl]

You are hereby ostracised from Headfi. Go to Anandtech where you belong

Anyway, that is a hell of a system. My computer is pushing 3.5 years old, and I bought low even then. Congrats. BTW, could you tell us about your heavily modded 950s? I'm curious now.

 

[mcbiff]

Yeah, the Quadro is basically the same card. But I'm not sure those reg tweaks work, I know that before it was said you had to solder to make your card into a Quadro.

 

[anders213]

Kick ass system. But bottleneck @ HDD
Get a SCSI.
Reccomended:
RAID0 | 2 X 18.1GB Seagate 15000RPM

 

[dhwilkin]

Oh really? I hadn't heard about the soldering... what exactly needs to be soldered? Or is it more a matter of a connection trace not being present, ala using a pencil to enable Athlon overclocking?

 

[mcbiff]

I'm not really qualified to talk about it since it's been like a year since I read about it, but from what I remember it involved making a couple of connections and soldering on a resistor or two. Don't quote me on that though.