New Puter, New Aps, New pics -- Wheee!

[p?tr?]

Ah, come on you guys...why do you have to talk about new computers and nice hardware....you making me jelous! I shouldn't spend anymore money on my computer, but there is that little voice inside the case saying "more ram, MORE RAM!!!" And you've awakened him! Ahhhhhh!

[ronmatt]

Well, I'm going to get a CRAY. It creates it's own RAM as needed and when I'm not screwin' around in Photoshop, I'll run Tactical and Strategic war games.

[Gaussian]

I could force my board to be Conroe compatible?

True. ;)

You got yourself a fine computer, have fun with it.

I'm waiting for Vista to arrive, should be a lot more secure. By that time I'll know what hardware is needed and can I finally replace this 5 year old beast.

[Alistair]

True. ;)

You got yourself a fine computer, have fun with it.

I'm waiting for Vista to arrive, should be a lot more secure. By that time I'll know what hardware is needed and can I finally replace this 5 year old beast.

I got a friend as a Microsoft employee and he is not proud of Vista, at all. We'll see how it turn out though! I feel it's just going to be improvements on animation and visuals. (getting closer and closer to OSX ;) )

I'm not one to judge though!

- Al

[Gaussian]

Are those Conroe systems absolutely necessary or are they just pretty sweet?

Necessary? It depends on what you do with your computer Alistair. I happen to have more and more interest in music and video encoding/editing and for that every extra power is welcome, not to mention that Photoshop is also not getting faster every year and btw,? Photoshop really flies with a Conroe, more than pretty much anything out there!

You got yourself the Pentium 4 Duo Core 660 3.6Ghz? Personally I think you decided too soon, although it depends a lot on which other components you needed to update of course.

Understand though that not all new Core 2 Duo processors are Conroes. The Core 2 Duo E6600 and E6700 are Conroes, the E6300 and E6400 are Allendales.
How fast is for example a 2.4Ghz Conroe? Compare it with a Pentium 4 Duo Core running at 4.8Ghz if there would be such a processor.

Conroes can easily be overclocked with the stock fan since they use about 50% less heat than a Pentium 4 Duo Core, so it's easy to reach speeds comparable to a Pentium 4 Duo Core 6.2Ghz (if there would be such a processor). Mind you, this is just simple overclocking with the default stock fan and a reasonable motherboard. I?ve seen people push this number a lot higher with water cooling.
Some speed comparisons:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu...-shootout.html

I?m serious, these processors are fast? and I mean REALLY fast?and it doesn?t happen so often that we see a new processor creating such a gap with the competition.

Price? A Conroe E6600 is about 5% faster than the fastest AMD, the Athlon 64 FX-62, yet it costs 60% less. The E6600 uses only 52 watts at full load, the Athlon 130watt (!) (even the high end Pentium D uses close to 130 watt). So you can imagine how hot these old Pentiums and AMDs get and if you live in a hot area and you don?t have air-conditioning in your room, then these hot processors can cause problems like overheating, unstable system, shorter system?s life expectancy, higher electricity bills, etc. Personally I never liked the Pentium 4 "heaters", I think it was a bad design to begin with and that's the main reason why I didn't update for so long. AMD was never an option for me for other reasons that I don't want to get into.

The E6600 uses idle 21watt, the Athlon 42. The Athlon can be overclocked with about 10%, the Conroe with 30-50% (if not more, because Conroe is all brand technology and not fully tested). Needless to say that many people have been waiting for quite a while now for their ordered E6600 to be shipped, because of the overwhelming interest.

I'm also still waiting for my Conroe to arrive (and some other components) before I can start rebuilding my current computer, but it's worth it, I've been looking forward to this moment for quite a while now.

And you know what's also great; everybody here at home is getting a better computer because of this, since we move computers from person to person (depending on their needs and age). We can now also get rid of the last Windows 98 machine that's still attached to our local network, so general network stability and security will also improve.