Post Your Computer Specs in this thread!

[Ellendesu]

Inspired by tetsaru's post in the other thread about something totally different. lets see whos cybernetic dick is bigger shall we?

I'm currently running...

AMD Athlon 64 3000+. 1.8 Ghz Base Speed, AM2
1GB DDR2 RAM (800mhz)
Nvidia GeForce 6100
250 GB Hard Drive
DVD-RW/CD-RW Drive (52x Max Speed on CD writes, 16x on DVD)
7.1 Surround Sound
Windows XP Professional (Because anything less is useless)

All of that is packed into a Black Case complete with door and lock, the case is also equipped with 2 fans, one primary, and one on my heatsink, which leads into an airduct that filters out hot air through the side of my case, I run a constant temperature at base speed of roughly 30-34 Degrees Celsius (Keep in mind that the average computer runs at a temperature of 50+) Plus, my power supply fan (For a 450w Power Supply)

All of my components are barely 2 months old, and from shut-down to full load it only takes 7-8 seconds to be booted up completely. I also load Multiplayer maps on BF : Vietnam and Swat 4 so fast the rest of my friends wind taking longer and I have to sit and wait for 2-3 minutes for them.

This comp fucking rocks. Only cost me 600 Bucks by the end. This is the power of building your OWN MACHINE kids. All of those components in a computer from Worst Buy (like Best Buy would even carry high quality Overclocking class DDR2 Ram and motherboards?) would run you easily 1500-2000 bucks, for serious.

So whats in your box?

[JG]

Bill's is very much like mine.  Although I've had my workstation for over a year now.

Persephone (workstation):
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (2 GHz HT clock)
1GB DDR2 RAM (also 800Mhz)
ATI RADEON 9600
120GB S-ATA hard drive
16x DVD+/-RW drive
W2K-Pro
I'm not big on sound, so I just use onboard sound cards. I really can't tell much difference.
19" ViewSonic LCD

Athena (server):
AMD Athlon 1400+ (forgot what clock speed)
1GB DDR RAM
Onboard video (it is a server after all so I don't look at it often)
48GB ATA133 IDE of hard drive space (havent needed much more)
2.4x DVD+RW drive
W2K-Pro (really would like to get server though)
Also manages my 200GB external drive for backups.

Persephone ran me about $700-$800 last year.  Athena was the workstation before then, and it probably cost me $900 or so when it was built about 4 years ago. And another $150 or so last January when i added the backup drive.

I also have a testbed system set up in another room.  Its nothing to speak of though (A 9 year old Pentium 233) Triton runs Windows 98se, and I use it mainly for testing software I write to make sure it doesn't blow up on pre-NT platforms.

[tetsaru arigashi]

lol, i guess it was inevitable...

so, yeah, um, i have a fucking gateway computer.  yeah, it's about 5 years old or so, seeing how i got it during high school...  it still has a FLOPPY DRIVE.  a fucking FLOPPY DRIVE, ok?  as i mentioned earlier, it has a pathetic 256 MB of RAM and a pathetic 2.0 Ghz Intel Celeron processor.  it runs on Windows XP Home Edition 2002 with Service Pack 2, and my hard drive has a capacity of a mere 37.2 GB (wtf's up with THAT kind of number??).  as a result, i constantly have to delete and re-download anime to avoid crashing it.  i only have a CD-RW, although i DO have 4 USB ports (2 in front, 2 in back), which i guess is fairly decent.  oh yeah - both my monitor (which is probably around 15"-17", i forgot exactly) and my scanner are "hand-me-downs."  the monitor is a ViewSonic E771 (i think), and it came from the band department at my old high school where my dad used to work, and was about to be thrown away since the screen kept flickering, but it seems to work fine now (although my desktop icons wig out on me all the time when i either close a large window with a lot of graphics on it, or try to access a folder with a lot of data in it)...  as for the scanner (a Microtek SlimScan C3)...  God knows how old it is, since it was stashed away with my dad's ancient Mac stuff.  i also have a Lexmark Z22 printer, which is slow as hell and runs out of ink quickly (and on occasion, feeds all the paper i've loaded into it AT ONCE and jams up and spews ink all inside the bottom, and furthermore lags up horribly when i have to cancel a printing job as a result...), a 128 MB RCA Lyra MP3 player which i cannot transfer songs onto anymore since a friend of mine accidentally CRUSHED the USB cable that went with it while he was moving around in one of the chairs in my dorm room at college (it has a weird-shaped port that goes into the player, so i can't just use a regular one), and finally, the most up-to-date thing i have is my Kodak EasyShare C330 digital camera, which, unfortunately, does not have a memory card in it, so i can only hold around 16 pictures on it at a time.  =/

NAW, I DON'T THINK I NEED TO UPDATE MY COMPUTER SYSTEM, IT'S FIIIIIINE...  >_<;

so, anyway, i saw this one computer on Alienware's site a while back that had some good stuff on it (something about multiple graphics cards, although i know nothing about that - if someone could explain how that works, that'd be nice), but it's IMMENSELY overpriced.  take a look:

http://www.alienware.com/product_detail_pages/Aurora_ALX/Aurora_overview.aspx?SysCode=PC-AURORA-ALX-R7&SubCode=SKU-DEFAULT#pdp-nav

basically what i'm wanting is some of the best top-of-line, high-performance shit that i can get for no more than $2500 (lower prices are always better, of course, but i'd rather have better stuff than lower prices).  any suggestions as to where to get stuff for cheap, or what hardware is awesomely good?

[Snorlax.RAYZR]

ASUS A8V [VIA K8T800]
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ @ 2.0 GHz
20 GB HDD to run Windows
120 GB HDD for whatever
ATi Radeon 9800 Pro 128 MB AGP 8x
1 GB DDR2 RAM

[tetsaru arigashi]

ASUS A8V [VIA K8T800]
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ @ 2.0 GHz
20 GB HDD to run Windows
120 GB HDD for whatever
ATi Radeon 9800 Pro 128 MB AGP 8x
1 GB DDR2 RAM

one of my computer-knowledgable friends said that it might be beneficial to get a small hard drive JUST for the Windows operating system, and then use your larger one(s) for everything else.  anyone know if this gives a significant increase in performance?

[Snorlax.RAYZR]

Uhm... well yeah. I install all the junk on my slave drive though. I'm only using the 20GB temporarily. I'm looking for a 5GB 100 000 RPM HDD.

The higher the RPM, the better. Your folders and windows will open before you even click them. Haha.

[Ellendesu]

Don't knock the floppy drive. You can use it set up RAID. for real.

[Yoko Matsugane Lover]

I got a computer...............Thats all i know

[JG]

it still has a FLOPPY DRIVE.  a fucking FLOPPY DRIVE, ok?

I still build them with Floppy drives.  They're still useful, just less so.  Probably better off with an external floppy thesedays though.

so, anyway, i saw this one computer on Alienware's site a while back that had some good stuff on it (something about multiple graphics cards, although i know nothing about that - if someone could explain how that works, that'd be nice)

More and more video cards are starting to include dual outputs, one to amonitor and one ot either a second monitor or more often, a tv.  Some of these high end cards have dedicated processors to each of those outputs.  Some video cards can also be tied together with a duplicate of the same card, and a birgde made between them.  It accomplishes the same thing as the dual output.  So that PC can output to 4 different sources.  If all the output monitors/tvs were close enough otgether, it could look like one big tv (think arcade style setups).  Id be hard pressed to find any need for people to invest in such a setup. Its overkill.

one of my computer-knowledgable friends said that it might be beneficial to get a small hard drive JUST for the Windows operating system, and then use your larger one(s) for everything else.  anyone know if this gives a significant increase in performance?

Yeah it helps, but only if they're on different IDE channels (ie, you cant primary/slave this setup and expect it to work) and the files you're working with arent too big (bigger than say, half your ram).  Big files would essentially be copied from the data drive to the memory on reads, and if its more than your memory can hold it goes to Window's disk cache instead, which is always stored on the system drive.  File clusters not in cache would have to make a seek to another drive, which could be slower than the benefit gained by splitting the drives, especially if the other drive is busy or worse, not spiinning at full access speed yet.  Big internal caches on drives helps negate this somewhat but no matter what the setup it will never be 200% as fast as a single drive setup (probbaly 180-190%)
S-ATA drives have made this a moot point by now though.

I'm looking for a 5GB 100 000 RPM HDD.

I think you mean 10,000. Most things these days benefit from more cache rather than faster RPM.  Which is why you still see mostly 5400 and 72000 RPM drives still, with 8 meg caches and the like.

[DualSoul]

Intel Pentium 4 Northwood 2.8C
DFI Lanparty Pro875B
2GB Corsair TWINX Pro PC4000
2 x 300Gb Seagate SATA1
ATI X800XT PE
Audigy 2 ZS hooked up to Logitech Z640
LG 4160B DVD burner/ROM
Enermax 465
19" HP F1905 LCD
Windows XP Pro
... all wrapped up in an black Ultra Aluminus case

Upgrades in the future?  Switch the Northwood out into either an HTPC or a server, hook up some SATA drives for RAID5, and get a Core 2 Duo.

[frost]

Dell Cheapo Special($300 3 yrs ago)
2 GHZ Celleron Processor
28.5 GB HD
Windows XP Home Edition
1 GB Sdram
Nvidia Geforce FX 5500 256mb(Old PCI & overclocked)

I spent more on the upgrades than what the computer was worth when I bought it lol. I have yet to play an MMO on it yet that it couldn`t handle.

[JG]

Seagate

Fail.  There are two brands of hard drives I advise people to stay far away from: Seagate and IBM. (Maxtors and Western Digitals have my highest recommendations.)
I've had or been involved in the use of seven or so Seagates over the years.  At least five have died, with three of those totally unrecoverable.  They have inferior cooling mechanisms and seem more prone to electric spike damage.

[DualSoul]

Fail.  There are two brands of hard drives I advise people to stay far away from: Seagate and IBM. (Maxtors and Western Digitals have my highest recommendations.)
I've had or been involved in the use of seven or so Seagates over the years.  At least five have died, with three of those totally unrecoverable.  They have inferior cooling mechanisms and seem more prone to electric spike damage.

Really?  Most people I've spoken to prefer Seagates over Maxtors and IBMs.  It's unfortunate that your experience with them has been shakey at best, but luckily that hasn't spread to the majority of consumer PC users that I've dealt with.  As for me, none of my HDDs have ever failed, so I'm hoping they never will.  That and my next RAID5 setup will probably be making use of some 320 or 400Gb Western Digitals, so hopefully I don't 'fail' so much after that.

EDIT:  I will agree on the fact that they tend to run hotter than most any drive I've used.

[Snorlax.RAYZR]

I think you mean 10,000. Most things these days benefit from more cache rather than faster RPM.  Which is why you still see mostly 5400 and 72000 RPM drives still, with 8 meg caches and the like.

Yeah sorry. My 2 and 0 on my keyboard are lm@e. 72 000? Never heard.

Really?  Most people I've spoken to prefer Seagates over Maxtors and IBMs.

Really? o_O
It's the total opposite for me. Everyone here says Seagate isn't so great. But as long as it works for you I guess =]

[JG]

I think you mean 10,000. Most things these days benefit from more cache rather than faster RPM.  Which is why you still see mostly 5400 and 72000 RPM drives still, with 8 meg caches and the like.

72 000? Never heard.

Oy, one more reason why I shouldn't go around correcting people all the time.....

[tetsaru arigashi]

man, i started up my computer this morning and it starting making a loud rattling noise...  i turned it off, then i went ahead and opened it up and air-dusted it, and it seems to be fine now.  scared the crap outta me, though, especially seeing how i'll be going back to college in about a week...  >_<;

[Centurion]

lmao... i'm playing FF11 on a GeForce 2.

[tetsaru arigashi]

*BUMP*

Eh, it looks like I probably won't be getting a new computer for Christmas/birthday after all, seeing how my parents tend to be such cheap-asses...  I guess I'll just have to save up my money somehow, which will be very difficult for me, seeing how I'm a full-time college student and new card game expansions keep coming out...  ;_;  Oh well... a Nintendo Wii and some new games should keep me busy for a while...

I know I can build a "good" computer for relatively cheap, but I'm one of those people who would rather pay more in order to get the really good stuff.  And seeing how hardware quickly becomes obsolete, I'd rather get all of the best stuff at once so that I wouldn't be faced with the problem of starting out with basic stuff and not being able to get the new, awesome stuff because it wouldn't be compatible with my motherboard, etc., although I know the not-so awesome stuff would significantly drop in price...  Hopefully you guys can understand what I'm saying, but I could REALLY use a new badass computer that can handle Photoshop and the most advanced games and could store shitloads of anime (sorry, but I don't like hanging on to buttloads of discs, even if that IS easier... plus, I'd like to be able to put my anime onto an iPod Video later on if possible to watch while I'm on the go), and still have the capabilities to handle any new technologies that are more specs-demanding in the future.  Sorry if it seems like I'm complaining a lot, but I've just been very limited with the outdated technology I currently have, and I want to be wary of how that may affect my future aspirations in a graphic design career.  =/

Reply or PM me if you've got any good suggestions.

[MustardMaster]

Intel Pentium 4 1,6 GHz
1 GB of RAM
120 GB HDD
ATI Radeon 9600 PRO
Some integrated piece of shit soundcard

Good enough for pr0n, anime, music & occasional game of Heroes 3 or Age Of Empires 2

[R-9]

Pentium 4 2.6 GHz
512 MB of RAM
ATI Radeon 8500
250 GB HDD
RealTek AC'97 audio

Eh, it looks like I probably won't be getting a new computer for Christmas/birthday after all, seeing how my parents tend to be such cheap-asses...  I guess I'll just have to save up my money somehow, which will be very difficult for me, seeing how I'm a full-time college student and new card game expansions keep coming out...  ;_;  Oh well... a Nintendo Wii and some new games should keep me busy for a while...

You just hit on why I don't do CCGs anymore.