You will have to excuse me but I don't understand what all of the fuss is about having the fastest prossessor.

For most of us a 600 pent is more than sufficiant. Who needs a gig prossessor or two
1 gig prossessors, all's were doing is making Intel a wealther companie than it already is.

I mean lets face it unless your doing a lot of high end cad or graphics you don't need it

If you realy want speed keep your 5 or 600 mhz prosessor and through in a 7200 rpm harddrive and watch how much faster your system is,and that hard drive will last you a long time.


Just thought i'd through my .02 cents in for what its worth.

I have to say that I agree with you, in most instances, people tend to only use around 10% of the capacity of their computers. This is an issue thats been going on for years - I remember very similar discussions in the day of the 386.

Of course times are changing, and with the advent of complicated 3D games, the 'need' for faster processers seems more pronounced than ever - larger hertz ratings often falsely promise better performance, faster, smoother games - a picture produced by the clever marketing techniques of companies such as Intel and AMD. However, what most people forget is that the processor is one component in a system consisting of many different pieces. It's all very well having the fastest CPU money can buy, but if your other components can't keep up, then this extra speed goes to waste.

As you quite rightly say - in general people simply don't really need more than 600 MHZ cpu's - graphics cards like the Gforce series manage to get highly acceptable results from budget processors such as the Celeron 400. Games will never need the very latest processors to be playable, if companies did this, they would commit financial suicide - remember a very small proportion of computer users own the latest kit.

At the end of the day some people will always want the latest kit - it's just a pity they're not prepared to wait - having the latest bits and pieces costs and of course can produce all the niggling bugs and problems that new hardware and software inevitably brings. Still it keeps forums such as this alive and well!

[This message has been edited by Damien (edited 21 May 2000).]

Making intel more wealthy will only bring goodness.

Think about this.

If you right now are content with the current speed of your processor and framerates on say quake 3 with it beafed up all the way, just emagin about 3 months down the road what games may come out.

I am content with my stuff at 500 pumped up all the way that my monitor will handle in quake 3 but at times not. I still everyonce in a while get a drop in frames and that kinda sux, but the jump from quake 3 from 2 was so great in such a little amount of time and see what sof did with the quake 2 engine.

If you have a gighrz processor just think about how much better the game would be. you could put it in the highest everything and not wory about anything bad. browsing your computer and doing things in photoshop will be so much faster.

If you have ever rendered anything in photoshop that was huge, and you had a 500 processor and it took kinda long, just emagin how short it would take with a processor that was 1000.

all i am trying to say is things will get better and better requires better stuff. planing ahead just keeps you up to date and gives you bragging rights at lan parties

I hear what your saying but would you not get
just as big of a performance boost by spending a hundred or so dollars on a hard drive that spins at 7200 than spending 3,4or 5 times that on the latest prosessor.

Like Dameien said the system consits of more than just the processor, the right mother doard, ram, hard drive and video card will will make a 500 pent screem. Like my machien.

Hell my sister has a little 266 that just rocks.

"He who dies with the fastest computer wins"

For me it's all about having the best stuff, I can afford it so why not? But I see your point also. I don't need the fastest stuff for playing games but it helps. Also when attending LAN parties you tend to be the center of attention and envy. (hehe)

My System:

Dual PIII 850's
256 Megs Ram
Tyan Tiger 100 Mainboard
Adaptec Ultra 160 Controller
1 - Seagate 18 gig Ultra 160 10RPM
3 - Seagate 18 gig U2W - 10RPM
Plextor - Ultra Wide 40x Cdrom
Plextor - 12/4/32 CD Burner - Scsi
Sony 10x DVD Drive - Scsi
CL Geforce DDR
CL SB Live Platinum
24" Sony Wide Aspect Monitor
....

Obviously you do not:

1. Run Windows 2000.
2. Play all the latest games at the highest resolutions and quality settings.
3. Do image editing.
4. Test out the latest software. Beta drivers and the like. (and love to test out the latest stuff)
5. Video capture. Converting DVD's to CD. Recompiling videos. (This takes HOURS on my P3-630 and I can not stand it)


Here is my system
P3-550@630
Abit BE6 Rv1
Matrox G400 32m AGP OEM
WinTv Theatre (Video Capture card)
Soundblaster Live! X-Gamer
Creative Dxr3 (DVD Decoder card)
Netgear 10/100 NIC PCI
Asus 8x40x DVDROM
Ricoh MP7040A 4x4x20
LS120 drive
Maxtor 40g 7200rpm DMA/66
Maxtor 27.2g 7200rpm DMA/66
128m PC-100 generic

Don't get me wrong this system is fast. But it is not fast enought for what I do. I think it's ridiculous that I have this kickass system but it takes me hours to compile a video or if I turn up a game to the highest res it goes slow. That's why my next upgrades in this order are:

Mushkin 256m CAS2 Ram ( would get 512 but I consider it a waste considering that DDR is starting to get lower in price)
Geforce 2
CDR (Mabye a 8x4x32 or somesuch)
New processor (probably a 1g)
Mabye a newer motherboard
Mabye another 40g so I can set up an IDE RAID.

DosFreak
Very impresive system, but I believe I said most of us. I agree you do a lot more on your computer than the average person,but you don't need a 800, or a gig prosessor to run a video game.

[This message has been edited by JMD (edited 22 May 2000).]

Dos,

When you get that GeForce 2, you'll be able to do any thing you want in games.

I agree with you to an extent. I have a k6-2 450 and I hate myself for buying it. Most k6-2 owners probobly know what Im talking about. I would totally be happy with like a p3 600 or athlon 6-700. even a p3 500.

its really very easy..if ur into gaming it helps more to have a fast processor than a faster hd..even tho the general speed is helped more by a faster hd the games dont care much wether ur hd`s at 5400 rpm or 7200 (except for loadtimes and i can w8 a couple of minutes if i get 75 fps at the least

Well, it really depends on the users. Some of them, if you throw them a P233 MMX, they are satisfied with it. They can do all their emailing and Word processing.

While for some others (like me ;)), I don't think dual 1 Ghz processors will satisfied my thirst.

For the kind of work that I work on (Autocad + 3D Studio MAX), Video encoding, etc, etc, I generally have to leave my computer on for ~10 hours to get what I want.

With dual 1 Ghz, 5 hours??
Still quite long isnt it?

Slkh
I do a lot of cad myself, ie CadKEY, Ideas,
soon Unigrapics, and was woundering about that Studio Max is there a student version
avalable, and how user frendly is it(how much
of a learning curve was it)
Feel free to e mail me.
Thanks

What I have found is that I'm a lot happier with the performance of my machine for much longer if I go dual processor. Back when the p3 600's came out I loaded myself up with a dual p3 550. The cpu's were 365.00 a piece at the time and that was back in September or October. Since then the price has fallen to around 225.00. A significant drop but they still retain a large portion of their original value.

So after that upgrade from my previous system of dual p2 300's, SMP equivelant of 600MHz, I now have a system that is actually double the speed in SMP enabled applications if you take into consideration the Katmai instructions that the system now utilizes.

To date there isn't any single x86 processor that can take it. Even the fabled 1GHz processors remain just that, fabled. No one has seen one yet and even if they had it would cost well over 1000.00 just for one of them.

Now you are saying "But that's just it, there aren't very many SMP apps and nothing else will take advantage of it." Well you are right and wrong at the same time. W2k and NT both on a 2 cpu system distributes the processes so as to even out the load and not overstress a single cpu. While running games that normally would stress a single cpu, my system will allow the game to use up to 50% of each processor. And that leaves the other 50% to take care of things like the OS or anything else that comes up. That translates into a the games using a processor of their very own, so with the latest w2k drivers I DO get a better frame rate than someone on a single 550MHz machine. That also gives me the ability to do true multitasking and never have a pause when switching between apps. I can run anything at the same time as any other thing. For example, I usually run Seti in the background and it is always processing SMP, but it backs off when other things want the cpu. So I usually complete a packet in 8.5 hours. At the same time I can burn a cd (scsi 6x burner), and play q3 online, with photoshop open in the background, and 3dstudio max minimized. I will see a performance hit doing all this, true. But my burn won't coaster, my projects won't crash, I will find alien intelligence before you and I will still frag your ass with a rail gun.

Specs:
Tyan Tiger 100 (Upgradable to Dual 850's & 1GB of RAM)
256MB RAM (512 if I need to snag it from another machine)
GeForce DDR 256 (Primary monitor 19")
Millenium II 4MB (Secondary 17")
Apaptec 2940UW Scsi Interface (10k 4GB OS drive - 6x4x16x CD-RW)
Promise Fastrak66 Ultra ATA/66 Raid (2* Maxtor 27.2GB Striped for RAID-0 50GB Total)
OnBoard UDMA (6GB games drive - 10x DVD-ROM)
Intel 10/100 NIC (Connected to HUB and going out to DSL 768k/128k connection)
SB Live! Value (Four Point Surround with Sub)


You may spend a little more $$ building a system like this but it's infinately upgradable. So whenever I decide that this machine isn't fast enough, I will replace the component that is lacking until the entire system has been replaced and I will rebuild this exhisting one at that time into a new fileserver/network renderer.

That's my advice.

JVail
I was under the impression tha the over all performance gain by dual prosessors is only
about 10 to 15%. not a lot of bang for the larg amount of extra money.

Your right, it does come in hand when you do a lot of multi tasks, but unless you some big time multi tasks and i'm not talking about doing AutoCad and word at the same time your
wasting your money, that's the point I was trying to make.

Ps Dell is now offering the 1 gig pross on their workstations.

And as far as fraging my ass, your probably
right, but when I get my new Dell workstation
with twin gig prossessors you'll be the one who's ass gets fraged. O no see what you'v done to me. I'd better put the visa away.
Cheers

oh...for those of you with 400mhz systems or below that say you would be happy with just a 600mhz machine. Your LYING! heheh. I went from a slow K63400@433 124mhz fsb to this P3550@630 115mhz fsb. As soon as I was happy that I "knew" this computer I easily overclocked it (far easier to overclock than my K6!!!). So when you get your brand new computer you will NOT be happy until you overclock it or get the latest thing out. Computer guys like us are never happy. hehehe

Dos I did'nt think overclocking a prosessor
was a healthy thing to do.

Don't you lessen the life of your prosessor?

If not i'm interested in how you go about doing it.
Thanks

Yes overclocking does shorten the "life" of your processor. The thing is how long is the "life" of your processor? If you upgrade your processor every 1-2 years I would recommend that you overclock your processor. Usually overclocking can be accomplished by changing the bus speed in your bios. If you have a P3 you can not change the multiplier you can only change the bus speed. If you have an Athlon you can change both the multiplier and the bus speed. If you have a Celeron you can change both the multiplier and the bus speed and of course if you have a K6 you can change the multiplier and the bus speed.

I had an Athlon 500, I just got a 750. YES
buy a faster processor, you will love it.
I run 2020 Cabinet Cad, Corel Draw and numerous games, well worth the $$$$, dont hesitate, dont think its not a big deal, you will smile and life will glow!!


Ned

I want your job....heheh.

Err. I don't think you can change the multiplier of Celerons processors.

One more thing about overclocking, well, a lot of people says overclocking is unhealthy for your processor. Well, only the chipmakers says so.

What would I say is that, chipmakers are the REAL overclockers who has control over the multipliers and voltage (bus speed if you want to include as well).

With 1 Ghz, they ramp up the voltage but they say they ramp it up to increase the yield. A user to ramp up their voltage? To overclock

What is the difference here between to increase the yield and to overclock here?

What difference between a 1 Ghz chips and a 800 Mhz chip? The marking is different, the multiplier is different (Maybe.. 800Mhz/133 then mutliplier the same). Thats all?? The heatsink that bundle with it is different. The busspeed is different (If 800/133 then same bus speed). Thats all? Err... The SL code is different, the core is the same.

In this case, why not we up the voltage a little bit, increase the bus speed, and couple it with a better heatsink and you get 1 Ghz?

My remarked P100 (Actually P75) is still alive until today, so they shouldn't have shorten the life of the chips.

JMD,

I don't remember any 3D studio MAX for students, but perhaps you can find some of the stores offering 10% discount for students??

How hard is AutoCAD for you? I will says 3D Studio MAX is twice as hard as that. Learning curve? Hmm.. need lots of practice. Even until now, I still admit that I am not efficient enough on it.

Yes there is 3dStudio Max Educational version for around $800, may still seem steep but not when you consider the actuall package is around $4000 and they are exactly same except one of them gives you a spash screen reminding you that it is an educational version so don't make any money on it.

All this talk makes me want an athlon. I heard their getting alot cheaper.

Go for it A-guy.

The new pent gig is out. My little p 500 is starting to look aufull slow, im sorry I started this thread.

JMD, going back to your original question, here is my 2 cents. Were you ever into suping up old cars when you were younger (or still doing it today)? Always pushing for a .10th of of second off at the quarter mile, running against others for the bragging right to whose car is the fastest? For us computer freaks, it is the same thing. My celeron 300A@450 was getting old, but it is still a good processor and does almost everything smoothly still. But here came the reviews of the Celeron II 566 cpu's running at 850. I had to have one. Just so I can say that now my system runs at 850. Truthfully, there wasnt that much of a gain from 450. But is a rush to see it that high for the first time. Just like breaking the 13 second barrier at the track with an old car.


------------------
Celeron II 566@700, Abit BH6, 160 RAM, Seagate Barracuda 20.4gig 7.2k rpm UDMA66, Modified Promise ultra66 turned into a Fasttrack hack, 48x Lite-on CDROM
Diamond v770 tnt2 16 meg, Voodoo2 8, meg, 17"Daytek