Bought a new PC.....my excuse was to do the f-body logos!

[fastTa]

Picked it up from Circuit City. It's a HP Pavilion a1450n. After the $100 rebate, it will cheaper than anything I could even find online.

This thing is very quick!

It has:
-AMD Athlon 64 x2 dual core processor 4200+@ 2.2 GHz
-It came with 2GB of PC3200 DDR RAM, but I bought 2 more 1GB sticks
-250 GB 7200 RPM SATA hard drive
-1MB L2 cache
-2GB system bus speed
-Lightscribe DVD+RW burner
-NVIDIA Ge Force 6150 256MB LE graphics

I also bought a ProView 19" LCD monitor(couldn't resist).

So far the HP seems to handle multiple heavy applications without missing a single step. That is impressive. The absolute only gripe I have about it is that it did not have an integrated DVI output. I'll just get a quality DVI PCI card.

Here is the link:
Link to HP Pavilion a1450n at Circuit City

Send me all the f-body logo ideas you can think of!

[Craig 94 TA GT]

-It came with 2GB of PC3200 DDR RAM, but I bought 2 more 1MB sticks

So you'll have 2.002 GB of RAM afterwards

Just kidding, I know what you mean.


Why don't you buy a Geforce 7900 to replace the 6150? http://www2.shopping.com/xPO-BFG_Tec...etail_Free_Shi

[fastTa]

So you'll have 2.002 GB of RAM afterwards

Just kidding, I know what you mean.


Why don't you buy a Geforce 7900 to replace the 6150? http://www2.shopping.com/xPO-BFG_Tec...etail_Free_Shi

LOL, yeah stupid me typed a M instead of a G.

Yeah, the 6150 is integrated so I was going to look for an upgraded PCI graphics card. I don't really play alot of games on my PC, but I would like to have a good card because I do a bunch of video editing.

Is that 7900 supposed to be one of the better cards?

[ryan34]

So where are those f-body logos?

[fastTa]

So where are those f-body logos?

I'm still on Ken to send me his address so I know where to send the bill.

[Craig 94 TA GT]

LOL, yeah stupid me typed a M instead of a G.

Yeah, the 6150 is integrated so I was going to look for an upgraded PCI graphics card. I don't really play alot of games on my PC, but I would like to have a good card because I do a bunch of video editing.

Is that 7900 supposed to be one of the better cards?

I think the 7900 is close to top of the line for Nvidia. It may be their fastest PCI-E card. But I haven't been into video cards lately...so I'm unsure of all the latest out there. I know my laptop has a standalone GeForce 6600 and it's showing age. DX9 games have horrible frame rates...not sure about normal graphics apps though.

Hey, I've always wondered, how does that SATA hard drive compare to the standard IDE ones? I've always wanted to try one. Your system must be blazing fast

[fastTa]

I think the 7900 is close to top of the line for Nvidia. It may be their fastest PCI-E card. But I haven't been into video cards lately...so I'm unsure of all the latest out there. I know my laptop has a standalone GeForce 6600 and it's showing age. DX9 games have horrible frame rates...not sure about normal graphics apps though.

Hey, I've always wondered, how does that SATA hard drive compare to the standard IDE ones? I've always wanted to try one. Your system must be blazing fast

I switched to a SATA in my last HP desktop and you really can tell a difference.

This one in my new HP is rated at a 1.81 Gbit/sec transfer rate peak, combined with the 1st party DMA support and the intellgent data handling technology with NCQ(Native Command Queuing) it is noticeably faster.

Where it really shines is when you are doing heavy read/write processing....like when I am going between Macromedia Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Dreamweaver, or when I am writing HTML or JAVA and I need to constantly compile, open, simulate, etc., etc.. I tend to also have some pretty CPU heavy apps running all at once and with a SATA, you can make your page file space much much larger.

[DeWynter]

I hope you are using windows xp x64 edition. Windows xp x32 cant address 4 gig of ram even if it is addvertised by microsoft as that. When you pop it in and go look at your system properties it will not register the full 4 gig. I don't feel like typing it out so I'm going to cut and paste a quote.

I really should save my standard reply to this, as this question seems to be popping up everywhere recently... *deeply inhales*....

Problems with 4 GiBs of system memory in PC's

Problem 1) The "Memory Hole" problem: because of legacy reasons, all device interface maps reside at the top of the 4GiB address space (the idea being allowing memory mapping of devices in standard memory space, start at the end (which, at the time was 2^32 bits, or 4GiB, and work backwards). This requires mapping of the memory that would be unaccessible due to overlaping these device maps to the address space above 4GiB. This can be accomplished in either software (via BIOS + OS awareness) or in hardware (via BIOS and hardware ability, only available in the 90nm chip revision

Problem 2) The "Hey, where'd my other 2 gigs go?" problem: Windows XP 32-bit (Home only comes as 32-bit) is able to address 32-bits worth of address space (without ugly hacks like PAE, but that's for another thread) which, as said before, is 4GiB. We're money, right? Unfortunately not, as Windows splits the address space and hence the memory into "kernel memory" and "user memory", and it splits this 4GiB address space right down the middle, leaving processes only able to access, at most, 2GiB of space. While there is no solution to make Windows let any process use all of the possible address space short of adding more address bits, there is a boot parameter you can set in boot.ini that may help the situation, /3GB, when appended to the boot params can allow processes the ability to use up to 3GiB of address space at the cost of the kernel only having 1 GiB. As such, I've seen this approach work wonders and I've seen this approach crash systems, requiring fine-tuning of the address split using the USERVA=##### switch to back off from 3GiB. Even after all of that, note that only certain applications that have been compiled with special flags will even be aware of the possiblity to use more that 2 GiB of memory, and most of those are in the scientific and engineering realm.

Problem 3) The "Where's the performance?" problem: As others have touched on here, save high-end video editing, veryhigh end photo editing, mathematic simulations on large data sets, running a mid level to entry-enterprise level (web|DB|domain)server, or any other application where routine access to large, large ammounts of data is the order of the day, you will see little to no improvement over 2GiB. There are many articles around (including one on THG) that illustrate this.

Problem 4) The "Windows x64 kinda sucks" problem: As stated before, the only "real" way to see all those pretty bytes is to get a system that has the kinda available address space to house that memory and the mapped devices in one go which requires an operating system that has a few extra address bits in it's addresses. What you will quickly realize is that some of your old hardware won't work anymore and, guess what? it never will. Many companies just aren't supporting 64-bit drivers and, while the situation is much improved from "the early days", it still is a problem. Even beyond that, you will have to install many 32-bit programs as there aren't 64-bit verions of them, and when there are (IE and Firefox), some plugins are not (Flash, Java plugin), which requires the 32 bit browser. Linux and BSD is much better in the driver realm, but that point is probably moot here. Thus is life on the bleeding edge.

The 64 bit problem is getting less and less of a problem as Vista aproches as it will be released as 64 bit and 32 bit right away, and most CPUs today are 64 bit.

[fastTa]

I hope you are using windows xp x64 edition. Windows xp x32 cant address 4 gig of ram even if it is addvertised by microsoft as that. When you pop it in and go look at your system properties it will not register the full 4 gig. I don't feel like typing it out so I'm going to cut and paste a quote.

The 64 bit problem is getting less and less of a problem as Vista aproches as it will be released as 64 bit and 32 bit right away, and most CPUs today are 64 bit.

Running MCE 2005 5.1, 32 bit

It recognizes as well as utilizes all 4 gigs just fine. All versions of XP were capable of utilizing 4 GB of RAM. Some just took a few tweaks.

I am just going to wait until Vista comes out. There are still too many compatibility issues with 32 bit drivers and 32 bit software being used on x64.

[DJ Taso]

This thing is very quick!

It has:
-AMD Athlon 64 x2 dual core processor 4200+@ 2.2 GHz
-It came with 2GB of PC3200 DDR RAM, but I bought 2 more 1GB sticks
-250 GB 7200 RPM SATA hard drive
-1MB L2 cache
-2GB system bus speed
-Lightscribe DVD+RW burner
-NVIDIA Ge Force 6150 256MB LE graphics

If you do any gaming and want to play today's games at the highest settings I would invest in a 6800 or better. I got a 7900 GTX and this thing is a power house! If that's not your thing then, nice setup!

[Y2KHAWK]

I'm still on Ken to send me his address so I know where to send the bill.

Oh, I can give you that if you like???

I'm sure Ken wouldn't mind me helping out a fellow f-body friend.

Congrats on the new comp by the way.



















Geek...

[fastTa]

If you do any gaming and want to play today's games at the highest settings I would invest in a 6800 or better. I got a 7900 GTX and this thing is a power house! If that's not your thing then, nice setup!

Thanks Taso. Do you think that is one of the better PCI-E cards?

[fastTa]

Oh, I can give you that if you like???

I'm sure Ken wouldn't mind me helping out a fellow f-body friend.

Congrats on the new comp by the way.



















Geek...

Yep, just PM it to me. The sooner he cuts me a check the better!

[wolfdogs]

Yep, just PM it to me. The sooner he cuts me a check the better!

i just "cut something for you"........but it wasn't a check.....................


















bwwwhahahahahaa

[Injuneer]

What's the reliability record for HP? Everyone recommends Dell, but it seems like you can get a lot more power for quite a bit less moeny with the HP's. All the chain stores carry them. Only problem is they bundle them with printers, speakers and other stuff I don't want. I like the one you linked.... looks like just the computer, and allowed you to pick the display you wanted, and add options like the additional memory.

Whatever I get has to be better than my 8-year old Gateway.