Most powerful computer in the group?

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AstraVanMan 19 years ago

Just wondering what the most powerful computer any of you lot uses on a day-to-day basis is?

And I'm not about superduper mainframes or high-powered workstations and stuff - just 'regular' home computers like Macs and PCs.

I'm vaguely thinking about getting a new PC, and ages back saw something advertised by Dell with the following spec:

Dual Core Intel Viiv Pentium D 3.0GHz, 2 x 2MB L2 Cache, 800MHz FSB,

2GB DDR2 RAM
320GB HDD (decent speed Serial ATA type jobbie)
256MB nVidia PCI-xPress TurboCache something-or-other graphics card
19" Flat Panel Monitor plus a couple of gimmicky things like a multi-card reader and an analogue TV tuner card with remote control.

All for £799 incl VAT + delivery. Which I reckon is a bloody good price, and it seems they haven't advertised anything at quite as good a price since then. Doubtless I'll get people telling me I could build the same for less, but every time I've ever looked up component prices it hasn't seemed that way to me (maybe I'm not looking in the right places), but unless it's a decent amount cheaper and better, I really can't be arsed with that hassle anyway.

Anyway, my point is, has anyone on here got a PC or Mac of roughly equivalent spec to that, or better? Like I said, I'm talking top of the range home/office PCs/Macs and not super-powered Workstations used by graphic designers, or Mainframes or anything like that.

My reason for asking is that I'd like to know how quickly something of that sort of spec can redraw a complex pdf file - the one below in particular. It's not exactly the height of excitement (a Greater London bus map), but it is pretty complex and IMHO a good example of testing a machine's performance. My s**te old P3/450MHz machine with 320MB RAM takes a massive 37 seconds to redraw it - I've asked a couple of others to test it (cheers Dervy + SteveH) and it *might* be looking like software is the limitation, making 4-5 seconds the absolute quickest that's possible, so I'm throwing it open to the floor to see if anyone's computer can beat that.

So if anyone can be bothered - this is the file:

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Cheers,

Peter

-- "They said to me 'You could be anyone you wanted to be', but I was realistic and only ever aimed to be me, which I already was. So I gave up trying."

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Abo 19 years ago

Avoid, for gaming:

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AstraVanMan 19 years ago

Ooh, cheers for that. Last thing I want if I'm spending semi-decent money on a PC that's probably going to be the last PC I buy for at least

5 or more years, is something that's a compromise. I'm not really into gaming at all tbh (unless you count Minesweeper and Websudoku) so the lack of ultimate performance from that respect wouldn't bother me so much - it's just the fact that it's compromising resources. If I was happy compromising resources I'd spend a good few hundred quid less on a PC with less RAM, less internal CPU cache, integrated graphics card, etc etc - the point of me spending £800 or so was so that I'll get decent components that all do their own job without using other bits to help them out.

-- "They said to me 'You could be anyone you wanted to be', but I was realistic and only ever aimed to be me, which I already was. So I gave up trying."

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Justin Cole 19 years ago

At 45% zoom mine takes 5 secs, however the good thing is that you can zoom and move about before the screen has finished repainting...

When zoomed in at 100% repaints take about 2 secs, about 1 sec @ 200%.

My spec is not mega-modern:

P4 660 (3.67GHz Hyperthreading)

2Gb PC4300 DDR2 RAM PCI-Express Nvidia 6800

I wonder how the AMDs cope, they're often faster for this sort of stuff?

Justin.

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Rob 19 years ago

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Depresion 19 years ago

Don't touch them with a 1/4 mile barge poll.

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(You could look up there owner on there)

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I had to return a dead DVD drive to them, they held onto it to do the test for over a month taking it past the 12 month warrantee then said that as it was over 12 month since I bought it they wouldn't replace it despite the fact that they had it long before the 12 months was up.

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DanTXD 19 years ago

Mine's a bit outdated now,

Athlon 3200xp Geforce 5950 Ultra

1gb DDR 400gb HD DVD/RW and DVD

But I can play battlefield 2 on full draw distance, so I'm happy :-)

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Homer 19 years ago

AMD 3200XP GeForce 6800GT

1GB Ram

Took 4 seconds.

If you're getting a new PC then an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU is the way to go.

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Ronny 19 years ago

Amd 64 bit 3600

2gb Ram 2 x 300gb hdd ATI radeon x850 Xt

Took about the same

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Depresion 19 years ago

I'll let you know, I should have all the parts on the way for one (2.4Ghz 4MB cache) next week, although I have been told there may be a delay due to demand for that chip. I'll probably also stick the Beta of Vista on it and give that a whirl.

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Burgerman 19 years ago

Mines 5 months old. Mainly for solid modeling pro engineer, autocad, web design, graphics editing (BIG photos) and ripping movies etc.

All 64bit XP Asus AN8 SLI Premium AMD 64 X2 Dual core (toledo) 4800 2mb cache overclocked by 12 percent.

2 of XFX Gforce 7 SLI linked RAM 4gb total (4x 1gb sticks) cas 2 Corsair extreme with pretty "activity lights" which are rediculous since my case is not a cristmas tree! 2x 120gb drives on RAID 0 as boot drive, 6x 250gb for storage/backup/emergence boot etc. All serial ATA2 etc. dvd writer, floppy, wireless card, card reader, scanner, printer, etc etc 21 inch HP P1130 trinitron flat screen monitor Cooler master server case with bunch of thermostatic drive bay coolers etc.

Runs fast reliably and quietly. Never seen a blue screen or any problem since I built it. Not cheap but it paid for itself ten times over so far!

64 bit XP actually uses all 4gb of memory when you are doing multible things at once, no slowdowns! I hate waiting.

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DervMan 19 years ago

HFM? Dell's delivery is around £65.

As I've said, it's about four seconds on this notebook (Centrino Duo 1.66). But then this machine isn't built for speed, it's built for, err, well, eight hours in Starbucks "working." :)

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DervMan 19 years ago

And how long did it take?

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DervMan 19 years ago

Freaky. Four seconds again. What version of Adobe Reader are you using?

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Burgerman 19 years ago

For what its worth it redraws the map (at 1600 x 1200 res) from any size to any size faster than you can count. prolly less than half a second. but its a strange test. Not sure what exactly its testing?

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Burgerman 19 years ago

Just been testing it again at 800 percent and 100 etc and its way faster than half a sec. Its sort of instant. You cant really measure it.

A better test would be how long to do a seti unit, or to rip a movie (using same files and software) so it lasts long enough to test and test cpu/cache/mem performance?

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Burgerman 19 years ago

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Burgerman 19 years ago

A better test might be to see how fast your machine takes to unzip a zipped file into a folder.

Here are some desctop pics you may like (vertically) on a black desktop. Tastful fit birds...

They are all 1200 tall, as my desktop is 1600 x 1200.

Anyway it takes just under one sec to unzip these pics.

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AstraVanMan 19 years ago

Maybe I wasn't clear enough - that quoted price included VAT and delivery. A while back they made this subtle change in their advertising that was obviously directed at domestic users - I guess pricing on brochures sent to businesses probably doesn't include the VAT.

Heh, still not bad, mind.

-- "They said to me 'You could be anyone you wanted to be', but I was realistic and only ever aimed to be me, which I already was. So I gave up trying."

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DanTXD 19 years ago

I use Foxit reader and it took about 2 :-)

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