Hardware recommendations

Chris Fullmer · 3 Aug 2008, 15:45

They mostly have the same requirements. The biggest difference is that some of the upper end game ones have 2 video cards in them that sync together to give you twice the video processing speed. This is handy for games that are super high end grapghics. I am not sure if this is helpful in 3d modelling. It is expensive.

I like that Alienware page. Those are some great computers. I think for me I'd go for the green one (Area-51). Maybe someoneelse has some more thoughts on this though. Don't just go off my opinion alone, I don't keep up with computer specs like I used to

You might be able to find a better price somewhere else though

Chris

juju · 3 Aug 2008, 16:08

IIRC Alienware have some other tweaks they make to the system (the BIOS methinks) you wouldn't normally find on the exact same hardware.

kevsterman · 3 Aug 2008, 22:01

Hmm.. I've just read some very negative reviews online about Alienware computers. I guess though that every company out there will have its share of negative reviews to some extent.

Whats the most reliable computer company? Dell? HP? Mesh?

remus · 3 Aug 2008, 22:10

I think its quite hard to say one manufacturer is more reliable than another, as its mostly down to the components used, and id guess that most manufacturers use very similar components.

Just out of interest, what were the problems mentioned in the alienware reviews?

chango70 · 3 Aug 2008, 22:24

I researched Alienware as a possibility for my laptop. Apparently their customer service is a joke. Technical enquiries to their support team often end with 'why don't you just type it in Google ' Also I've heard of serious overheating problems.

Just a moment...

(www.pcspecialist.co.uk)

Check these guys out. I got a lappy from them. Very good Cumstom PC makers with nice interface.

kevsterman · 3 Aug 2008, 22:29

@unknownuser said:

Just out of interest, what were the problems mentioned in the alienware reviews?

It's probably easier to read some of them than it is for me to describe the main problems they had. http://www.ciao.co.uk/alienware_co_uk__5329936

And this was a particularly damning one. http://www.musicface.co.uk/alienware.htm

But for all these negative reviews there will be a lot more positive ones I'm sure. I've just not found them yet.

kevsterman · 3 Aug 2008, 22:37

@unknownuser said:

Just a moment...

(www.pcspecialist.co.uk)

Check these guys out. I got a lappy from them. Very good Cumstom PC makers with nice interface.

I have looked at that site in the past but as I know very little about graphics cards, CPUs, motherboards etc I don't know what the best spec for my money would be.

dsarchs · 4 Aug 2008, 15:47

I have found Sharkyextreme ( http://www.sharkyextreme.com/guides/MVGSBG/article.php/3747766 ) to be a good source for what to buy if you plan on building the machine yourself -- always a good way to go.

A few times a year they update three different levels of computers [$1000, $2500 and $5000, if I remember correctly) and try to come up with the fastest computer available at that price. That includes keyboard, mouse, monitor, etc... so if you already have those it'd be a little less.
These guides are geared for building a 'gaming' computer, but that would coincide pretty well how sketchup works.

It's worth a look, at least.

kevsterman · 8 Aug 2008, 15:06

I've been looking at the pcspecialist website and I've come up with the following spec for £1300. Is this good value for money? Will it give me a really fast computer capable of dealing with several intense programmes and the internet all running at the same time without any noticeable slowdown?

Processor (CPU) - Intel Core2 Quad Q9550 (4 X 2.83GHz) 1333MHz/12MB (Special Offer)

Memory (RAM) - 8GB CORSAIR DOMINATOR 1066MHz - LIFETIME WARRANTY (4x2GB)

Motherboard - ASUS P5K SE: DDR2, SATAII, PCI-e x16, 2 PCI, 3 x PCI-e x1

Operating System - Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit Edition + SP1, CD (£59)

USB Options - 8 x USB 2.0 PORTS (6 REAR + 2 FRONT) AS STANDARD

Memory - 1st Hard Disk - 1000GB SERIAL ATA II HARD DRIVE WITH 32MB CACHE (7,200rpm)

1st CD/DVD Drive - 20x Dual Layer LightScribe DVD Writer ±R/±RW/RAM

2nd CD/DVD Drive - 16x DVD-ROM & 52x CD-ROM Drive

Graphics Card - 1024MB GEFORCE 9800GX2 PCI Express + DVI (Special Offer)

Sound Card - ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)

Network Facilities - ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT

Memory Card Reader - INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (READS XD, MS, CF, SD, etc)

Case - Stylish Black Aluminium Trigon Case + 2 Front/Side USB

Power Supply & Case Cooling - 700W Quiet Quad Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan (£79)

Processor Cooling - ASUS SILENT KNIGHT II PURE COPPER ULTRA COOLER (£36)

I'm just so clueless about all this stuff.

Chris Fullmer · 8 Aug 2008, 16:20

I can't say that I'm overly knowledgeable, but from what I do know, that looks to be an awesome system. Where I had problems when I upgraded from win xp 32 bit to Vista 64 bit was in my peripheral hardware. Well, specifically my wireless card. It just wouldn't work with vista 64, and it was really new. I had to buy another one. Otherwise, I've had no problems with vista 64bit.

I think its a great system and the price (based on some real loose calculations done in my very flawed brain) looks to be about right, though I might have thought that at that price a monitor would be included. But heck, that is a great system. If you willing put the cash in to it, that one will be good!

Chris

EDIT: Thats good advice from remus about shopping around.

remus · 8 Aug 2008, 16:24

Hard to say wether its good value for money as i havent been keeping up with developments as of late, but it will certainly give you very good performance, especially for multi tasking.

If you want to get a better idea of value, try and spec a similar machine form a few other manufacturers and see how the price compares.

edit: i tried getting a similar spec machine form dell and thers came out about 100 quid more, so id say youve got yourself a pretty good deal there

juju · 9 Aug 2008, 11:18

Seems like a good machine kevsterman, a few comments though:

upgrade path is very limited due to DDR2 based RAM and motherboard.
why do you need two optical drives? I used to have two in my last machine (it made sense at the time) but my new machine (built it November last year) only has one optical drive, a DVD-RW, and I have not had a situation whereby I require two yet...
try rather getting two HDD's; one (fast, smaller capacity) for OS and program installations, the other (regular, large capacity) for data.
that graphics solution requires a bit of power and could be replaced with something like a nVidia GTX 280 or even a GTX 260 (less expensive than the GTX 280) that will give you similar (if not better) performance for roughly the same energy usage. Pricing should be competitive on the GTX 260.

Power requirement according to eXtreme Power Supply Calculator Lite v2.5 for your machine (specified by you, using 85% TDP for CPU, 90% load and 25% capacitor ageing) should be approximately 485W, so your 700W PSU is probably an overkill. Power requirement using the same tool with a GTX 280 graphics solution is 498W approximately and 403W with a GTX 260. Changing from one SATA HDD to two SATA HDD's adds 30W to the power requirement, changing from two optical drives to one optical drive reduces power requirement by 33W.

DDR3 RAM is slightly more expensive than DDR2, and motherboards that support DDR3 are also a bit more expensive than DDR2 motherboards, but the higher rated memory will work really well with the newer CPU's and DDR3 uses less power than DDR2.

GrinsNGiggles23 · 10 Aug 2008, 05:18

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remus · 10 Aug 2008, 06:52

What card have you got and what version of the drivers are you using for it? its quite hard to help if we dont know what hardware your using

kevsterman · 11 Aug 2008, 16:08

@unknownuser said:

that graphics solution requires a bit of power and could be replaced with something like a nVidia GTX 280 or even a GTX 260 (less expensive than the GTX 280) that will give you similar (if not better) performance for roughly the same energy usage.

I've compared the GTX 280 and the GTX 260 against the 9800GX2 on the nvidia website and the 9800 seems to outperform the other 2 quite a bit. For example, graphics performance for 9800 is 45x and for the other two its 35x. Texture fill rate for 8900 is 76.8billion and for the other two its 36.9 billion. Max memory bandwidth for 9800 is 128GB and for the other two its 111.9GB. Standard memory config for 8900 is 1GB and for the other two its 896MB.

So isn't the 9800GX2 a better graphics card to get than the GTX280 & 260?

juju · 12 Aug 2008, 08:59

@kevsterman said:

So isn't the 9800GX2 a better graphics card to get than the GTX280 & 260?

Only to applications that will / can make use of a SLI setup. Even though it is not strictly speaking a SLI setup since there is only one graphics card the implementation is still quite the same.

SU benefits from stronger GPU and stronger (higher clocked) CPU components. You need to consider what application you're doing the upgrade for and if it will benefit from the technology offered or not, I made that mistake when buying a 2.4GHz quad core CPU thinking SU will be all over it like white on rice.

AFAIK SU isn't optimised for dual graphics card implementations (or multi core CPU's) and as such wouldn't benefit from these technologies at the moment. Hopefully that will change with SU7, but who knows when that will be coming to market since there is not so much of a peep from Google, apart from "working on it" about SU7 release date.

Also:
The 9800GX2 has 512MB video RAM, 128 stream processors and 256-bit memory interface width per GPU. The higher the number in the memory interface width the better the graphics card is my rule of thumb.

I must say, for the price these 9800GX2's are going at they would be awesome for gaming, but I'm not convinced that SU would benefit that much from it, but then again I could be wrong.

nbxx · 23 Aug 2008, 02:31

think you.

sky2779 · 23 Aug 2008, 12:18

hi all.i found that there would be some problem using ATI video card.something like there are some problems when you chooseing the face.
is there anyone have the same problem?

JuanV.Soler · 23 Aug 2008, 12:47

not here, yet

brodie · 25 Aug 2008, 14:34

@sky2779 said:

hi all.i found that there would be some problem using ATI video card.something like there are some problems when you chooseing the face.
is there anyone have the same problem?

Ya, that's pretty common w/ ATI cards. I had the same issue. You can try different drivers but that didn't work for me. I ended up having to turn off Hardware Acceleration (basically the same thing as yanking out your ati card and throwing it at the wall but less satisfying). I ended up buying an nVidia card.

-Brodie