Computer upgrade

[Cruddy]

Oh yeah, one thing I SERIOUSLY recommend to anyone getting a new PC - follow Panag's advice on spybot/internet security. If you can afford that $50 for ZoneAlarm Pro, spend it - it will save you days of downtime in the long run.

I used to moan to Ming about Panag's spamming. Not anymore. I may disagree with his politics - but as an Internet newbie I found his advice very valuable.

[Giancarlo]

I don't understand most of Panag's posts.. they don't make much sense. But if he did say that about spybot/internet security, he is right. Except I use the more stable Sygate Personal Firewall Pro (registered).

[Urban Ranger]

You also have to be careful about scrap files.

[Cruddy]

It's an interesting link Urban. Thanks.

To be hones, I never run files from the icon. I always go to an application first and open from there - it's more cumbersome than the "OOO, what's this file? Click" approach but it's the method I've always used.

Except maybe TYPE on CPM. That was a long time ago.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Zopperoni

Do you really need a new one?

I have a Radeon 9500 (non-pro) with a 9700 PCB. I'm happy with it. If you're lucky enough, you can successfully patch it to a 9700/9800. (I get a bit of the checkerboard-effect unfortunately, so I put things back.)

Can someone give me advice about what kind of video card I should get. I have an old 16mb and that's all I know. What's the diff between a non-pro and a PCB?

I don't want to spend too much money, but I want something that will be good for a while.

[Cruddy]

Originally posted by Tingkai


Can someone give me advice about what kind of video card I should get. I have an old 16mb and that's all I know. What's the diff between a non-pro and a PCB?

I don't want to spend too much money, but I want something that will be good for a while.

I suggest you start a new thread on this - but if people recommend other than an ATI9000 I would be surprised from a price vs performance POV. I'm no expert on gfx cards though so start that thread!!!

[MichaeltheGreat]

Provost and MRT, I hope you're done with the snide comments now.

Let me rephrase, you are done, I just hope you are done on your own, instead of with my help.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


If I were you, I'd pick up some Opterons instead. Xeons never worth their price tages.

The main cost constraints are the processor licenses for SQL Server 2000.

On my server boxes that have less demand, I'm running commercially licensed MySQL, but it does not have the same high-load performance as SQL Server.

Unless there's direct Opteron vs 3.06 Xeon benchmarks that show it's faster running SQL server under similar load conditions, the cost difference for the Xeon won't phase me. And dual processors, too. Although if you know of dual processor Opteron boards and benchmarks, I'm interested if there's actually a better alternative.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
Although if you know of dual processor Opteron boards and benchmarks, I'm interested if there's actually a better alternative.

I don't know of any comparative benchmarks yet, but the inital Opteron offerings, 242?, 244? something like that, are designed to be two-way multiprocessing. Later they'll come out with the 1xx version (uniprocessing) and the 4xx version (4-way multiprocessing).

[Asher]

Originally posted by Tingkai

Can someone give me advice about what kind of video card I should get. I have an old 16mb and that's all I know. What's the diff between a non-pro and a PCB?

PCB is the PC Board...that's the plastic board all the circuitry sits on.

The Pro is just a higher clocked/faster version of the card, that's the only difference (nvidia's name for Pro is Ultra).

Cruddy: The Radeon 9000 is a DirectX 8.1 card, so I wouldn't recommend it anymore...

[Asher]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
I don't know of any comparative benchmarks yet, but the inital Opteron offerings, 242?, 244? something like that, are designed to be two-way multiprocessing. Later they'll come out with the 1xx version (uniprocessing) and the 4xx version (4-way multiprocessing).

http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1816&p=4

Perhaps most relevant:

[Zopperoni]

Originally posted by Tingkai
What's the diff between a non-pro and a PCB?

I don't want to spend too much money, but I want something that will be good for a while.

Asher described both terms above. I'll elaborate on my ATi Radeon 9500 (non-pro) example.

Different manufacturers may have different architectures for their cards. A Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9500 looks different from a Club 3D Radeon 9500.

However, if you want to be able to patch your 9500 (non-pro, this is important: the "trick" only works on non-pro models), you need a 9500 with the same architecture/PCB as the 9700, which looks like this:



This is how my Radeon 9500 looks like:



For comparison, this is how the Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9500 looks like:




Clearly, a different architecture.

Now, the 9500 and 9700 look so much alike, because they are essentially the same card. Both cards have eight pipelines, but four of the eight are "de-activated" in the 9500.
What you do with the mod, is basically open the four remaining pipelines. When successful, the result is a Radeon 9700 for half the price.

For more on info on the process of executing the mod, check out this page.

Now, I must warn you though. The mod is at your own risk.
The process will always be successful (when the right parts are used, the mod will always work). The outcome however, is not guaranteed to be good. If you're lucky, it works and you have great value, but you can also get a "checkerboard-effect":



It can vary in how bad the effect is.
The worst case scenario is obviously that you don't receive any video output anymore.

A poll had the following results:
Perfect outcome - 43%
Checkerboard (bad) - 40%
Checkerboard (OK) - 8%
No video - 6%
Weird blue spots - 2%
Missing polygons - 2%

I'm personally with the eight percent there.


The bottom line of this is that you can create value with this mod if it works, but if it doesn't work, you'll still have a very decent video card for the next few years.

[Solly]

That adds up to 101%.

[Giancarlo]

The ATI Radeon 9500 PRO costs about $20 more.. you get better performance with the pro version, I'd go with it.

[Asher]

The reason why sometimes it doesn't work, is sometimes certain pipelines are corrupt or just bad. So instead of becoming a 9700, they just disable half of the pipelines (including the bad one), and it becomes a 9500.

But with that hack, when you enable all the pipelines, the screwed up pipelines result in a checkerboard effect.

I believe it's pretty hard to get the 9500s with the same design as the 9700 now, ATi redesigned the 9500 board quite some time ago.