Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Waffle on December 08, 2005, 02:21:10 AM
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Got an email back from Mr.Claus that said I need to leave out $20,000 worth of premium scotch (at wholesale prices)....
What gives?
Processor/s: Dual Processor - Dual Intel® Xeon™ Processors 3.6GHz w/ EM64T 800 MHz FSB w/2MB Cache
Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional with Service Pack 2
Warranty: 1-Year AlienCare Toll-Free 24/7 Phone Support with Onsite Service
AlienRespawn: Alienware® Respawn Recovery Kit
Case: Alienware® Professional Workstation Chassis - Black
Power Supply: Enermax EG851AX-VH 660 Watt Power Supply
Motherboard: Alienware® X2 Dual Xeon™ Motherboard
Memory: 4GB Dual Channel DDR2 Registered ECC SDRAM at 400MHz - 4 x 1024MB
Graphics Accelerators: Dual NVIDIA® Quadro™ FX 4500 PCI-E 512MB DDR3 - SLI Ready
Chassis Upgrades: Alienware® Acoustic Dampening Level II - 40% Noise Reduction
System Drive: Extreme Performance (RAID 0) - 1TB RAID0 (2 x 500GB Serial ATA-II 3Gb 7,200 RPM w/16MB Cache)
A/V Work Drives: High Performance with Data Security (RAID 1) - 500GB RAID1 (2 x 500GB Serial ATA 7,200 RPM w/32MB Cache)
Hard Drive Bay: SATA Hot-Swap Bay for Workstation Chassis
Removable Storage : 3.5" 1.44 MB Floppy Disk Drive - Black
Primary Optical Drive: 16x Dual Layer DVD±R/W Drive w/LightScribe
Technology
Secondary Optical Drive: 16x Dual Layer DVD±R/W Drive w/LightScribe
Technology
Network Connection: Integrated High Performance Gigabit Ethernet
Additional Input / Output Controller: SIIG® Firewire 800 3-Port PCI Controller
Digital Audio Hardware: Creative Sound Blaster® Audigy® 2 ZS High Definition 7.1 Surround Firewire (IEEE® 1394)
Digital Content Creation Software: Autodesk® 3ds max® 8
Professional Creativity Solutions: Adobe® Photoshop® CS2
Primary Display: Samsung SyncMaster 244T 24" 6ms LCD Display - Black
Secondary Display: Samsung SyncMaster 244T 24" 6ms LCD Display - Black
Auxiliary Display One: Samsung SyncMaster 244T 24" 6ms LCD Display - Black
Auxiliary Display Two: Samsung SyncMaster 244T 24" 6ms LCD Display - Black
Power Protection: Opti-UPS ES1500C 1400VA (980W Capacity)
Speakers: Logitech® Z-5450 Digital 5.1 Speaker System w/ wireless rear speakers
Input Devices: 3D Connexion SpacePilot
Input Devices: Wacom® Intuos® 3 Platinum 9x12 Professional Pen Tablet
Productivity Software: Microsoft® Office 2003 Professional Edition
Free Alienware Mousepad: Free Alienware® Mousepad
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When you wish, you go all out!
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Obviously, not a gaming rig, but one helluva audio/video work station.
Although, you might want to get the Creative X-Fi Elite Pro,instead of the Audigy 2 ZS (not that there is anything wrong with the ZS, but the X-Fi is just better).
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dang a free mouse pad how do they do it? looks like 660 might not be enough power. go here and get a 1 Kw psu.
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Hmmm, the only specs I could find on the SyncMaster 244T showed a 25ms response time. As Skuzzy pointed out, that may not be too good for a gaming rig.
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No no, the reason I said it is obviously not a gaming rig is the use of the Quattro NVidia video cards. They bite for gaming, but are awesome for video work.
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lol - been kicking around the idea of getting something more tailored to audio work, that can also work above average on 3d content creation...
but let me weight it out....
a computer...or a new car! lol 20k might be too much, but 4 - 24' monitors would be sah-weet!
I might end up frankensteining something together.. I am curious about the dual processors.
Right now I've got an AMD64 3200 with ati x800pro with 1GB ram.
Who knows...lol prob wait and see what happens with prices of components after the first of the year.
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To hell with the dual Xeons, pair of dual core Opterons is the way to go.
My dream system -
2 x dual core Opterons
Tyan mobo
8gb mem
U320 drives
2 x dual GPU 7800's
My own power station to run it!
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Hrm..... left hand: tried and true, tested, well-known xeons. right hand: New technology that runs very hot and has not been refined or tested...
*shifts hands up and down*
Left hand, it is!
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Given the number of issues I have seen with the dual-core AMD CPU based systems, I think it is premature to use them in a production environment.
And before any of you dual-core AMD/64bit AMD users jump in and start yelling about how perfect your systems are. Know this,..they aren't.
Based on what Waffle has posted, I can pretty well see what he is going to be doing. No way would I trust an AMD (dual core/X64) based solution for it, unless you just absolutely love to continously tinker with your computer.
Say what you want about Intel. They are slower, but they are far more reliable (system wide) and stable as compared to any AMD based solution for this type of work.
By the way. I do not love Intel. I do not love AMD. I want a reliable solution which works everytime I need it. And Intel still has AMD beat in that area. I have tried AMD. I will try AMD again.
Oh, and I also could care less what some WEB site has to say about either of them. I trust my experience with them more than any WEB site.
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my AMD64 system has been rock solid stable for a year and a half now('cept for when i screw up the o.s.)and i use it for everything including some of the CAD programming i do for work, so i don't know what you are talkin about scuzzy. ever use one for an extended period?
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Yes (sort of). I still was not happy with the overall performance though and had to under clock the RAM to make it stable (Crucial PC3200).
Also had problems with my Audigy 2 ZS card. When I did get it to work, there was still static in the sounds. Take the same Audigy 2 ZS card and use it in an Intel based system and it is flawless.
For serious audio work, I would not use nor recommend an AMD based system.
I said 'sort of' earlier. I did not keep the AMD system (ASUS motherboard, Athlon XP3200+) very long after fooling with it for a couple of weeks, I dumped it. I have never, ever, had those types of problems from an Intel based motherboard. Put it together, set the BIOS and boom, go to work. No fiddling around, no tweaking for the odd hardware, it just works.
I have not seen any real improvement in that in the newer stuff. Still picky about RAM, still finicky about sound cards. The X2 stuff has some issues I have not figured out yet. Until I do, I am staying away from them.
Kev367 is a staunch advocate of AMD systems, but I have seen how much effort he has put into his system, and the problems he has had. All have been worked out, but that is the point. You have to spend a lot of time working it out. If you want a system which just works, then AMD still has a long way to go as compared to an Intel based system.
Glad yours is working for you buzkil, and you may already do things you know that need to be done in order to get an AMD system up and stable (I do not know how you work around compatibility issues though).
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i know we aren't talking state of the art, or running special needs stuff, but my AMD system, with NO tweaks, just plugged and ran has been going for over 2 years now with the only thing happening is a power supply fan dying and nuking the PS
heck i think it even has kingston memory in it :rofl
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skuzzmeister,
I recently had to ditch my crucial memory on my A64 platform. I picked up some gskill value stuff on sale at newegg, and it's just as fast and cost half as much. I spent around $200 for 2x512 meg sticks of crucial ballistix back in Jan 2005, and I'm convinced now that they were causing my system instability. It got to the point where every week I'd change the ram to slower settings, and finally it was so bad I bought 2x1 gig sticks of the gskill stuff. I put in the memory, it autodetected fine, and the computer hasn't locked up once after almost 2 weeks of use, including 4 days of stress testing.
I'm still convinced that crucial memory is high quality stuff, but for some reason the memory died on my A64 MSI mobo, and I've heard others report the same thing. A bad batch of memory, or incompatibility? Who knows, but the ballistix memory has a reputation of getting very hot so who knows.
Anyhow, if you're still fighting an A64 setup with crucial memory, consider replacing it with something else. This 2 gig kit cost under $170 at newegg so I'm sure you can find something similiar.
BTW newegg advertised it incorrectly as "extreme series", when in fact it is "value series". Shame on newegg... They've been called on it at least twice in product feedback but they haven't changed the product listing. The only way to tell is to note the price (it's pretty low for CAS 2 PC3200 memory with 2 3 2 5 timings) or go to the gskill website. The heatspreaders also suck. The crucial heatspreaders were well aligned and the thermal tape entirely covered each ram chip. This gskill value stuff has a terrible heatspreader that is totally misaligned, and the thermal tape is only about 1/3 as wide as the ram chips so it probably makes the memory run a lot hotter than it otherwise would. But removing the heatspreaders will void the warranty, so I'm just happy I got 2 gig of nice fast memory that runs fine at stock PC3200 speeds and 2 3 2 5 1T timing for $168 plus shipping. Can't beat that with a stick, and my A64 rig appears to be completely stable once again.
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Not so much staunch, if Intel produces a CPU competitvely priced, that can match an AMD64 for performance in gaming, and doesn't run like a toaster oven, I'll quite happily buy one.
Same goes for video cards had both ATI (9800 Pro) and nVidia (6800GT) last couple years. I just think nVidia had the edge on price/performance when I got my current 6800GT.
Perfect match - An Intel produced chipset for an AMD64.
Main problems with dual core still seem to be with Win XP, don't know what MS changed in the Windows scheduler for XP but it 'loses' track of threads when moving them between cores.
Same thing just doesn't happen in Win 2000.
I got the spinning clipboard when I 1st installed my X2, but only because I tried a HAL change on the fly.
Since reinstall of Windows AH2 has run fine apart from the current warpy/slidy thing people are now getting.
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Originally posted by Skuzzy
Yes (sort of). I still was not happy with the overall performance though and had to under clock the RAM to make it stable (Crucial PC3200).
Also had problems with my Audigy 2 ZS card. When I did get it to work, there was still static in the sounds. Take the same Audigy 2 ZS card and use it in an Intel based system and it is flawless.
For serious audio work, I would not use nor recommend an AMD based system.
I said 'sort of' earlier. I did not keep the AMD system (ASUS motherboard, Athlon XP3200+) very long after fooling with it for a couple of weeks, I dumped it. I have never, ever, had those types of problems from an Intel based motherboard. Put it together, set the BIOS and boom, go to work. No fiddling around, no tweaking for the odd hardware, it just works.
I have not seen any real improvement in that in the newer stuff. Still picky about RAM, still finicky about sound cards. The X2 stuff has some issues I have not figured out yet. Until I do, I am staying away from them.
Kev367 is a staunch advocate of AMD systems, but I have seen how much effort he has put into his system, and the problems he has had. All have been worked out, but that is the point. You have to spend a lot of time working it out. If you want a system which just works, then AMD still has a long way to go as compared to an Intel based system.
Glad yours is working for you buzkil, and you may already do things you know that need to be done in order to get an AMD system up and stable (I do not know how you work around compatibility issues though).
all i had to do was set up the bios for the video card.....and i've built 7 AMD machines so far, the only one that was a problem was my sister's....the hard-drive power wire was loose:rolleyes:
sounds like you just had bad luck
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It's amazing how many people will spend-
$300 on a CPU
$400 on a graphics card
$200 on a mobo
Then buy the cheapest, nastiest RAM and PSU in the store.
Theres were half the probs come from.
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Now now, let's not discount CPU/MOBO/3D problems, either. I had a nasty little problem with my computer. I bought a top of the line mobo (spent more than I wanted to, as well) and had major issues with the entire PC locking up. Over several *months* I questioned the cheap stuff like you did... I wondered if I had bad ram.. I wondered if my PSU was cheap as hell. I wondered if my old video card was the problem. Hell I began to wonder if the thermal paste that came with my Pentium4's heatsink was the problem!!! I thought it might be heat, might be lack of power on certain lines in my case, everything.
Turns out to be the motherboard. Specifically the LAN card built into the motherboard. ASUS board no less. Supposedly drivers that work on NORMAL Yukon gigabit NICs don't work on the integrated mobo NIC for ASUS P5P800s. That's a hardware problem, if you ask me. And I paid a lot for this board.
On the other hand my 512MB ram is running sweet as ever and with rebate it was only about $50-60. My PSU would have cost about $30 but on newegg I got it for $5 on a 1-day-only sale. My sound card is second-hand OEM. My vid card is as well. My HD is old as hell (20GB and I got it in 1999/2000), my DVD rom drive skips, is as old as the HD, but the problem was the new motherboard!!!
Oooooohhhhhh brutha..! If I didn't love irony so much I'd be mad right now :p
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YA....mother boards are printed out like newspapers, and sometimes a bad one slips through.
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Originally posted by Skuzzy
No no, the reason I said it is obviously not a gaming rig is the use of the Quattro NVidia video cards. They bite for gaming, but are awesome for video work.
+ 2D / 3D Cad (Acad, Inventor, SW, 3ds MAX etc...)
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Oy. The last time I did AMD, I RMA'ed the motherboard, as the RAM could not be run at full speed. Got the second motherboard in and it did eactly the same thing. By the way Kev, Crucial is not garbage. And the power supplies are always Antec. But I do agree with you. I see too many people spec a system and use some off-brand power supply and some no-name memory.
Took the same RAM which would not be clocked at 200Mhz on the Nforce board, and ran it at 231MHz on an Intel motherboard. Been a year at that speed and runs just peachy.
I have friends who spend hours at a time tinkering with thier AMD systems. They have used Corsair (repackaged memory from other suppliers) and Mushkin. Seems every weekend I get a call from one of them having problems with thier AMD systems. None of the these guys are novice builders either.
One of them got tired of it and built an Intel system. He is a happy camper now.
Now, there is a not a darn thing wrong with AMD CPU's. Good stuff for sure, but the motherboard chipsets still lack the polish of Intel's motherboard chipsets.
And I have yet to run into an AMD user who would not agree, that an Intel based chpiset + AMD CPU would be the best combination to be had. There is a reason for that.
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IT MAY BE MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH VIA CHIPS....NOT AS FAST OR TUNED FOR GAMING, BUT FOOLPROOF
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Skuzzy - wasn't suggesting you had used cheapo RAM and PSU, was general comment on a problem that commonly occurs.
Krusty - The built in v seperate card drivers are not that uncommon. Very common for servers with built in SCSI or RAID for you to need different drivers than an equivalent seperate card. Dam Dell and their onboard Adaptec stuff is renowned for it.
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Originally posted by Skuzzy
Oy. The last time I did AMD, I RMA'ed the motherboard, as the RAM could not be run at full speed. Got the second motherboard in and it did eactly the same thing. By the way Kev, Crucial is not garbage. And the power supplies are always Antec. But I do agree with you. I see too many people spec a system and use some off-brand power supply and some no-name memory.
Took the same RAM which would not be clocked at 200Mhz on the Nforce board, and ran it at 231MHz on an Intel motherboard. Been a year at that speed and runs just peachy.
I have friends who spend hours at a time tinkering with thier AMD systems. They have used Corsair (repackaged memory from other suppliers) and Mushkin. Seems every weekend I get a call from one of them having problems with thier AMD systems. None of the these guys are novice builders either.
One of them got tired of it and built an Intel system. He is a happy camper now.
Now, there is a not a darn thing wrong with AMD CPU's. Good stuff for sure, but the motherboard chipsets still lack the polish of Intel's motherboard chipsets.
And I have yet to run into an AMD user who would not agree, that an Intel based chpiset + AMD CPU would be the best combination to be had. There is a reason for that.
I will gladly take any old Athlon XP cpus / parts.
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not a direct attack on your skuzzy or anyone here.
I purchased the following.
a7v8X-MX-SE
AMD xp2600+
786mg kingmax 333mhz
9800 pro 128meg
have been running her for the past 4 years without any problems. Although i have stayed with asus boards because of people saying they are the most reliable motherboards.
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I slapped my old 256mb DDR266 stick of Crucial to a A64 Nforce4 board and it booted @ 400Mhz DDR rock solid. :D
It has happened to me that when I changed motherboards, only the other one of the memory pair no longer worked in the new motherboard (amd). The only AMD system I've had problems with was a VIA based chipset on the old Athlon XP system. It had problems with soundblaster etc. The current Nforce4 board takes a soundblaster happily in with zero problems.
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I think as Skuzzy has so eloquently put it -
The problem isn't AMD, it has been some of the poor chipsets that have been available.
Setup usually is easier with Intel based ones.
However the situation is reversed with Intel/AMD dual cores.
Intel dual core setups have been notoriously picky, difficult to setup and unstable.
Toms harware test, 3 mobos (2 destroyed/heat damaged), 2 PSU's, 2 or 3 sets RAM and even then they had to disable SLI to get it stable, and a visit from Intel engineers to set it up.
But I'm sure it will change given time, after all dual core is still a relatively 'new' area.
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Just checking in on this thread.
I preface this with my attitude about a PC. I consider it an expensive gaming platform. The ONLY reason I got my first PC was when MAC-AW was canceled and I had to FLY! Little did I know where that path would lead me!
I was a 10 year MACHEAD when that happened.
I was also very lucky to have a couple friends that had been luring me to the Dark Side for a while, and knew what direction to point me in, and taught me the fine art of tweaking..
My first system was an AMD K6-2 350, and I haven't looked back! AMD has always done what I asked, and any problems I've had are due to my learning curve ;) Ya, I fried a few components trying to overclock them, or tweak their BIOS, or use a cheap PS or RAM. I'd guess I've built 20 AMD systems clean.. and another 30 rebuilds due to MY inexperiece and errors. I've built a couple Intel systems with the same result..
Skuzzy, you use Antec PS's exclusively? An Antec, and Powerman PS's are the only ones I've had die. The Antec took out a MB as well, BUT I didn't have them on a UPS either. Possibly my fault.
I've learned a lot in the 7 years I've been tweaking PC's, and I currently have an Athlon Barton 2500+ reporting as a 3200+, and has been for well over a year. My MB is an Asus A7N8X 400. I have a new system OTW, NF4 Ultra chipset, Radeon X1800 XL PCI-E, Athlon 64 3700+ (San Diego core), and I'll still be using te Geil Ultra PC 3500 RAM I've had for years in the new system :)
The MOST important lesson I've learned is that there is no substitute for good RAM. RAM is the key to a speedy system. Back when I had my K6-2 system, I spent the bucks and got some Atlas PC 130/ 128 MEG RAM, and the difference was incredible!
A good PS doesn't hurt either :aok
We currently have 3 AMD based, one Intel, and one Cyrix system running in the house, but the Intel's days are numbered..
:p
SALUTE! and Merry Christmas!
Newman the GEEK