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You don't really remember Caminogate, do you?

Dv will 'splain.

Last edited by Bat (2008-11-18 5:21 am)

Bat wrote:

You don't really remember Caminogate, do you?

Dv will 'splain.

That was a bit before my time.

For those who don't remember, basically, the first Rambus-capable, "OMGWTF" chipset (the i820) from Intel was put into a series of motherboards. Those motherboards were total and utter crap. Anything that could go wrong with them would.

Fortunately, my vintage Rambus PC is running on an OR840 motherboard.

Bat wrote:

Intel was pushing RDRAM for the PIII, where it was totally unneeded (the PIII of that time, pre-Tualatin core, peaked at 1.0GHz and couldn't begin to use the bandwidth), yet very expensive.

It was also a lot higher latency than SDRAM or DDR. PC800 RDRAM offers about as much bandwidth as single-channel DDR400, but latency on my Pentium III is about double my Athlon, iirc.

For most things, memory access times don't matter, but for some things, it makes a HUGE difference.

For instance, (again with my old Athlon) SETI@Home crunch time used to scale almost lineally with my memory bandwidth from 6 hours at stock settings down to about 4 hours, when the CPU seemed to say, "ok, uncle."

I need someone to sub for me on hardware sometimes, when I'm in a rush.

heh

I'm betting Pariahs budget is decidedly not workstation class.

Ribtorus wrote:

It's true enough that maybe 90% of workstation class capability may be had with a consumer board, and the remaining 10% capability may never be realised or fully exploited.

This seems like an excellent opportunity to shame Pariah into buying a $400 motherboard.

"Yeah, you aren't a serious enough computer user to need anything like that."

Seriously though, Pariah - too much expandability is tempting. "Perpetual Upgrade Cycles" are fun.

The idea is, start with a midgrade machine, upgrade one part of your machine every six months. After 5 years you've spent less money overall and have a better computer than if you had purchased an uber machine up front, thanks to the long lifespan of Cases/PSUs/HDDs/Optical Drives/PCI card, premium pricing on high end equipment and the wonderful tick-tock of obsolescence. The upshot is you don't have to worry about a $75 motherboard lasting longer than, like, 18 months.

Nuh-uh, Mr. AIO. Plan intelligently and you may go 8-10 years before the last part of your DIY machine wears out, becomes incompatible with newer parts/ formfactors/ etc. and has to be retired. I have. 5 years at least should be obtainable now, and you won't be nearly stuck in time a la an iMac, should a new one last that long.

The case is usually the last to go, when it will no longer accomodate newer formfactor mobos.

Here's my suggestion:

For a near-workstation class board with a nVidia chipset (well supported in *nix and hackintoshs), the ASUS P5NT WS would fit the bill. It has the PCI-X bus of a workstation board but accepts regular ram and an Intel Q6600 or better yet, a Q9550 Quad core.

http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3& … lmenu=2cpu

Price would be in the neighbourhood of $250.00 plus the Q9550 at about $430.00 plus 8GB Kingston ram at about $110.00

10 USB ports as well. Rather generous.

Last edited by Ribtorus (2008-11-20 4:41 pm)

dvpierce wrote:

/me humps Ribby's leg.

The real question of our time - is it Ay-suhs, or Ah-soos?

Rib pronounces it 'Tyan.' [/old thread]

I think it's Ay-suhs.

Bat wrote:

Nuh-uh, Mr. AIO. Plan intelligently and you may go 8-10 years before the last part of your DIY machine wears out, becomes incompatible with newer parts/ formfactors/ etc. and has to be retired. I have. 5 years at least should be obtainable now, and you won't be nearly stuck in time a la an iMac, should a new one last that long.

The case is usually the last to go, when it will no longer accomodate newer formfactor mobos.

dvpierce wrote:

ScifiterX wrote:

"Perpetual Upgrade Cycles" are a bit if a myth

No, it really does/can work that way. Whether or not you save money in the process just depends on how careful you are.

8-10 years is a while but isn't perpetual and I did admit you can keep it going a while to save money if careful. I personally say once you've replaced the internal component, it counts as a new system. BTW I DID say "The case will probably outlast all the other components combined."

As far as Mr. AIO goes, I've owned 2 AIO (both of which I liked), 10 desktop units (most of which I liked) and 1 tower (which was problematic).

That. And I recently put a hard drive made 8 years ago back into service. Obsolescent parts can still be useful; most of us DIY types have a box or more of parts not in use but potentially still useful.