How fast of a computer do you REALLY need?

from WinCustomize Forums
My office machine died last week. One of the CPUs went bad (one of two). Ticked off, I started looking at getting a brand new mega machine. My current work machine is a dual (now single) 650mhz P3 setup with 512MB of RAM.

So I go over to Dell's site and look at the top of the line workstations - 1 gig RAM, dual Xeon 1.7Ghz P4's, etc.

Then it dawned on me. Have computers simply lost their umph or has software simply not advanced fast enough to make getting such a mega system worth it?

I remember back in 1991 getting a 386SX-16 and getting a noticeable performance improvement simply by playing around with shadow bios.

But now, the various machines I have here at home don't really show much difference. I have a 1Ghz machine on the other side of this room that I"m not even using to type this (the P3-800mhz laptop is the main machine).

So what's the deal? Unless I'm doing CAD or rendering or something, what is a P4-1ghz (a dual no less) going to do for me, a developer, that a dual 650 setup won't be able to do in almost the exact same amount of time?

What are your views?
12,664 views 38 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I just want a system that runs faster than it can crash...
It doesn't matter how fast your computer is.....when it hangs, it hangs at exactly the same speed....;(
Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
i still have an old 500mhz, 256MB ram....i find that i can work on it without any probs (unless i'm working at 300dpi, instead of 72dpi).....i'm going to upgrade in the next month or so to a 1.1Ghz system just because it's cheap
Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
doing a lot of graphics stuff.

So I would like
Dual 1GHZ
Matrox millenium 500 dual head
1024MB RAM
Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top
3.5 terrahertz please, directly neural wired perhaps. 45 inch HDTV resolution plasma screen or retinal imaging system. Of course I need the bubblenet modem for data transfer at 5 terrabits/sec.

Oh yeah, for under $1000,00 US too.

Oh to live in Dangerussland...
Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Russ...can I come visit?
I got my own mountain bike...
Reply #6 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I had a horrendous failure too. Lost the hard drive in my notebook and corrupted a lot of my desktop's files. This is a real wake-up call for me as far as mirroring and backing up goes... I'm a believer now.

As for speed, I too remember the increase that you got with faster processor speeds being obvious in screen draws and saving files. Now it seems that the speed is a false promise after a certain point. Although, that being said, I am definitly upgrading my desktop from the 450MhzPII to something a bit more robust as soon as I can afford it. I just finished a 4-color print job that crawled through every phase of creating it. (though certainly, the corrupted files from a failing hard drive controller didn't help)
Reply #7 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Umm... p75? I won't be happy until my machine can boot in under five seconds. Even my amd800 takes forever to boot. As for screens, I definitely want to get rid of them monitors. What I want is a high resolution beamer... or two even. I'd better start saving already.
Reply #8 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Well a little insight, I have an old P2 450 mhz that is now strictly a file server, then a P3 800 that is a secondary machine. The new P4 1.7 is the main system. As for insight, if I go to render an image to full poster size on the P3 it takes 5 days, while on the P4 it takes just about 2 hours. Now you may not be working with large files or rendering, but think of the next year or two, or the delay in waiting for files to open, or apps to open. In a day calculate the amount of time you wait for the apps and that is the time you will be saving. True very little software is pulling the potential of the P4's but in a short time they will, expecially since Intel just cut the 1.7 P4 price in half. Personally if I could trade the two older systems in for an even swap to a second P4 I would in a heartbeat. The speed in the processor and bus speed to me makes it well worth the change. ANd what is wrong with MORE POWER
Reply #9 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I think it all depends on what your going to do with your PC. At work I use a P2, 233MHz, 96MB Ram, Win95 laptop, on which I'm running AutoCad 14, and a number of other CAD apps at the same time. Yes I cater to its lack of power, but I get my work done. Its a hard call, if your doing alot of graphics with fills, you'll need power. How is the system running with one CPU, could you get use to it.
Reply #10 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I'm still running a PII 233MHz with 128 mb ram, an 8mb matrox card 3gb hard drive and 15" monitor. I hate the thing, and would give anything for something better. I will say this though, since I installed Win ME, it hasn't crashed once! about 5-6 months now. Please contribute to the "Buy BoXXi a better system fund". Thank you.
Reply #11 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Well, being a gamer, I have to say that I can totally see a difference using a P4 1.8/Geforce 3 over any other system combo that I can slap together. But I have to say Frog, that at this point, you're right. How fast do you need to do something work-wise? At the 700MHz plus range, you're going to get your work done pretty fast regardless...

btw - for all-around performance, I'd recommend an AMD 1.2+, but for sheer gaming power, the P4 1.8 is a benchmark killer.
Reply #12 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Well, at home, I still have my P2 333Mhtz, and I really see no incentive to upgrade. I will get more RAm and more disk space, but other than that, everything runs as fast as I'd like them to.
Reply #13 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I moved from my old PII 266, to a PIII 550, noticed minor improvments, then I moved to a PIII 850, works plenty fine for everything I want to do. Heck even my 266 laptop, does the job fairly, well.
Reply #14 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Moved from an AMD K2 300 to a P4 1800/Geforce 3 machine and I notice a remarkable improvement in everything.
Reply #15 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I have a little weird AMD450 and I can feel a lot of difference when moving over to a friends 1 gig Athlon. Photoshop crawls a lot, sometimes even at smaller files. An upgrade is definitely in order now, and nothing less than a 1.2Gig, as I'm also a gamer
As for WinME not crashing, it crashed twice on the first day I installed it... and this trend continued for as long as I used it.

One thought, do programmers spend less time optimising the performance of their software, and just take it for granted that users have the fastest and latest? I remember when optimisiation was everything, to get the most possible out of a system. Soon it seems, we will begin to see minimum requirements 1.5gGig+ processors.
Reply #16 from WinCustomize Forums Top
The faster the better, look, here i got this p3 800 with a Voodoo 5 5550 and 360 RAM, and i can run 800 x 600 3d games with x2 sample FSAA at pretty fast frme rates...

Thats cool, but my uncle has his double P3 850 with also a Voodoo 5 5500 and 540 RAM and he run games 1280 x 1024 with x4 sampe FSAA at faster frame rates than me. Thats HELL nice, you can see the enemy eye before snipe him.

Off course its very expensive for just gaming but is what he use that computer for... pretty sad..
Reply #17 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I agree, Indigoe, although it helps if users don't do stupid things that cut performance. There's many skinners who would do well to consider performance when they skin, too -
Reply #18 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Are your guidelines for a fast skin posted up anywhere? New skinners probably won't know that tiling is faster than stretching and it's generally better to have a larger tilable image than the smallest possible.
Reply #20 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I've got three machines running at home...

Main WS
PIII 1Gig with 512M Ram and a GeForce2 Ultra Card

Secondary WS
PIII 550 with 192M RAM and ATI Rage Pro 128 vid card

E-mail and Web Server
PIII 600 with 320m RAM and ATI Rage Pro 128 Vid card

Personally all machines run equally fast for normal usage. The extra RAM in my main WS gives the ability to multitask a bit more as well as handle large (320Meg images) a lot more quickly.

While rendering, there is a definite advantage to a higher end processesor, but never noticed the render taking up any additional RAM.

All in all, for the everyday user doing basic computer work and skinning stuff, a PIII 600 with 256 Meg RAM would suffice just fine.
Reply #21 from WinCustomize Forums Top
My wife has a Celeron 633 with 64 M of RAM, and as I said I have a P2 333 with 128M of RAM. And I really don't find her computer any faster than mine.
Reply #22 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Paxx, the noticable difference come into play when you hit 256 Meg RAM...

Some of my SAS programmers churn out some serious data sets. With 128 Meg RAM, the machine will chew away for about 13-15 minutes. When I bumped them up to 256, the process time dropes to below 30 seconds. Yes, this is a specific scenario where most users won't run into needing to process these data sets, but overall, the users have reported back that multi-tasking had also taken tremendous gains.

In essence, the extra RAM reduces the need for all the extra disk writes to cache files and running apps.
Reply #23 from WinCustomize Forums Top
put it this way, on my K62-400 with 256 meg of ram, if i start web surfing, downloading a file with getright, and trying to move the mouse pointer all at the same time CPU usage never drops below 98%

i tried playing mp3's in the background the other day. bit of a bad plan really.

i think i need an upgrade.
Reply #24 from WinCustomize Forums Top
feline, I don't think that's a hardware problem... Are you running Seti or a CPU cooler app?
Reply #25 from WinCustomize Forums Top
pjpowell - See my WindowBlinds skin optimization tips at http://www.greenreaper.btinternet.co.uk/wboptimise.htm