A few other experiences that you can consider:
1) Performance experiences
There's a lack of mention of user experiences. It helps u decide whether u r throwing ur cash into getting an over-specced or under-specced system.
Am using an Intel 865G??? series motherboard with Intel 2.6GHz HT, 800MHz FSB, 2 x 512MB DDR400 RAM. Fast(est?) Seagate harddisk 120GB SATA. Using integrated (on board graphics card) cos my 64MB graphics card from my previous system is problematic.
I dun bother to do benchmarking tests but based on my empirical experiences with Task Manager, much as I try, I seldom manage to max my CPU utilisation to 100%. Serious.
Which means that I have plenty of processing power in reserve usually.
Despite burning a CD-R at 24X using Nero (reading from my other data hdd 40GB), generating thumbnail reviews on ACDSee and doing batch sharpening on PS 7 concurrently, utilisation mebbe 90+% CPU usually. Most other times running ad-hoc apps, seldom even hit more than 50% utilisation.
Physical/paged memory etc. only goes up to 300-400MB even when I have 10 Internet Explorer Windows and such open at the same time.
Bottom line: the bottle neck is almost always the harddisk throughput, which is the slowest in the whole chain. The fact that I seldom hit 100% CPU utilisation speaks well of Hyper Threading compared to previous CPU technologies. In fact, the latest CPU/motherboards are way more powerful than most home/non-professional users' needs.
Unless you are a professional photographic/video house, speed is not even an issue.
It also means that if u do mainly 2D image processing, all the video cards in the world and any configuration better than what I have basically will count for zilch - performance wise. Graphics cards are supposed to help crunch 3 D image processing to relieve the CPU's load.
It also means that DDR400 Ram and 800MHz FSB really work well.
With the benefit of hindsight, I can also conclude that I could have made do with 2 x 256MB DDR400 and not see any worse performance based on the memory utilisation readings on task manager.
Go figure if u really wanna spend on 2 x 512MB.
2) Dual Channel RAM
Supposing you have 2 x 512MB DDR 400. When u open a 200MB TIFF file, theoretically 100MB of it goes into each piece of RAM chip concurrently.
With older (SDRAM etc.) RAM, if you have 2 x 512MB RAM, the 200MB goes into the 1st chip. Only when it is filled will data spill over and go into the second piece.
Its not quite accurate to call it doubling of memory bandwidth but you can see why its very helpful.
When you buy it at the shop, say buy at Cybermind and assemble at Fuwell or vice-versa what not... make sure that they give you the 2 pieces packaged in a SINGLE box. It looks like 2 x normal RAM pieces but packed together.
When I bought mine at one particular Indian shop, the boss juz picked up 2 separate boxes and placed it in front of me. Only after I reiterated "Dual Channel" did he hesitate and replaced it with the correct single box packaging.
Dual Channel RAM is produced from the same production batches at the factory. Semiconductors being what they are (like CPUs), different batches give differing performances, latencies etc. no matter how slight.
More importantly, they are quality tested together. Only then are they packed in the single package boxes.
Make sure the shops doesn't screw u over by giving u 2 separate ones. If you have one piece slower than the other, imagine what speed or error issues u may have.
Cheers,
Long
funksoulava said:
Hi Long, appreciate you taking the time to write your very detailed reply on the pros and cons of SLS shopping.
I think I'll be buying everything from either Fuwell or Cybermind and ask them to assemble too.
