The Official PC building thread -3rd Edition

The new site, although less outdated looking than the old site, I do agree is a little limiting. The fixed with is the bit that bugs me the most, but hey, this isn't a complaints thread

As for Dell stuff, I can't say their business practices are ideal, but sadly there are few honest companies out there, and Dell actually provide reasonable support and produce relatively decent products, which is more than can be said for a considerable number of companies.

 

Exactly this. Sadly there isn't much point making a fuss, as it rarely changes anything, and there are no perfect choices, else there'd be no fuss to make

 

Rather fond of Dell hardware myself being a long-time owner of one of their higher end monitors. As far as quality I can't say I've seen a better panel outside of the 3007/3008WFP and the like. The actual support for the stand being billet steel doesn't hurt either A little pricey at $600 but the warranty still stands(I paid the extra for the extended warranty) and I have yet to find a single situation where it limits or hinders me in any way. Again, I would snap up a good deal on a 30" in a heartbeat, but I don't think I could fully replace the good old 2407WFP.

The only complaint I can level against them is a rather bad batch of Optiplex workstations they released a few years ago. Apparently they had thousands of returns with bad capacitors. Being an IT Support Technician for a rather large educational software firm, one of my best friends was right in the thick of it when it happened. Understandably he is strongly opposed to Dell products

As far as pricing goes I've also found their entry level and mid end desktops to be very decently priced. It's when you buy say an "XPS Gaming Machine" that the price starts getting disproportionate.

Expanding a tiny bit on what creaky had to say about Bill Gates... a little Googling shows he's generally lost touch with the world as a whole. Thanks for the heads up creaky

But yeah not the time and place. Try to keep it to computers folks.

 

I think they were referring to the quality of the desktops but even then, they're not bad.
The monitor line is universally excellent - a 3 year on-site next day guarantee against a single dead pixel, who can argue?
One dead pixel? Ring Dell up, next working day a guy is round with a new monitor for you. Over 3 years that's amazing

 

5 year warranty on mine and the monitor just broke 3 years old. I daresay I'm pretty well covered ;P

The desktops are sparsely featured(unless you pay big), but man are they rock solid. Seen very few dead Dells personally. One of my dad's friends still uses his P3 933, 512MB, Rage 128 Pro machine daily and it runs like the day it was new. The board supports the 1.4Ghz Coppermine and up to 1GB of RAM so I've been looking around for those. Very curious to see ho well it runs fully upgraded. Video card will be replaced with a GeForce 7200GS AGP for DXVA. And yes it WILL play 1080p perfectly with DXVA enabled. I've done it with 1.4GHz socket 423 Pentium 4s no problem so a P3 at the same speed should be fine. Either way he intends to keep the machine as it's perfect for his uses which include some bubble popper gem game thingy on Pogo and email.

 

1.4Ghz P3s eat 1.4Ghz P4s alive, so no problems there
I remember the Coppermine P3s, it's the first (and largely only time) I've seen a CPU advertised including its core name. Over here at least, you got the P3 Cu800, Cu900 and so on. You don't see Conroe2400 these days do you? I suppose the ability do that fell by the wayside when clockspeed became near-irrelevant as a performance measure.
Weren't the fastest P3s like 1.4s actually Tualatins though?

 

I'm 90% sure there were versions of both. I think the difference was FSB. One was 100 and one was 133. Though I may be entirely wrong. It was so long ago. But yes the system does support the 1.4GHz Pentium 3 and I think I just found one. Bidding for it now

EDIT: Yeah actually Wikipedia shows you right Sam. The Tualatin is the 1.4GHz one with 512K L2. The Pentium 3 is an interesting family

 

AFAIK they were the first Netburst CPUs. Used a Pentium 3-ish platform with a Pentium 4 core. Thus very slow because netburst needs lots of breathing room to even work properly. Choked down buses and memory meant bottlenecked performance. A Pentium 3 will win every time vs the same speed Pentium 4 every time. Hell, Core 2 Duo is literally Pentium 3 updated to 65/45nm with faster memory and buses. As I recall, early Core 2 Duos would read as a Pentium 3 in out-of-date versions of CPU-Z.

 

Sam,
I think the Slot Processor Coppermines went as high as 1133MHz, and the socket 340 Coppermines went to 1500MHz with the Coppermine T. The Coppermine T was dropped due to internal errors, shortly after it's brief release

I have to say that the best purchase I ever made was a Dual P-III Dell Precision 420 Workstation, 2x1 BX80526U1000256 SL4FP "Coppermine" 1.0GHz P-III, 4x512MB 800MHz Rambus memory, 10,000 rpm Fuji 36GB SCSI HDD. As purchased as a 2 year old computer it was almost identical in it's specs to this review.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/desktops/1389/dell-precision-420

As you can see by my specs listed above I upgraded the CPUs to two 1.0GHz Coppermine P-IIIs, and the Rambus memory to the full 2GB allowed, in virtual Dual Channel. In late 2004 I purchased a then new Dell 3000, 3.0GHz Prescot to replace it with and wound up replacing the Dell 3000 with it, and selling the 3000, with a 2.8GHz Prescot in it! Glad I didn't sell it! There wasn't a P4 on the planet that could match it's performance, including the much loved P4 Northwoods. I still have it, and in spite of it's age, it's still a reasonably viable computer, even by today's standards. A most amazing computer for it's time! I'm currently hunting a new AGPx4 video card for it, as the Old Matrox 400 Dual Head card expired. I have a Geforce2 MX400 32MB AGPx4 video card, but it too is on the way out.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Try a GeForce 4MX card. Available in both AGP and PCI.

 

My mother brought me some pc parts one day. I have a slot based CPU. Don't know why I kept it. I guess I just don't like throwing away PC stuff LOL!

 

Estuansis,
I have two of those, a 400 and a 440, but they aren't as good as the Matrox 400 was. I would like to find the best card I can come up with for it. This is a very special machine for me. I found the original Packing slip and Invoice inside the machine, and it was over 4 grand when it was originally ordered. I bought it two years old for $65 delivered! I also found a Dell Commercial .024 Pixel Pitch 19" Flatscreen CRT monitor for it for $50. Still have that too, and a spare CRT Tube for it! A monitor like that today runs about $1400, and are not directly sold in the US. These come from China and can only be bought in through Canada. NuknFuts has two, I believe.

We're talking fine grain photographic quality here, in a 19", 4:3 monitor. I have a heavily modified Intra-Oral camera fitted with a 1/2" glass rod, that curves 90% at the end, that I use for coins, and gemstones, and use a Jewelers Loop to study them right on the screen! I can change the Color Temp and brightnes or switch to Infrared. I've seen dates on coins that are so worn out that you can't see them with the Jeweler's Loop alone, yet show up with that camera, on the monitor screen.

I watched Alice on it and was amazed at what you can't see on any LCD monitor. The Caterpillar's Hookah (Bong), has incredible detail to it that I never saw before. The colors, hues and textures, plus the Patina it shows, is simply amazing. I discovered Rainbows in Prince Caspian, where the River God tears up the Bridge, that I didn't even guess were there. I guess you call that, Un-paralleled sharpness and clarity! The HD release of the 1956 Technicolor CinemaScope movie, "The King and I", is magnificent, beyond words! The HD release of The African Queen makes you feel like you are right in the boat with Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn. It all looks just so Friggin real!

Two best deals I ever got in computing! About $1 a pound too! LOL!!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

I don't remember loving the 'much loved' P4 Northwoods. I remember distinctly feeling the Athlon XP was superior, but then that was me back then
The P3 PC is still in my cupboard, for whatever reason, along with both of my CRTs, and the remains of the Athlon XP PC.

Old CRTS have superb picture reproduction, but the refresh rate is just plain irritating, and it's a bit like vinyl records, you're always trying to mentally put away the interference to get at the unmarked quality underneath, but it's still always going to be there.
Frankly if you think ancient CRTs have yet to be bettered by LCDs, you haven't spent long enough around S-IPS panels

 

Have found it takes 3 messages on a new page for it to be visible to people. I'm sure it used to only be two!

 

Thanks. This must be increasing the mods' workload somewhat!

 

Keeps um on their toes LOL!