The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

I had a Ti but also had Commodore 64 Color, Atari 800 & 400, an 8080 plus the later Z version. I also had the first Ti handheld digital calculator with red LED display ever made it was about $400 USD when it came out.

Russ would have been to young to remember those days.... LOL

The Good Ole Days,
Stevo

 

I know MIPS aren't everything, but I thought this was kind of interesting:


286 @ 12.5Mhz: 2.66 MIPS
386DX @ 33Mhz: 11.4 MIPS
486DX2 @ 66Mhz: 54 MIPS
Pentium @ 100Mhz: 188 MIPS
Pentium Pro @ 200Mhz: 541 MIPS
Pentium III @ 600Mhz: 2054 MIPS
Pentium 4 EE @ 3200Mhz: 9726 MIPS
AMD Athlon64 X2 3800+ @ 2000Mhz: 14,564 MIPS
AMD Phenom II X4 940 @ 3000Mhz: 42,820 MIPS
AMD FX-8150 @ 3600Mhz: 108,890 MIPS
Core i7 2600K @ 3400Mhz: 128,300 MIPS


ARM Cortex A15 Quad core @ 2500Mhz: 35,000 MIPS
ARM Cortex A9 Dual core @ 1500Mhz: 7500 MIPS
ARM Cortex A8 Single core @ 1000Mhz: 2000 MIPS

Intel Atom N270 Single core @ 1600Mhz: 3846 MIPS
Xbox 360 IBM Xenon Tri-core @ 3200Mhz: 19,200 MIPS

Going by MIPS count, the sort of CPU common in today's high-end smartphones is not only more than 3x as powerful as the Pentium 3 (let alone the Pentium pro!) but also coming up on half the speed of the X2 3800+!
The Intel Atom also puts in a solid showing at almost double the performance of the 600mhz P3.

 

Stevo,

I think I pre-date you and ddp by a couple of years! LOL!! My first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000 I bought in 81, for around $200. In 84 I bought a ColecoVision Adam Computer expansion module. I had all sorts of problems with the buss connection on the back of the ColecoVision. Coleco finally gave me a stand alone Adam computer as a replacement. I used it to run my business for a couple of years before replacing it with an Atari ST-512, and then an ST-1024. I also had a Compaq Lug-able, for mobile computing. I built my first PC in 89, a 40MHz AMD 386 in a System and Technologies Intel chipset motherboard w/4MB of ram, with a rather exotic (for the day) Genoa Video Card. That was 518 builds ago! LOL!! I went with the AMD chip because it was cheaper and 7MHz faster than the Genuine Intel @33MHz. Most of my PC's have used AMD clones, because they were always better than the Intel, for less money!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Sam,

I've seen lots of Atoms. None run as fast as the P6200 in my Acer, in fact, I've yet to see one that isn't bog slow. My former neighbor bought one of those $99 HP Atom laptops last Christmas. It takes 3 times longer just to boot up with the charger connected, than my P-6200 does on battery alone! A $99 joke, if you ask me! They are good at one thing, that's being slow!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

To be fair, the biggest issues with the netbooks are often graphics and storage performance rather than CPU performance.

 

Indeed, there is a lot more than just the CPU involved in loading times. The sort of PC that has an Atom in it is usually slow for other reasons.

 

Ahem, 4,200RPM hard drives. That is all.

 

A lot of netbooks have SSD's so storage sure shouldn't be the issue with them. Graphics most probably.

 

In my experience, netbooks with SSDs run quite well if they have a good SSD. AMD's netbooks tend to beat the Atoms, especially in graphics performance. The Brazos IGPs are fairly decent IMO. An AMD netbook with an SSD should be good for most basic tasks. Bad SSDs and hard drives don't run so well.

 

Russ is complaining about boot times, so graphics won't be the issues. Until relatively recently most netbooks used either 4200rpm HDDs or standard SD derived flash, both of which are horribly slow, and that will be what Russ has seen.

 

Have seen some higher-end Netbooks that performed quite well once given a proper SSD. Battery life and heat are a concern though. Adding anything more powerful than they are stock is usually an instant fast track to death or being useless as a mobile computing solution.

 

No, I have netbooks from well over a year ago that have SSD's so how recent are you talking? I think Russ is more so comparing Atom's to Celeron's, and even celery chips should beat an Atom, which I've experienced to be slow too. However if it is a mobile processor verses a desktop, the desktop should do much better for obvious reasons.

 

Just a quick update. Got my camera working and snapped some new photos. Better resolution, and much more up-to-date

http://img809.imageshack.us/img809/3332/dsc00080aj.jpg

http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/8721/dsc00087ri.jpg

http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/2857/dsc00111nt.jpg

http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/3571/dsc00107wk.jpg

http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/4692/dsc00118lc.jpg

 

That fourth picture doesn't do a build that nice justice.

I really like your cable management. It makes mine look like crap, lol.

 

The comparison he's making is Atom vs Pentium P6200, which is obvious, as the latter is a midrange laptop dual core chip, which will far-surpass an ultra-low footprint chip like the Atom.

Nice pics, although I'm not so sure about the blue CCFL in a red case

 

Wish I had a better camera, none of them do it justice It doesn't handle low-light so well and using flash drowns out the CCLs. The camera in my iPod handles any lighting perfectly but is horrible quality.

The cable management was a trial and error affair...

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Sam, if you saw the rest, I have a black, red and blue theme going. Blue lighted keyboard, blue status lights, blue motherboard, red and black case, red and black video cards, red and black PSU, red RAM. You really need to be here to get the full effect. The end result looks quite detailed

Also, the camera does my lighting zero justice. All of the light bleeding through the front panel and the window is drowned out.

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My next project is replacing that horrid plexiglass panel. That thing sucks. You even look at it sideways and it smudges or scratches permanently. Even with hours of careful prep and surgically clean hands and optical lens cloth meant for camera lenses, it's a smudgy mess. Some kind of mesh panel design is in the works right now, so I can have a proper side fan, and no more case windows. I hate them with a passion after the one on this case. The cool AMD dragon design is great, but not at the cost of cleanliness.

Expect pics in the next few days.

Also I will probably dig out some brushes and do some paint touch-up on the worn areas.

 

Sam,

Actually it was the almost 3 minutes it took that HP Atom of my neighbors to fully boot up, that I was complaining about. Everything is "hurry up and wait!" I'm more than happy with the P-6200 in my Acer laptop. For $347 shipped, it's a much better bargain than the Atom was for $99 IMHO! The slowest computer I ever used was a Ti-99A. My friend got "Burgertime" for his, and I was used to playing it on my Adam, so I asked for a try. It was pathetic! Everything moved like it was wading in fudge!

That was the great thing about the ColecoVision. The games for it had the look and feel of the arcade version. They even painstakingly duplicated all the little nuances that the arcade versions had. The system was so popular in the early 80's, Atari even relented and ported Centipede to Colecovision. IMO, 10 times better than it ran and looked on an Atari 5200 or the 400-800 computers. Atari 400's & 800's had very poor graphics for games. Everything had the square look to the graphics, and Centipede was the worst of them all on Atari. The parts of the Centipede that were supposed to be round looked like little squares, with rounded corners and what could only be described as poofy sides! On the ColecoVision, it looked and felt, just like the arcade version. It had what was called a "Roller controller" that used a genuine Cue Ball for the ball. Made the game a lot more fun! My all time favorite ColecoVision games were "The Dam Busters", followed by "Dragon's Lair"!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Seen them with 1 or 2 usually.