Dream Machine!

With it being Christmas and all, I've been compiling my Dream Machine specifications on what I would like my PC to become one day.

Here's mine:

Moniter(s): 2 x 21" TFT LCD Samsung displays
Graphic Card(s): 1 x 512MB XFX GeForce 7800 GTX PCI-Express
Harddrive(s): 2 x 250GB Western Digital SATA
Processor(s): 1 x 3.0GHz AMD Athlon
Memory: 1 x 1GB DDR4

With this I would play FEAR until I faint from exhaustion, probably wake up eventually so I can hug my PC tower case. Just wondering what you guys would get, if money wasn't an issue.

Make that a Dual core athlon, it really will speed up everyday tasks as more is multitasked than you realise. It makes everything responsive, particularly if you're doing one thing and loading another... and so on...

Another thing: just get DDR400, but get 2 gigs of the stuff in 1 stick each (2x1gig). Make sure it is particularly low latency stuff like ballistix.

It's not much more expensive but likewise will pay off in everything you do.

2 gigs and low latency are, unfortunately, mutually exclusive.

So far, Battlefield 2 is the only mainstream software which really benefits from having that much RAM.

I hope you will be RAIDing those drives.. My dream wmachine would have four and would be RAID 0+1

I would only RAID on a server for backup puposes, who needs them for home use?

Why only a 3GHz Athlon when you could have a 3.6 or higher Intel P4?

Soundcard?

Kayboard/Mouse/Game Interface?

Dual Layer DVD-RW?

I've only listed the fun components of a PC, as the others seem dull. When talking about a new sports car, you don't go on and on about how it has glass for windows and four tyres. The DVD-Rom drive will be spun by a mouse in a wheel, the case made from carboard and the keyboard will be carved from a chunk of cheese.

It doesn't exist yet. Bring on the 256-bit windoze on 10Ghz already. What happened to Moore's law? I think we got a bottleneck when the cpu is the size of a postage stamp and we need to be bolting a heatsink the size of a vaccum cleaner on it. I notice we're crawling up at the rate of 0.1Ghz every 3 months.

The current speed/cpu upgrade path is a pathetic waste of money for anyone who's been sitting at 3Ghz+ for the last 12 months.

I'm buying one of these DV301B's shortly:

http://www.mitsubishi-electric.com.au/PRODUCTS/COMPP/infodisplay/index.html

Kenshin, Moore's law also had a limit.


These days, Instead of making them faster, theyre making them more efficient. AMD started early on, now Intel are following up :) Thats why a modern day Celeton 1.7 may actually be faster than my 1-2 year old Pentium 4 M 2.0ghz. I think we will have to measure in MIPS from now on.

You're wrong on both counts.

Maybe when that day comes, that will be obsolete and we'll all be using quantum computers

hope you have it before that happens ;)

edit: thx Grey x)

quantum?

Moore's law has nothing to do with CPU speed -- all it says is that the number of transistors on a CPU will double every 18 month's, and thats still pretty much true. It says nothing about the operating frequency.

(Plus it was more of an observation than a law, really)

>Moniter(s): 2 x 21" TFT LCD Samsung displays
>Graphic Card(s): 1 x 512MB XFX GeForce 7800 GTX PCI->Express
>Harddrive(s): 2 x 250GB Western Digital SATA
>Processor(s): 1 x 3.0GHz AMD Athlon
>Memory: 1 x 1GB DDR4

that might took my full one month salary...
planned to update my machine, but have no time.

We're at DDR4 now!???????

BTW, Xlsior is correct. Thanks for the refresher.

Besides, with dual core becoming more and more common and quad core and above being just around the corner, the transistor count will keep climbing in the foreseeable future as well.

'speed' on the other hand may plateau a bit, at least for single-threaded applications.

I've just noticed you all us Radeons you sick, sick people. :P

Why not get the AMD64?

Why doesn't anyone else bother to post their Dream Machine specifications?

I was wrong about Moore's law. You know what I was getting at though.

Moniter(s): 2 x 21" TFT LCD displays
Graphic Card(s): 1 x 512MB XFX GeForce 7800 GTX PCI-Express
Harddrive(s): 2 x 250GB SATA, 2x 250GB External drives for backups
Processor(s): Depending what's available at the time, some kind of dual-core 64-bit beast, the fastest available.
Memory: 2 x 1GB DDR4

I've had 1GB of memory for years, and I'm starting to hit the wall in terms of what I can do. I would at least like to double it. And I wouldn't use both screens for gaming, obviously.

Thing is, the Dream Machine spec is subject to change, since it's basically based on what's available now. I intend to wait for a year or so until Vista is out, 64-bit is commonplace, and software has settled in to the new standards that will bring. By then, I expect we'll have another generation of GeForce cards, and 4Gb of RAM might be a good option. 'Specially with 64-bit architecture.

I heard recently that with 2Gb of RAM, you can turn off virtual memory, and your system will cruise. I expect that situation won't last long, but in a years time with 4Gb it might be possible again.

If you did have a 21" TFT LCD display, what resolution would you play video games at, using the XFX GeForce 7800 GTX card? I'd probably would have two internal 250GB Western Digital harddrives, aswell as a removable internal harddrive and a USB 2.0 external harddrive. I'd also like a static IP address, so I could use my external harddrive to host FPS gaming events. Apparently with Be Internet Broadband, you can get an internet connection 'up to' 24MBs, but they don't say if you'll get all of that, just 'up to', I didn't e-mail them asking what the average connection would be for everyone that had it, but they claimed it depends on noise of the line, quality of the copper line and how far away I was from a local exchange. God forbin how I'm supposed to find all this kind of information out, and if I was too, would they be able to -then- tell me how much of the 'up to' connection speed I could get. I mean I could sign upto a 12 month contract thinking it's great and get a slower speed than dial-up.

The website is http://www.bethere.co.uk incase you would like to check it out. They offer a connection 'up to' 24MB line only for £25 per month, which is what I'm paying now.

One Eyed Jack: Show me a working configuration of 2 gig of main memory with 2-2-2-5 latencies and 1T command rate with the RAM being driven at less than 3.2v.

I haven't researched this in a couple of months, so it may be possible. Mushkin made the fastest RAM at the time I upgraded, but you had to drive it at something mad like 3.6v and it required active cooling.

Active cooling? For RAM? Mental!