My new system!!!

[Nickcanada]

I finally sold my Sigma 12-24mm. There were a few things on my want list, a 10mm 2.8, some lighting equipment but editing files on my computer was becoming too agonizing so I went for a system upgrade instead.

Intel DUO E6550 2.33Gz
ASUS SKT 775 G31 M. ATX
2 GB of Ram 800mz
western digital 500GB SATAII 16MB
LG 20x multi-DVD RW
R5 Mid tower 400W power supply
ASUS GF8500GT Silent 512MB DDR2 video card.
Running on Windows XP

The hard drive is formating right now so I have a while before it'll be ready to edit photos with but I'm excited. :)

http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k162/nickandaline/DSCN0231.jpg

[GaryS]

w00t! Looks nice Nick!

[Nickcanada]

Thanks! I should add that currently I am editing on my laptop running @ 2.2 Ghz single core processor, 1 GB of ram, on board video and 80 GB of hard drive space. I think I'll notice a difference.

My old desktop was 900 Mhz, 512MB ram and 120 GB hard drive, 128MB video card.

[r3g]

good stuff. my desktop is running a e6550 also but i have mine clocked to 2.9Ghz. can go as high as 3.2ghz with a good mobo and ram. =]

[zmikers]

I know nothing about computers mine says 1.0GHz, 512 MB of RAM. Should I be upgrading and how?

[DonSchap]

I know nothing about computers mine says 1.0GHz, 512 MB of RAM. Should I be upgrading and how?

Ask Apple ... that MacBook Pro (http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/) is mighty fast and nice!

That is a STRIKE-ing looking PC you got, Nick. Sorry, the bowling "mark" is hard to miss. :D

[cdifoto]

Thanks! I should add that currently I am editing on my laptop running @ 2.2 Ghz single core processor, 1 GB of ram, on board video and 80 GB of hard drive space. I think I'll notice a difference.

My old desktop was 900 Mhz, 512MB ram and 120 GB hard drive, 128MB video card.

Damn. Yeah you'll see a difference for sure. The speed jump from my 2.16GHz AMD w/ 2GB 533MHz (I think) RAM desktop to 2.16GHz Intel Core2 Duo w/ 2GB 667MHz RAM laptop was huge.

[Rhys]

I'm currently fixing a system for somebody at the moment. It had an infected McAfee antivirus (never ever known McAfee or Norton to do anything about stopping viruses - seen them get infected by them many times though). In total there were 1,017 viruses on the system and 138 items of spyware. It wasn't even up to SP1 either!

It has a decent spec though. 40GB hard drive, 2.2Ghz CPU but only 128MB ram. Add more ram and it'd move faster than an oar through porridge.

With XP unless you're doing really intense stuff, you don't really need more than 2GHZ and 512MB RAM.

These days I recommend not keeping data on the computer hard drive. Rather, keep it on an external drive so that it's portable between machines. It does make fixing systems easier - just format the blessed thing and re-install.

If I'm still not happy with that machine (which I'm not at the moment) I might ask for permission to format and reinstall from Dell's repair partition.

I'm glad to see you got the system you wanted. Before you go online with it, stick a decent antivirus and antispyware system on. AVG is pretty good. Adaware is also pretty good. I'm not sure how good Windows Defender is but that might be even better since it's written by Microsoft although I'm a little uncomfortable that the people whose operarting system is full of holes is selling additional patches!

[Nickcanada]

It's online now!

Monitor Calibrated and all! It's much faster then my laptop! I can easily move from lightroom and PS without any lag. Saving files is near instantaneous. Making adjustments to photos is easy and fluid without waiting for the system to catch up.

Money well spent I think.

I'm going to install AVG. I had it running on my laptop and I have never had a single virus on that computer. I'm a careful surfer too which I think is probably the best defense.

Here is a fresh image from a shoot I've been trying to get to for a while.

http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k320/livelifelivepics/_MG_2212.jpg

[Nickcanada]

Ask Apple ... that MacBook Pro (http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/) is mighty fast and nice!

That is a STRIKE-ing looking PC you got, Nick. Sorry, the bowling "mark" is hard to miss. :D

It's an ugly case but it was cheep. ;)

[r3g]

That mobo is a decent overclocks. Throw a Zalman CNPS9700 on and you should be able to hit around 2.7Ghz with your memory unlinked.

[T06]

I'm currently fixing a system for somebody at the moment. It had an infected McAfee antivirus (never ever known McAfee or Norton to do anything about stopping viruses - seen them get infected by them many times though). In total there were 1,017 viruses on the system and 138 items of spyware. It wasn't even up to SP1 either!

It has a decent spec though. 40GB hard drive, 2.2Ghz CPU but only 128MB ram. Add more ram and it'd move faster than an oar through porridge.

With XP unless you're doing really intense stuff, you don't really need more than 2GHZ and 512MB RAM.

These days I recommend not keeping data on the computer hard drive. Rather, keep it on an external drive so that it's portable between machines. It does make fixing systems easier - just format the blessed thing and re-install.

If I'm still not happy with that machine (which I'm not at the moment) I might ask for permission to format and reinstall from Dell's repair partition.

I'm glad to see you got the system you wanted. Before you go online with it, stick a decent antivirus and antispyware system on. AVG is pretty good. Adaware is also pretty good. I'm not sure how good Windows Defender is but that might be even better since it's written by Microsoft although I'm a little uncomfortable that the people whose operarting system is full of holes is selling additional patches!

Spoken like a true politician Rhys....:D

[DonSchap]

It's an ugly case but it was cheep. ;)

Most computers go under the desk, anyway ... heck, I've been operating one of mine with no cover for about 2 years ... just to circulate more air to CPU and hard drives. Darn thing got hot processing all the images, then I had a new one constructed (better air flow and much faster CPU) and now "the furnace" it sits pretty much off and out of the way. I use it only when workload gets too bizarre. It's kind of slow by comparison.

I suspect you will have great results from yours, Nick. Just don't spsend too much of your time with the World of Warcraft. LOL :D

[Rhys]

Most computers go under the desk, anyway ... heck, I've been operating one of mine with no cover for about 2 years ... just to circulate more air to CPU and hard drives. Darn thing got hot processing all the images, then I had a new one constructed (better air flow and much faster CPU) and now "the furnace" it sits pretty much off and out of the way. I use it only when workload gets too bizarre. It's kind of slow by comparison.

I suspect you will have great results from yours, Nick. Just don't spsend too much of your time with the World of Warcraft. LOL :D

OMG. I have a nephew who is absolutely addicted to WOW. All he lives for is to play that and believe it or not, he's in university!

[DonSchap]

Rhys,

There have been several documented cases of WOW Widows (Women who have divorced their men because the guy's "first love" is now "The World" and their character). Honestly, it is quite understandable. Who would want to deal with the real world (bills, nagging wife, kids, and god knows what other horrors :eek:) after you've had a chance to step away into complete fantasy and face little monsters that LOOK like the monsters they are? All the guessing disappears and you literally become ... mentally animated, running from mission to nission, saving your friends and cohorts. Who needs silly and expensive drugs to escape into this world? You can do so with your sharpest wits about you ... and be afraid ... be very afraid ... that someone is going to interrupt your indulgence, as you sit at your fast-running gaming machine, hour after hour, hardly eating ... in fact, hardly doing anything at all, but interfacing.

33375
33376
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Bring 'em on ... to heck with the -phffft- real world! As long as you have a credit card making the $40 installments to keep you part of the world alive ... here we go ... your world awaits. :D

[Rhys]

I'd call it world of misery.

No interfacing with the real world = no friends, no contacts, no social networking.
No social networking = no chance of a better job.
No chance of a better job = life sucks.

It's a downward spiral that will lead only to misery.

[FLiPMaRC]

:cool: Nice setup Nick ... except the video card :( Still, it's a big step up from the laptop :p I went from laptop to desktop about a year ago too :D

[Jason25]

I'd call it world of misery.

No interfacing with the real world = no friends, no contacts, no social networking.
No social networking = no chance of a better job.
No chance of a better job = life sucks.

It's a downward spiral that will lead only to misery.

Agreed, kinda pathetic really. I tried one online game awhile back, but never got into it.

[Rhys]

Agreed, kinda pathetic really. I tried one online game awhile back, but never got into it.

I think paying to use an online game really takes the biscuit!

There still are free muds available. I used to mud quite a bit but don't do it more than a few minutes every few months now. My life is way too exciting to bother with a ficticious life.

[Nickcanada]

:cool: Nice setup Nick ... except the video card :( Still, it's a big step up from the laptop :p I went from laptop to desktop about a year ago too :D

Thanks, so the video card isn't the greatest? I'm not gaming on it so I thought I would cheap out a little on the card. So far it's been great! :)

[BBPhoto]

Nice setup Nick. I decided last week to set up a dedicated photo machine myself. I'm a little tired of working on the laptop and my old desktop wouldn't cut it. The system shipped from Dell today so I should receive it in a day or two. Keep us posted on how things roll.

[DonSchap]

When I was putting my system together, last summer, I went with the ASUS X1600 - 256M video card (p/o the crossfire system for gaming) married to an ASUS M2NPV-VM using an AMD 5400+ Dual Core and because I am not running nor do I plan to run Vista in this machine ... and for what I paid, it seems to have delivered the goods. I made the C: drive a RAID 1 of two 250GB drives. The redundancy of identical drives allows me to feel a little more comfortable about my work residing on the machine. I truly wanted a raw speed improvement over the older machine I was using ... because it was just poking along after the drive got a little more crowded (I swear it would actually get lost doing web pages). This just seemed to be a good choice. While my next investment is definitely the monitor (easily twice the cost of my system) ... color control is critical to our craft.

I would recommend the higher end ASUS cards. They seem to be great, overall ... so why argue with success? Good choice, Nick. The machine looks to serve you well.

[Buzzed]

Nice setup Nick! I agree the video card is weak but it should only impact you if you plan on gaming. I actually just ordered some new parts too today to upgrade my 4 year old pc.

Intel e8400 core 2 duo(Wolfdale)
Gigabyte P35 mobo
2gb mushkin RAM 800mhz
WD 250gb SATA 16MB
eVGA 8800GT 512MB Supeclocked

The rest of the parts are remnants of the previous machine. Hopefully my old Enermax 425w PSU can handle the new parts. What are you using for color calibration?

[Nickcanada]

Hehe, this is turning into a "what have you got under the hood?" thread! I like it! :)

To answer your question Buzzed I use Spyder 2 Suite. I got a great deal on it when Spyder 3 came out. It was easy to use and I would buy it again. I couldn't believe how much of a difference there was!

A good monitor will be on my list down the road too.

[FLiPMaRC]

Thanks, so the video card isn't the greatest? I'm not gaming on it so I thought I would cheap out a little on the card. So far it's been great! :)

:cool: It's cool. I don't game either. But for our purposes, photo/video editing, something around the same price range but with better specs/performance does help a bit.

I am currently looking to buy the HD 2600XT card ;) I'm not sure where you bought it, considering you're in Canada, but on Newegg, it's a $20 difference between your card and an HD 2600XT.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121093
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161178


But at least you're calibrated :cool: I like the Pantone Huey :)

[FLiPMaRC]

While my next investment is definitely the monitor (easily twice the cost of my system) ... color control is critical to our craft.How about Panasonic's new $5,000 17" monitor, LOL! http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/20/panasonics-17-inch-bt-lh1760-production-lcd-costs-5000/



And why are not planning on running Vista? I have Vista Home Premium running at home for a year now and loving it.

[GaryS]

If I were to invest in a new monitor, it would be the Wacom Cintiq (http://www.wacom.com/cintiq/21UX.cfm) monitor/tablet.

I've used one for awhile at a show, and I was blown away at how nice it was....

[Rhys]

I looked at monitors and the best I've seen is the LCD monitor. It takes a while to get used to the lack of absolute black but other than that they're really quite good. I prefer them to CRT as the colours don't change.

[erichlund]

If you are talking about the 20", You are looking at a $2000 monitor. Even the 12" is $1000. Yeah, it's nice, but...

Rhys, I would say that while LCDs may not drift in color as much as a CRT, no change at all is not true. Each month, when my Spyder 3 says it's time to check calibration, it tells me of a bunch of small changes, but so far, nothing to require an actual recalibration. However, I've only been calibrated for about 4 months with this solution.