Does this computer upgrade sound like a plan?

[Sid]

My computer is a Dell XPS 410 (http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/xpsdt_410?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs) with 32-bit Vista, C2D 6700 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115002) and 4Gigs of DDR2 667.


I am looking at changing out the C2D with a Core 2 Quad Q6600 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115017), changing out the 4Gigs of 667 with 2Gigs of DDR2 800 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227139) [32-bit Vista only recognizes 3Gig anyway. . . Crucial Memory (http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts.aspx?model=XPS%20410) confirms that my system will support DDR2 800]


Currently, this computer scores 5.5 on the Vista scale for processor and 5.6 for memory. This upgrade should max out both scores for my gamer sons. A DirectX 10 video card will come when some more software supports it.

I am looking at the upgrade for the sheer crunching power of the quad, since I have been BOINCing for about 4 months now. . . (http://www.boincstats.com/signature/user_1145699.gif) and want to step up things a bit.



I would then be left with the C2D and 4Gigs of 667 for the start of a 64-bit Linux computer build I have been lusting for. . .

Does this plan sound reasonable?

[Pleye]

Can't answer re:hardware. I'm stuck in the dark ages and still have more processing power than I need. Just built a P4 2.8GHz HT on the weekend for a relative. I'd like something like that!

What are you using the Linux box for? I have a really great older dual p3-600 with the Linux OS split across multiple spindles and platters and the thing is a rocket desktop and a fabulous web server.

[Sid]

I'm stuck in the dark ages and still have more processing power than I need.


Pleye:


I have two sons [10 and 15yo's] who play Guild Wars, World of Warcraft and Flight SimulatorX online and the minimum requirements to play these games just keeps going up.

As mentioned, I have been involved with BOINC (http://boinc.berkeley.edu/) and found a use for raw processing power. Many BOINCers run multiple computer farms with old servers and overclocked homebrews. My C2D is a Chihuahua pretending to run with the big dogs.


What are you using the Linux box for?


Several reasons: I want to do a computer build, learn a little Linux and use a 64-bit OP on some of the BOINC applications that support 64-bit.

[Pleye]

Nice thing about Linux for things like BOINC is that you can recompile an optimized kernel and run minimal apps to get the most power for BOINC. I used to do SETI around 2001.

I have a bunch of old machines sitting around with nothing to do with them at the moment. I thought about LTSP for fun. Even if I put them all together I doubt I could approach the processing of one of today's computers.

I love FlightSim. Last one I bought was in 2001 - I got a copy that still had the twin towers in it. If I had more time and money I'd love to put in a few monitors and a nice flight control surface just to play FlightSim.

You'll have a blast with Linux - no limits.

[NovaStorm]

You mean Pagan Wars and World of Witchcraft?? Uh-huh. Anyhoot, for certain games, CPU is not so important, much of the processing power is going to be done by the GPU. Flight Simulator, which I am a long time fan of, does use a bit of CPU power compared to Role=Playing Game’s since such simulators do a lot of physics calculations. RPG is a bit different, however, it takes more out of the GPU (from the video card) but not so much regarding scenery complexity but of the high amount of objects in a scene. For online RPG’s it’s even less demanding on CPU since the server handles much of the tracking and such.

As for grid computing, I used to do that long ago, well until I found out that only a portion of the crunching was actually going to the project, that many companies that do so actually crunch numbers for other companies for a price that may have no relation to what they supposedly tell you your time is contributed to. It’s big business I guess. Then they would always give me these stupid messages telling me how I needed to buy an authentic Intel processor etc and knock points off my score (which I wasn’t doing it for any score) because I use AMD and don't want to buy a processor from their advertiser, Intel.

Probably the biggest performance boost you will get all around is having enough memory. No point in getting a bleeding edge CPU if you have less than 1GB of system memory, 2-3GB being a serious performance boost. Of course with Vista you would want more than 1GB to start. Memory is important for the GPU as well, but that is VRAM memory for the GPU compared to System RAM for the CPU. Usually 256MB on VRAM is really nice with current games.

[Pleye]

Thanks for bringing that up! I quit doing SETI because I thought it was a waste of time personally. Guys I worked with started working on protein folding as a more worthwhile cause. I'm glad to hear your results are a little more realistic as to what is really happening.

This isn't really a good place to bring this up, so maybe I'll start a new thread....