Buzz Foster
Second Unit
- Joined
- Jan 21, 1999
- Messages
- 450
- Real Name
- Steve
I'm really behind the times, yet I actually haven't even decided if I need a new machine. But I have been looking, and I have some questions.
1) Of the "new" generation of processors (64 bit), what do the different ones do? I see dual core AMD processors, but I don't know what they do, or if that is useful for me.
2) Is my Athlon XP+ 2400 333 FSB system really all that out of date? As long as it runs, do I really need to worry about it?
3) How much better are these systems at handling large amounts of RAM? Is more simply better?
4) How outdated is my GeForce Ti 4200?
5) How good are newer monitors and printers at color calibration?
6) Is there any significant advantage of SATA over ATA100 or ATA133?
7) What I am interested in doing is graphics and video work. If I build a new system (Big if, still), then I would be using a lot of video editing and image editing software. Right now, I use Adobe premiere 6.5 and Corel 11. How much of a boost will I see in performance for these types of applications, and what type of processor should I be looking for to handle them?
Whatever knowledge you guys can toss my way would be apprecated. Digging around on newegg, I came up with a possible combination of parts:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ (Manchester core)
ASUS A8N5X Nforce4 Motherboard
Crucial Technology 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM (x4)
Maxtor MaXLine Pro 500 7H500R0 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache IDE Ultra ATA133 (x2)or...
Maxtor DiamondMax 11 6H500F0 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA (x2)
EPSON Stylus Photo R2400 and maybe...
A pair, or possibly a triplet of Viewsonic 19" LCD monitors. I have no idea about anything involving LCD monitors, so I have not even given a suggestion here. If I go with a triplet of monitors, I would also need a graphics card to handle that.
My CD-R is fast enough as-is, but my DVD-R is a whopping 4x, so it could use an upgrade. I figure I can probably buy a combo unit that will equal the 52x of my CD-R and handily beat the 4x DVD-R, but I haven't really looked too hard. Other than that, I have my Zip drive and my floppy to carry over. I would probably turn my old system into a network file storage.
The printer is for doing larger format prints of digital photographs, possibly for amature shows. We have a lot of those things here in New Mexico, and I thought it could be fun to enter some shows. I have other friends who have. Anyway, am I looking in the right direction?
1) Of the "new" generation of processors (64 bit), what do the different ones do? I see dual core AMD processors, but I don't know what they do, or if that is useful for me.
2) Is my Athlon XP+ 2400 333 FSB system really all that out of date? As long as it runs, do I really need to worry about it?
3) How much better are these systems at handling large amounts of RAM? Is more simply better?
4) How outdated is my GeForce Ti 4200?
5) How good are newer monitors and printers at color calibration?
6) Is there any significant advantage of SATA over ATA100 or ATA133?
7) What I am interested in doing is graphics and video work. If I build a new system (Big if, still), then I would be using a lot of video editing and image editing software. Right now, I use Adobe premiere 6.5 and Corel 11. How much of a boost will I see in performance for these types of applications, and what type of processor should I be looking for to handle them?
Whatever knowledge you guys can toss my way would be apprecated. Digging around on newegg, I came up with a possible combination of parts:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ (Manchester core)
ASUS A8N5X Nforce4 Motherboard
Crucial Technology 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM (x4)
Maxtor MaXLine Pro 500 7H500R0 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache IDE Ultra ATA133 (x2)or...
Maxtor DiamondMax 11 6H500F0 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA (x2)
EPSON Stylus Photo R2400 and maybe...
A pair, or possibly a triplet of Viewsonic 19" LCD monitors. I have no idea about anything involving LCD monitors, so I have not even given a suggestion here. If I go with a triplet of monitors, I would also need a graphics card to handle that.
My CD-R is fast enough as-is, but my DVD-R is a whopping 4x, so it could use an upgrade. I figure I can probably buy a combo unit that will equal the 52x of my CD-R and handily beat the 4x DVD-R, but I haven't really looked too hard. Other than that, I have my Zip drive and my floppy to carry over. I would probably turn my old system into a network file storage.
The printer is for doing larger format prints of digital photographs, possibly for amature shows. We have a lot of those things here in New Mexico, and I thought it could be fun to enter some shows. I have other friends who have. Anyway, am I looking in the right direction?