New PC Rocks!
 

I just built a PC to use as a drafting workstation: Autocad 11 LT (2D)

AMD Phenom II X6 Processor 2.8GHz (6 cores!)
GIGABYTE 890XA-UD3 Mother Board
Sapphire Radeon 4650 Video Card (1GB SD2 Memory)
500 GB Sata Hard drive
8 GB SD3 1600 RAM
Rosehill ATX case & 400W power supply
Sony 4x DVD-RW
Windows 7 Pro

This thing SMOKES. The CPU ratings are about the same as the low end Intel i7 processors, for less than 1/2 the price. I was amazed at how the CPUMARK test in the 3D graphics mode (X-29 flying around) was so smooth and fast. My regular Lattitude E6500 (Core 2 Duo 2.8 GHZ) scored only better on the disk drive tests (not sure exactly why, except that maybe this is really an older SATA drive, one I had laying around).

I'm still tweeking the MB settings, but this thing is Smoking fast.

Can you share your approximate cost?

Nice. I just fired up my new workstation, and am installing Inventor/AutoCad as I type.
Fairly similar build... 4-core 3ghz 64bit Xeon, 12gb ram, dual ati firepro v5700 video cards. I'm looking forward to running Inventor without crashing for the first time in a long while. It's amazing how much faster it is than the 5+year old machine I was working on before. ;)

What do the Xeon processors have that the other Quad Core Intel processors don't have? I've always wondered why these processors were/are much more expensive?

This is for "light" drafting work. The CPU scores under CPUMARK are pretty close, 5412 vs. 5162, Intel Xeon W3550 3.07 GHz vs. AMD Phenon II X6 2.8 GHz, respectively.

Windows 7 is a great OS. And this coming from a windows hater :).

You could make it even faster by using an SSD drive, but those are still pricey.

Messed with auto cad some but prefer microstation. Auto cad esc is your best friend. Have you tried microstation? Sounds like you have a nice system there....

How does the cost compare? I haven't bought my software yet. The AutoCad 2011 LT is about $880 after 2 rebates ($1300 before).

About $700, including shipping. I already had a monitor, keyboard and mouse, so they are not in the cost.

A similar Machine with a comparable i7 would be about $300 more. I haven't priced a similar machine from Dell, but I will.

That's great and all... But what color is it? ;)

Black, or course...

I'm building one for my wife shortly, and the desktop box will be the following:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1284086537.jpg

$39.99 - Athena Power CA Silver / Black / MicroATX Slim Desktop Computer Case 300W Power Supply
$39.99 - HITACHI 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
$43.99 - Foxconn M61PMP-K AM3 NVIDIA MCP61P Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
$74.99 - GeIL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1333 (PC3 10660) Dual Channel Kit
$88.99 - AMD Phenom II X3 740 Black Edition Heka 3.0GHz Socket AM3 95W Triple-Core
$16.99 - SAMSUNG CD/DVD Burner Black SATA Model SH-S223C - OEM
$15.80 - Shipping

$320.74 - Total

It will be about 1/2 the power of my drafting box, but about 10-15x the power of what she has. I have a Win 7 Pro OEM disk, which I think was $69. And I already have 1600x1050 Monitor, keyboard and mouse. I expect I'll have to pay for a couple of internal cables (USB to front, and CD audio cable).

If I were to re-use her case, I could knock off $40 and $10 shipping. If I re-use her Hard Disk & DVD drive (giving up SATA), then I'd save another ~$60.

I used to build my PCs. The last one was in 2001 I think. It had a big case, a Tyan server mobo, dual Intel processors, what passed for tons of memory at the time, six SCSI hard drives, two big fans with some homemade air ducts, a big power supply, a nice ATI Rage card, Win NT. I loved that machine. Probably made my first Pelican posts with it. I imagine it had all the performance of my daughter's HP Mini netbook . . .

I'll bet it had less...

Then I got really into the original mini notebook, the Toshiba Libretto. Spent weeks stripping down Windows to run in the memory available, either 32 or 64MB I think. That was a cool machine.

Did you see, ARM just announced the A15, up to 2.5 GHz and 8 way, with all the features that make for a server CPU. The next few years are going to be very interesting. I think Microsoft will port to ARM. They took an architectural license to ARM, you do that if you intend to design custom ARM-based processors. Intel has got to be very concerned. PCs will be a 10% unit growth market at best over the next decade. The growth is in mobile devices and Atom-based netbooks are now being hurt by ARM-based iPad with plenty of ARM and Android-based tablets coming. Microsoft is seeing trouble too. The chip in an iPad is plenty powerful enough for most things that most people do with a computer now, and it costs maybe $40. Android costs nothing. What is the future for $150 Intel CPUs and $50 Windows OS'es?

I think Microsoft sees Apple's success in the hardware side of things, and wants to mimic it. This has been Microsoft's greatest asset: the ability to imitate very well.

It's fun to build these machines. I re-built one of our PCs a few weeks ago. I've now decided to swap the case and the CD/DVD drive because I have too many holes in this one now. I pulled out the second CD drive and the 1.44 floppy. $50 for the case and $16 for the DVD burner. It will become fully SATA.

This was my first complete build in a while, probably 12-15 years. I think the last one I built was an AMD 486! It was fun to see how AMD kept ramping up the speed of the 486 and motherboards, to compete with the Pentiums.

One theory is that Intel charges that much because they can. They have to raise the money for the slush funds to keep the manufacturers not shipping AMD chips somehow...

One rumor is that all the Quad Xeons are actually the same core within the same processor family - e.g. that Intel don't make any "slow" Xeons and it's only the packaging - e.g. the links on the package that "tell" the mobo what the chip is - that determines what FSB speed and multiplier to run.

I know for a $15 investment in a circuit writer pen I "told" my Xeon 5420's that they wanted to run at 1600MHz FSB - so, as the multiplier is locked, they obliged by running @ 3.0 Ghz instead of ~2.6 - and they've been rock-solid ever since, for months. And all accesses to memory/peripherals are also at 1600Mhz FSB speeds as well.

You do need RAM and motherboard/BIOS capable of supporting that.

It's kind of funny, the AMD processor tells the MB what to run, but the MB (chip set from AMD) allows you to overclock, and then monitor the temps.

I had always thought it the processors were tested and culled. Ones that would test OK at one speed but not at another. It wouldn't surprise me to find out there is no difference.

Gee. And I was very happy with my new i5-650/3.2/L2 clone w/4GB & a tera . . . :(

Ian

My Dell is about two years old.... and dammit, this thread has me thinking about building a new one again!

Don't worry, next month something else will be out and I'll feel the name way....

I priced up an i5-650 system for you...

16.99 - DVD-RW, SATA
69.99 - 1TB, 7200 RPM, 3GB/s HD
51.99 - 1GB, 128 bit Video Card
84.99 - 4GB, DD3 1600 RAM
69.99 - BIOSTAR H55 HD LGA 1156 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
179.99 - i5-650 CPU
159.99 - Case, Power Supply and Win 7 Pro x64 (Combo deal)
12.89 - Shipping

646.81 including shipping

How does this compare?