![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lprovenWednesday was such a long day, it ended on Friday morning. That's going some.
After sorting out a new set of keys for the new temporary lodger - I've let the spare room for 2wk - I headed over to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
twistedanimator's in Leytonstone to sort out some problems. She's got a 2nd broadband connection in, via TalkTalk, and wants that set up, plus there's a new SATA300 disk controller to go in her Mac. First, though, there was a new CPU to try in one of the gaming machines I've built her. A dual-core Athlon64 3800+.
First try, she got a socket AM2 one by mistake - that needs to go back for a refund. My bad; I was insufficiently exact in my purchasing advice and Froogle's results change in a matter of hours.
It worked and started, but the PC died after 10min or so. I've swapped the motherboard - free replacements from Misco. I've swapped the chip - exchanging elderly single-core 3500+ for new dual-core 3800+. I've replaced AMD's basic OEM HSF with a whizzy Artic Freezer 64 Pro, winner of an award in CustomPC. (I used to write for them, know the team and think they're pretty clueful.) Plaudit to Aria PCs, who were not only one of the cheapest vendors on Froogle, they shipped so fast the unit was received the evening of the day after ordering. That's pretty good.
So I swapped the PSU. Result: perfect stability. Which does make me wonder if maybe the M/Bs and indeed older CPUs weren't at fault after all, but hey, new M/Bs cost no money and the chips were, by current standards, a bit past it.
So now, only 6mth after I started, Lisa has two working games PCs. W00t. Next step, after I have all 3 running and stable, will be to upgrade her various 3-4yo graphics cards to something modern and fast. For games, a perfectly-good 100% functional SLI array of 2 x 3yo cards is not nearly enough. The pair of GeForce 6800 Ultras - state of the art in 2004 or so - now registers in 3DMark less than a frame a second in some of the tests. Indeed, as low as 0.7FPS. Not impressive.
What's most worrying me now is that some of the newest and whizziest games are threatening to become DirectX 10 only, or even Vista only where they don't require DX10. These first 2 boxes fly in XP: 256MB+ graphics, 2G RAM, 80G PATA boot drives with dedicated 10-20G swap drives, DVD burners. I bet they'll be absolute dogs running Vista, though.
My first impressions of Vista have been extremely negative. It's clunky, dog-slow, the additions and new features are poor and lacklustre and it's not anywhere near as pretty as I expected from all the billing and cooing I've read online.
I'm much amused to see that reports matching my experience are now proliferating online. The latest I've seen is from Sam Varghese on ITwire Australia. Now, he's clearly a harsh critic - his writeup on the latest Ubuntu is pretty vicious too - but I can only agree with all his points.
Indeed, Micros~1 is getting worried about the poor reception of Vista and is embarking on a campaign to dissuade people from waiting for SP1. I confess much amusement.
After sorting out a new set of keys for the new temporary lodger - I've let the spare room for 2wk - I headed over to
twistedanimator's in Leytonstone to sort out some problems. She's got a 2nd broadband connection in, via TalkTalk, and wants that set up, plus there's a new SATA300 disk controller to go in her Mac. First, though, there was a new CPU to try in one of the gaming machines I've built her. A dual-core Athlon64 3800+. First try, she got a socket AM2 one by mistake - that needs to go back for a refund. My bad; I was insufficiently exact in my purchasing advice and Froogle's results change in a matter of hours.
It worked and started, but the PC died after 10min or so. I've swapped the motherboard - free replacements from Misco. I've swapped the chip - exchanging elderly single-core 3500+ for new dual-core 3800+. I've replaced AMD's basic OEM HSF with a whizzy Artic Freezer 64 Pro, winner of an award in CustomPC. (I used to write for them, know the team and think they're pretty clueful.) Plaudit to Aria PCs, who were not only one of the cheapest vendors on Froogle, they shipped so fast the unit was received the evening of the day after ordering. That's pretty good.
So I swapped the PSU. Result: perfect stability. Which does make me wonder if maybe the M/Bs and indeed older CPUs weren't at fault after all, but hey, new M/Bs cost no money and the chips were, by current standards, a bit past it.
So now, only 6mth after I started, Lisa has two working games PCs. W00t. Next step, after I have all 3 running and stable, will be to upgrade her various 3-4yo graphics cards to something modern and fast. For games, a perfectly-good 100% functional SLI array of 2 x 3yo cards is not nearly enough. The pair of GeForce 6800 Ultras - state of the art in 2004 or so - now registers in 3DMark less than a frame a second in some of the tests. Indeed, as low as 0.7FPS. Not impressive.
What's most worrying me now is that some of the newest and whizziest games are threatening to become DirectX 10 only, or even Vista only where they don't require DX10. These first 2 boxes fly in XP: 256MB+ graphics, 2G RAM, 80G PATA boot drives with dedicated 10-20G swap drives, DVD burners. I bet they'll be absolute dogs running Vista, though.
My first impressions of Vista have been extremely negative. It's clunky, dog-slow, the additions and new features are poor and lacklustre and it's not anywhere near as pretty as I expected from all the billing and cooing I've read online.
I'm much amused to see that reports matching my experience are now proliferating online. The latest I've seen is from Sam Varghese on ITwire Australia. Now, he's clearly a harsh critic - his writeup on the latest Ubuntu is pretty vicious too - but I can only agree with all his points.
Indeed, Micros~1 is getting worried about the poor reception of Vista and is embarking on a campaign to dissuade people from waiting for SP1. I confess much amusement.
