Computer suggestions...

[ErikG]

As a long time Mac user I'm now going to ge my first proper PC.

So what to think about?
It's going to be used to run Rhino, Prosurf/MaxSurf.
The faster the batter as always but...

Do I have to use a P4 or could I get away with an AMD (cheaper)
What's the best OS to run? 2000 or XP (home) or XP pro and why?
CRT or TFT display? Better to get two CRT's rather than one TFT?
Suitable videocard for two monitors.

Anything else I need to think about?

Please try to keep the suggestions to the low end side as I have a very limited budget...

ErikG

[Jeff]

I can't really comment about AMD vs. Intel because I've simply taken the 'easy way out' and stuck with Intel over years after my initial experience with AMD was tainted by their horrible AMD K6 CPU's. If I had started with an Athlon my decisions since then might very well be different.

I just finished building a dual Xeon 3.06 with 3 GB ECC DDR Ram on a Supermicro X5DA8 Motherboard on Sunday. As part of my switch I had to change from Windows 2000 Pro which I found to be very very stable and consistent to XP Pro (to take advantage of hyperthreading on the dual Xeons).

I like the looks of XP and some of the features are nice and handy (little things like built in support for my usb card reader, better folder thumbnail display, little things like that.) At the same time XP has wasted a lot more of my time troubleshooting in the past few days than I spent troubleshooting Windows 2000 having used it for nearly three years. First there was a glitch with no spell checker in Outlook Express even though it was a clean install of Office and XP. After three hours of searching I found one file needed to be relocated. Then the next day installing a printer driver ended up disabling the video driver the next bootup which took 6 hours to track down. The restore point feature in XP is a life saver, but it also seems much easier to corrupt XP than Windows 2000 was, especially in terms of drivers (which is weird because I thought this was going to be one of the strengths of XP… certain not so in my experience.)

Hopefully the road will be smoother from here forward with XP though. I’m committed to it, so I hope so.

CRT vs. LCD – definitely a flat screen. I finally went with a DVI digital connection to my two-year old Viewsonic VG181 and the display is really sharp compared to the trinitron on the computer next to me…. It seems a little easier on my eyes too when I use it for 12 hours without a break ;)

I just installed a 3D Labs wildcat 560 (http://www.3dlabs.com/product/wildcatvp/vp560/index.htm) which I got for $134 and I'm pretty happy with it so far - I haven’t tried it’s dual display feature though because I’m one monitor short and I’ve spent my upgrade budget for a little while :) I have my eye on a second 18" flatscreen though and am watching pricewatch for a deal to come up. I guess a while back Dell had a special on an 18" flatscreen for $350 but I missed it.

Please try to keep the suggestions to the low end side as I have a very limited budget...
Errr... oops. I've never been good at staying on a budget when it comes to computers. I meant to go with 2.4's for example because that's where the price point is, but at the last moment somehow I ended up getting 3.06's.

It will be interesting to see what Intels' upcoming 3.2 and 3.4 (?) Ghz 'extreme' P4's with their huge 2 MB cache are like in both performance and price and what happens to the pricing on the normal P4's - it seems like a bump in the pricepoint will finally be coming. Maybe I can take credit for it since it seems everytime I upgrade as soon as I get my software installed a price drop occurs.

[ErikG]

Well thanks Jeff, as an old mac user I'm sure I will get dumbstruck now and again, when migrating to the PC. I've never ever had any serious compability problems on any of my mac's, (Mac user since -86) so I'm sure I'll learn the hard way .-)

And since I'm still very fond of computers with at least a bit of style and pefer them to not be the dominatin furniture in my drawingstudio I was thinking abou this:

115644 - Shuttle SN41G2 Barebone PC Socket A - nForce2, LYD, AGP, EEE1394, USB2.0
* 113082 - AMD Athlon XP2400+ 2.0 GHz 266 MHz bus - Socket A (Thoroughbred) processor
* 111362 - Crucial PC2700 DDR-DIMM 256MB CL2.5 - Memory 184-P (för DDR-PC333MHz) (AMD OK)
* 113647 - Maxtor IDE ATA-133 80GB 7200RPM - DiamondMax Plus 9
* 119229 - LG CD-burner IDE 52x/24x/52x - Svart, Internal Retail
* 100727 - Sony Diskettstation 3,5" 1,44MB MPF-920 - Floppydisk Internal

I do realize that built in video witn nForce 2 might not be the best video solution out there, but the box looks kind of nice, has a low price (750$ US) and again it wont cost me an arm and a leg.
It does NOT support two monitors which might be a bummer...

Any comments?

[Jeff]

Well, I'll have to let someone else reply because I can't comment too intelligently on that. I've always disliked 'tiny' cases because it's so much more difficult to upgrade them. Then again my computer room sounds like an airplane from all the fan noise.... I've been trying to talk myself into a laptop but with no success yet.

The only thing that I object to on the list above is that you should get 512 MB or more of Ram. 256 is too little for Windows 2000 or XP and memory is pretty cheap now. 512 is the minimum I would consider for any kind of design/graphics box.

[Jeff]

I've never ever had any serious compatibility problems on any of my mac'sHopefully just a few days of bad luck for me and XP. Over the last three years with 2000 I haven't had any problems at all, so I was surprised that my initial XP install was so rocky. Then again the major problem was with one specific driver, and that was probably just a fluke. I probably shouldn't have even mentioned it.

[SailDesign]

Quote:
Hopefully just a few days of bad luck for me and XP. Over the last three years with 2000 I haven't had any problems at all, so I was surprised that my initial XP install was so rocky.

I knew there was a reason I was still using Win98! ;-)
Current box (home office) is an old Gateway with a Pentium 500, with a 64Meg GeForce, 512Meg of RAM, on a Dell P1110 monitor (21" 1600x1200).
Ofiice office machine is a Dell P4 1MHz box wirth simliar spec and monitor.
So far, I have little to complain about on the machinery end. They may be a little slow when rendering a 100Mb Rhino file, but they are happy to run all night if need be ;-))

Steve "Luddite" Baker

[Andrew Mason]

Erik

I can recommend the Shuttle boxes, we have a Shuttle SS51 and it has run faultlessly for the past 12 months. We use it for trade shows and product demos because it is so portable. It has proven to be a robust piece of hardware considering the large amount of travel it has been subjected to.

We run it with a high performance graphics card (a 3DLabs Wildcat 870) which has a dual monitor option, so you don't have to use the onboard graphics.

[ErikG]

thanks for the answer. Some more questions for you...

What's the best OS to run? I've run the MaxSurf Demo (and will run the real deal when I can afford it, great sw) and ProSurf on win 98 together with Rhino. What modern OS do you recommend, does it matter?
XP or 2000?

Erik

[Andrew Mason]

Definitely don't mess with anything but 2000 or XP, the rest are unreliable junk. I have personally switched my machines to XP and have had no problems, but I used 2K for a long time before that and was equally happy, so it is pretty much personal preference.

[edneu]

I would definately stick with the Intel Pentium 4 chips if you are using Autocad. I would get XP professional or Win 2000 professional. Any of these will seem a bit Luddite after your Mac OS. Get as much Ram and Video RAM as you can, Try to get some kind of Open GL Video board. Then you will be happy.

[ErikG]

What does Luddite mean? I think I know what you men but I don't know the word...

Why stick to P€'s for autocad? I have an old version lying somewhere...

Erik

[SailDesign]

A Luddite is someone who follows the thinking (well, what passed for thinking) of one Mr. Ludd, who made a practice of breaking up machinery in the Industrial Revolution on the basis that it was all the invention of the Devil.
Hence, if you don't like "progress", and prefer to do things the old fashioned way, you are a Luddite.
;-)

[duluthboats]

Steve,

I wonder what Mr. Ludd would think if he saw you sitting in front of your PC, and communicating with people half way around the world. :eek:

I have a Dell P4, XP home, 40G hard. 512 Ram, and no graphics card. I had no trouble until I installed R3. Now I have an occasional crash. I will assign the blame to myself for now. The lack of a card has really made my large models spotty when I revolve in rendered mode. Otherwise I’m not sure how much difference it makes.

Gary :D

[ErikG]

Well, since even Andrew thinks the Shuttle is ok for this I think that wil be my computer of choice. I'll ad a better graphics card when I can afford it.

When will Jeff add an automatic spellchecker to the forum you think?

I certainly need one :-)

ErikG
:D

[SailDesign]

Gry,
I hope Mr. Ludd is past caring about sh*t like that!
The lack of a good video card is a pain. My Dell has only got a 16Mb card, and that is why I prefer the slower machine (well, that and the fact that I have time for a cup of coffee or a 4-course meal now and again ;-))

[ErikG]

Well it ihas a built in Geforce4 MX, 128 MB VGA card, so it wouldn't be a total loss would it? I hope not...

Time to finish up, and go home, Tomorrow I'll sail this years last sail, on saturday she'll be up on the ground for the winter. So afterwards I'll spend even more time on "the net"...

Erik

[Jeff]

When will Jeff add an automatic spellchecker to the forum you think?If you use Internet Explorer as your browser you can use a free add-on such as IESpell from http://www.iespell.com/

I don't think too many people worry about it though. Hope you have a good sail! Of course we're always glad to have you spend more time on the forums in the cold weather too :)

[edneu]

Everyone told you about Mr. Ludd. I was trying to express that compared to the Mac you are used to the Windows interface is a bit less elegant. In my little corner of the world we use "Luddite" somewhat incorrectly to refer to our fondness for things rusty and crude, like old british motorcycles, tractors, steam engines, Atomic 4s, and large hammers.

I was taught that AUTOCAD was optimized for the Pentimum 4, or the XEON chips. It will work on any of the AMD/clone chips of similar specs however.

I agree that a video card like Open-GL card with at least 64Mb of Video Memory, will be so efficient you will never have time to do anything else, like go sailing.

Cheers

[jesseh]

Get the fastest you can afford. A computer by itself is fairly cheap, it's everything else that you need to support what you are using it for that will cost you a lot. The programs you say you will be running are math intensive.

Memory is cheap and more can be added a couple paychecks after you buy it. Same with a second and bigger harddrive.

Get the best, fastest, baddest video card you can possibly get. I can't overstate that. Most often it is the video card that is the bottleneck on percieved and actual performance. From scrolling text on the screen, to rotating models smoothly, to playing games. See what the software you will be using recomends, then get better than that. In fact, I would research this first and build a computer around it. These days there are versions within versions (agp version is a good example). The new amd64 boards support agp, but not the older versions. A notch in the agp slot makes sure of that.

LCD vs CRT?
I personally would stay away from LCD. I have worked in computer lab environments for several years now and have not had good experience with them. Last year on one workstation I went through 4 of them. In the last 5 years I have only had 3 CRTs go bad and even then they were still usable (blurry or off color) whereas the flicker and instability of the LCDs was so bad they were not usable or stopped working all together. Not only that, LCD tires your eyes faster and can be somewhat directional throwing your perception of the color off. The are more power friendly, lighter, and take up space. but to me the cool factor does not make up for either the price, reliability, or usability factors.

If you can afford it, get a second monitor, most high end video cards support two and the difference in the amount of workspace you have is amazing. I can't live without it.

I would recomend Windows XP over any other version of Windows. Windows 2k is fine, but XP is an improvement on that and is based on the nt kernel. Check what version of XP (or win2k3) you need as different versions support different limits on memory and number of processors you can use.

Jesse
Software Engineer

[Jeff]

Re: LCD vs. CRT:

What brand of LCD's are you working with?

Maybe I just got lucky, but in my limited experience with a ViewSonic LCD, I love it because it doesn't flicker, at all. It is also much easier on my eyes than my old 21" CRT or newer 17" Sony CRT because 1.) The LCD doesn't flicker (flicker I thought was a product of CRT's refresh from top to bottom at 70 or 75 or 80 Hz, whereas an LCD does not 'scan' from top to bottom at all, and 2.) my LCD is sharper and perfectly sharp across the whole monitor area. Especially now that I've changed from the analog to the digital DVI input, the LCD is noticably sharper. It's also over 3 years old now and still has no problems that I'm aware of except for one bad pixel that doesn't bother me too much. I have worked on a Dell laptop where I hated the LCD in comparison. But my desktop LCD is a world of difference from that. I do agree with the color comment though - especially yellows show as a bit warmer on my LCD than on a CRT, but I can live with it as it's so much easier on my eyes when I work with it for hours on end.

[jesseh]

Originally posted by Jeff
Re: LCD vs. CRT:

What brand of LCD's are you working with?

.

Not flicker as in scan flicker, but something in the hardware actually failing causing the monitor to flick off briefly, click, and shutter, much like a CRT trying to go into a video mode it can't support, however this was while running the standard settings from the manufacturer and without trying to change anything. I don't remember all the brands, but the last one was a viewsonic.