Building/Upgrading a PC for TS2
Hegelian:
Well, no. But the processor you have now doesn't remain at room temperature when you run it, either. I read the article as meaning it will run within its design parameters in "room temperature" ambient temps—in other words,without a cooling apparatus like a heatsink-fan assembly, or at least without heroic cooling measures.
J. M. Pescado:
Yes, but would this 350 GHz machine require heroic cooling just to KEEP it at room temperature, or are normal measures adequate?
MaximilianPS:
maybe with 10ghz we can reduce the cooling ? ;D
btw. i'm thinkin about a laptop..
ausus, with a gefo inside, it whould be a dual core 3Ghz with 1gb ram...
mabye 1gb it's a bit low... but i'm pretty intrested in a laptop.. about 1500€ same in dollars +/-
any suggestion about that ?
Hegelian:
The issue with laptops is always the same: for what are you going to use it? Does your primary use require (or is greatly facilitated by) the mobility of a laptop? If so, then the 1000€ price premium over an eqivalent desktop is probably worth it. Otherwise, laptops are not at all a good value for money in price/performance terms.
If your primary use is for gaming and you're not going to LAN parties, a laptop is a poor choice. In order to keep weight and heat down, laptops are way underpowered compared to a desktop at the same price. You can build or buy close to a state-of-the-performance-art desktop PC for US$1500 (not including monitor), whereas the same money gets you a nice laptop near the top of the low-power-consumption mobile CPU range (i.e., Centrino and Core Duo—Intel really is the leader in this market segment), but even the best of these don't top 2.2 GHz. Now, because of performance optimizations and massive L2 caches, these CPUs based on the P6 architecture (Pentium Pro) rather than the high-speed, high-wattage P7 "NetBurst" architecture (Pentium 4) can hold their own with desktop CPUs up to around 2.8~3.0 GHz in many applications, but probably not with apps that benefit from sheer CPU speed (like TS2). BTW, Intel's imminent Core 2 dual-core CPUs are based on the P6 architecture, which goes some way in explaining how they can outperform P4-based CPUs that run at higher clock frequencies.
Now, you can buy a laptop that (with the exception of its LCD display) can match an upper-end desktop PC in gaming performance, but you're going to spend in excess of US$3000 and end up with a heavy (5.5+ kg), hot (you've got a desktop CPU crammed into a tight space), loud (the tiny CPU fan will be buzzing all the time), and upgrade-limited machine. Some of these run so hot you can't actually use them as laptops. As for the display, despite advances in LCD technology, games and other primarily visual applications (photo-editing is one) still look much better on a CRT. Of course, you can probably attach a CRT to the laptop, but then you've lost most of the advantage of having one. Oh—don't forget that the keyboards on laptops can be difficult to type on and are mediocre at best (and you don't get a separate numeric keypad); the keyboards on business models tend to be quite a bit better than those on "consumer" models. OTOH, for US$3000 you can build or buy a killer desktop rig that will last you for several years before performance becomes an issue.
I'm not saying don't buy the laptop. I have a company-paid laptop myself because I work from home, and with a properly-secured wireless node on my network, the mobility is quite nice. But I'm writing this on my desktop, both because the display is much better (a larger LCD; I also have an inexpensive CRT attached for games and Photoshop), and because the relatively inexpensive IBM keyboard is much easier to type on than the (relatively good) keyboard on the laptop. What I am saying is evaluate—objectively—your needs before spending the extra €€ for a laptop you don't really need. In another month, Intel's very interesting next-generation CPUs will ship at what are reported to be very competetive prices. My personal opinion is that this is a bad time to be buying a new PC; wait a month and see what's available once the Core 2 processors ship and AMD slashes prices on its CPUs. ;D
FWIW, ASUS and other mid-range manufacturers source ther laptops from just a handful of Taiwanese OEM builders, so unless you're buying a Dell, HP, or IBM (Lenovo), they're all pretty much the same. I don't know that there's much to choose between the integrated graphics from nVidia and ATI, although the nVidia laptop display controllers probably suffer from the same driver issues as do its desktop products and from what I've read in various places, ATI still offers superior image quality. Regardless, whatever you get, be sure it has at least a 5400-RPM hard drive (instead of 4200 RPM); 7200 RPM is better but you'll pay for it.
MaximilianPS:
indeed my friend...
this is a sort of .."to buy or not to buy ...?"
ehe.. i wish a powerfull laptop 'cause i've 2 pc (@home / @work)
i'm my boss ... i've an internet point but "my job" is also to model and do render for some architect...
i wish to buy a laptop just to play with my sims...on this way i'll stop to have 2 sims installed (@home @work)
and also i will test / install my objec just on the laptop and all "source" of the objects, like texture and meses will be in the laptop, that i'll use to "sinc." the @work pc with the @home pc...
i hope that will be clear (isn't easy to explane it with my eglish lol)
the problem of the laptop could be the ram.. @home pc have 2gigs..
wile @work pc is a Dell Dual Xeon 2Ghz with 1GB ram (Rimm @ 600Mhz) with a quadroFx 1100 (128megs)
that pc is the one that i use to made 3d model/meshes and render too.
i've seen some alienware laptop that could be intresting but maybe a bit expensive ^^
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