recommendation for dev system
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- nForce3 motherboard that supports the 939-pin Athlon64 (about $150) - comes with sound/LAN/video - Athlon64 3000/939 (only 149!) If you already have DDR memory, you can use it in this system. There's absolutely no reason not to go to a 64-bit cpu. I would avoid the 754-pin Amd64 stuff because a) it's at the end of it's life-cycle, b) a 939-pin chip of comparable speed is the same price, and c) the 939-pin chips make less heat and use less power than the 754's. If you want memory, a 1-gb stick of name-brand DDR400 (PC3200) goes for about $280, but you can use lower-speed memory if money is tight. I use two drives in all of my systems. A small one for the boot drive, and a larger one for data. That way, if I have to wipe the boot drive and start over, all I've really lost is the OS. ------- sig starts "I've heard some drivers saying, 'We're going too fast here...'. If you're not here to race, go the hell home - don't come here and grumble about going too fast. Why don't you tie a kerosene rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt "...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001
John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: I use two drives in all of my systems. A small one for the boot drive, and a larger one for data. That way, if I have to wipe the boot drive and start over, all I've really lost is the OS Very good point .. but you can accomplish the same thing via 2 partitions on a single drive. So if money is an issue this reason alone may not be enough to justify the extra money.
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Trollslayer wrote: I doubt two hard drives make that much difference, better get one drive with an 8MB internal buffer. Depends ;) I have 2 WD drives with 8MB buffer, and they are running in RAID 0. It makes a fairly big difference :) - Anders Bill's Bar
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Anders Molin wrote: I have 2 WD drives with 8MB buffer, and they are running in RAID 0. It makes a fairly big difference I agree. I know it is application dependant, but if you need anything to write fast, you need RAID 0. There was a review somewhere on the net for when RAID 0 no longer gave you a read-benefit and I think it was just past 2 drives (2 drives gave good benefit, but after 2, benefits were much smaller). I don't recall who did that assessment though. I have Raid0 because of our other group who does digital streaming video, and they use constant highspeed read-write, and always use Raid0. I will have to ask on their improvements. My computers are duplicates of theirs, thus many Raid0 with a high-end graphics card. I do high speed reading of digital terrain, paged from disks, and I notice the performance hit on any single drive system, even high speed drives. _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: I use two drives in all of my systems. A small one for the boot drive, and a larger one for data. That way, if I have to wipe the boot drive and start over, all I've really lost is the OS Very good point .. but you can accomplish the same thing via 2 partitions on a single drive. So if money is an issue this reason alone may not be enough to justify the extra money.
David Patrick wrote: Very good point .. but you can accomplish the same thing via 2 partitions on a single drive. So if money is an issue this reason alone may not be enough to justify the extra money. true, but multiple partitions means quick-seeks from one end of the disk to the other, reduces performance, and increases disk failure (though not super significantly on the latter). I still prefer two drives on different channels for full speed access to each drive. _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
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What would you recommend now for a midrange development system? I'm currently looking at a P4 system for €440 (no peripherals). Processor - P4 worth it? What is an "AMD Sempron"?? RAM - 512MB seems standard now. Would you recommend 1G? (have it at work, is a charm of course) HDD - do two drives still improve performance notably? is SATA worth the additional price?
we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is Vonnegut jr.
boost your code || Fold With Us! || sighist | doxygenI am also looking for a new system. My setup will include 1 giga of memory, AMD 64, 128 MB radeon(?) One harddisk is enough on a dev system. More important is to install two XP's on your system(if you have company licence, of course). One on C and one on D. It is a life-saver when things go wrong and perfect for doing backups by copying the whole partition to another harddisk. (€500 no peripherals) jhaga --------------------------------- Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new. Henry David Thoreau, "Walden", 1854
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: I use two drives in all of my systems. A small one for the boot drive, and a larger one for data. That way, if I have to wipe the boot drive and start over, all I've really lost is the OS Very good point .. but you can accomplish the same thing via 2 partitions on a single drive. So if money is an issue this reason alone may not be enough to justify the extra money.
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On the memory; I'm running SQL Server, IIS and VS.NET on my laptop. When I first got it it had 512mb and was workable though not fantastic, certainly less than I expected from a P4 3.2Ghz. I then received the other 512mb stick and holy smokes, Batman! It makes a big difference. So get at least 1Gig. regards, Paul Watson South Africa Michael Dunn wrote: "except the sod who voted this a 1, NO SOUP FOR YOU" Crikey! ain't life grand?
Paul Watson wrote: So get at least 1Gig. :(( Regards, Brian Dela :-) Now Bloging![^]
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I am also looking for a new system. My setup will include 1 giga of memory, AMD 64, 128 MB radeon(?) One harddisk is enough on a dev system. More important is to install two XP's on your system(if you have company licence, of course). One on C and one on D. It is a life-saver when things go wrong and perfect for doing backups by copying the whole partition to another harddisk. (€500 no peripherals) jhaga --------------------------------- Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new. Henry David Thoreau, "Walden", 1854
I use Ghost to backup my os drive. ------- sig starts "I've heard some drivers saying, 'We're going too fast here...'. If you're not here to race, go the hell home - don't come here and grumble about going too fast. Why don't you tie a kerosene rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt "...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001
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I use Ghost to backup my os drive. ------- sig starts "I've heard some drivers saying, 'We're going too fast here...'. If you're not here to race, go the hell home - don't come here and grumble about going too fast. Why don't you tie a kerosene rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt "...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001
I still think booting to another drive and copying is faster. Of course last time I did it, I was taken down by Mslaugh(alias Blaster) in ten seconds flat. :) jhaga --------------------------------- Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new. Henry David Thoreau, "Walden", 1854
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What would you recommend now for a midrange development system? I'm currently looking at a P4 system for €440 (no peripherals). Processor - P4 worth it? What is an "AMD Sempron"?? RAM - 512MB seems standard now. Would you recommend 1G? (have it at work, is a charm of course) HDD - do two drives still improve performance notably? is SATA worth the additional price?
we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is Vonnegut jr.
boost your code || Fold With Us! || sighist | doxygenThe Sempron is the new Duron (ie: the lower-end AMD processor). Go for the Athlon64, Socket939. I use 1G, which is very nice as AutoCAD is a memory hog. No need for 2 drives, but "more is better", and SATA is nice, but you don't *need* it. I wish I could get a new system like that for 440euros. The kindest thing you can do for a stupid person, and for the gene pool, is to let him expire of his own dumb choices. [Roger Wright on stupid people] We're like private member functions [John Theal on R&D] We're figuring out the parent thing as we go though. Kinda like setting up Linux for the first time ya' know... [Nitron]
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What would you recommend now for a midrange development system? I'm currently looking at a P4 system for €440 (no peripherals). Processor - P4 worth it? What is an "AMD Sempron"?? RAM - 512MB seems standard now. Would you recommend 1G? (have it at work, is a charm of course) HDD - do two drives still improve performance notably? is SATA worth the additional price?
we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is Vonnegut jr.
boost your code || Fold With Us! || sighist | doxygenLike others have posted, gobs of memory will speed up your system more then anything else these days, so don't skimp. Personally, I'm a little paranoid about drive failures so I try to do raid 1 whenever I can. SATA is just much nicer to work with so do that if you can.
I can imagine the sinking feeling one would have after ordering my book, only to find a laughably ridiculous theory with demented logic once the book arrives - Mark McCutcheon
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Like others have posted, gobs of memory will speed up your system more then anything else these days, so don't skimp. Personally, I'm a little paranoid about drive failures so I try to do raid 1 whenever I can. SATA is just much nicer to work with so do that if you can.
I can imagine the sinking feeling one would have after ordering my book, only to find a laughably ridiculous theory with demented logic once the book arrives - Mark McCutcheon
I'll have a shop assemble the box, so all I care about is performance :)
we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is Vonnegut jr.
boost your code || Fold With Us! || sighist | doxygen -
What would you recommend now for a midrange development system? I'm currently looking at a P4 system for €440 (no peripherals). Processor - P4 worth it? What is an "AMD Sempron"?? RAM - 512MB seems standard now. Would you recommend 1G? (have it at work, is a charm of course) HDD - do two drives still improve performance notably? is SATA worth the additional price?
we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is Vonnegut jr.
boost your code || Fold With Us! || sighist | doxygenI'm actually one stick of memory away from finishing my second eBay PC. Here's what I was able to put together buying parts only from eBay: 3.0 p4 w/HT prescott core w/heatsink/fan - $163 - New 200GB Sata HD - $90 - New GeForce FX 5700 Ultra 128mb - $130 Generic case w/500w Power Supply - $50 - New ECS 865pe-a MB/built in sound/network/6usb/800Mhz FSB - $73 - New Sub Total - $506 I plan on picking up 2 512mb sticks of pc3200 next week for about $130 Grand Total - $636USD As for the two drive idea, IMO, that's the way to go. In my first eBay PC (celron 555mhz/256ram) I bought a 40gb drive to use for my data, and used an UBER old 6gb drive I had laying around for my OS, SQL, IIS. Having 2 needles doing the work for you is where you see the benefit. Partitioning one physical drive does you no good since you still only have one needle on the disk accessing data. That, and i was able to go from win adv server 2k to a fresh install of 2k3 w/o loosing any data at all. Just make sure to redirect your My documents folder to your second drive :-D Levi Rosol http://www.TwoRiversMarketing.com
