Has Anyone Looked At Apple Lately?


sam fisher posted on Sep 25 2006 at 05:44 PM said:
No, all these Dual CPU and dual core CPU's are for nothing. It's not like windows can't support upto 32 CPU's or something.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_xp

Windows XP Professional, which has additional features such as support for Windows Server domains and dual processors
 
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Shikaku posted on Sep 25 2006 at 06:54 PM said:
sam fisher posted on Sep 25 2006 at 05:44 PM said:
No, all these Dual CPU and dual core CPU's are for nothing. It's not like windows can't support upto 32 CPU's or something.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_xp

Windows XP Professional, which has additional features such as support for Windows Server domains and dual processors

Just Professional, interesting. I guess converting a pro mac would recquire $200 of software :eek:
 
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There isn't any sense in that ... you could build a machine with 2 dual-core Opteron processors on a server board with the NF4 Professional chipset, grab a few gigs of DDR or DDR2 memory, a good power supply, and a couple of GeForce 7900GT's run in SLI, along with near a terabyte of storage and a double-layer DVD burner for less than you'd pay for a much weaker machine from Apple. If you don't happen to have a dozen XP licenses lying around the house like I do, you could still fit a copy of XP Pro under that price tag. You'll have a machine to be reckoned with. There's literally no computing task it wouldn't be up for.

As for how many PCIe x16 slots it has, that's largely irrelevant. What matters is the number of lanes of PCIe connectivity and how they are divvied up. Modern high-end boards for standard PC systems have 32 lanes of connectivity for graphics alone (normally split into 2 16-lane slots in SLI or Crossfire configurations for dual videocards), and less beefy ones have 16, yielding 8 lanes per slot, (8 per card). This is also more than enough bandwidth to accomodate 2 dual-GPU cards like a pair of nVidia's ridiculously-overkill 7950GX2s. You can have all the SLOTS you want but what will a third slot net you? The ability to connect a FIFTH monitor? You can already add loads of monitors if 2 or 4 really isn't enough for you with PCIe x1 or x4 cards from companies like Matrox-- or just standard PCI graphics cards that can be had on eBay for $10 .. in packs of 5. ;) Most boards still have 2-3+ standard PCI slots. And you cannot add a third video card for 3-card SLI/Crossfire, nor a dual-GPU card for 6-GPU SLI .. there is support for it.

So tell me, what reason is there to buy that Mac ...

sam fisher posted on Sep 25 2006 at 03:44 PM said:
No, all these Dual CPU and dual core CPU's are for nothing. It's not like windows can't support upto 32 CPU's or something.
That's wrong; Windows, Linux and many other OS'es support dual-core CPUs. Windows can't even tell it's a dual-core chip, it looks like an SMP platform with 2 distinct CPUs, arbitrated by the BIOS and chipset.
 
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Epicenter posted on Sep 26 2006 at 08:24 AM said:
There isn't any sense in that ... you could build a machine with 2 dual-core Opteron processors on a server board with the NF4 Professional chipset, grab a few gigs of DDR or DDR2 memory, a good power supply, and a couple of GeForce 7900GT's run in SLI, along with near a terabyte of storage and a double-layer DVD burner for less than you'd pay for a much weaker machine from Apple. If you don't happen to have a dozen XP licenses lying around the house like I do, you could still fit a copy of XP Pro under that price tag. You'll have a machine to be reckoned with. There's literally no computing task it wouldn't be up for.

As for how many PCIe x16 slots it has, that's largely irrelevant. What matters is the number of lanes of PCIe connectivity and how they are divvied up. Modern high-end boards for standard PC systems have 32 lanes of connectivity for graphics alone (normally split into 2 16-lane slots in SLI or Crossfire configurations for dual videocards), and less beefy ones have 16, yielding 8 lanes per slot, (8 per card). This is also more than enough bandwidth to accomodate 2 dual-GPU cards like a pair of nVidia's ridiculously-overkill 7950GX2s. You can have all the SLOTS you want but what will a third slot net you? The ability to connect a FIFTH monitor? You can already add loads of monitors if 2 or 4 really isn't enough for you with PCIe x1 or x4 cards from companies like Matrox-- or just standard PCI graphics cards that can be had on eBay for $10 .. in packs of 5. ;) Most boards still have 2-3+ standard PCI slots. And you cannot add a third video card for 3-card SLI/Crossfire, nor a dual-GPU card for 6-GPU SLI .. there is support for it.

So tell me, what reason is there to buy that Mac ...

I've never looked at a server board, but my new "server" will come out to be 2.2k :lol:(without the os) :lol:

I'm happy with my $600 set up myself.
 
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^^^
Fluffyhamster: I agree, there's no reason for a box like that, not yet-- not for most users. Software isn't parallelized enough to take advantage of 2 CPUs a lot of the time, much less 4. We'll see the real advancements when the CPUs can break down 1 thread into many to run on the multiple cores to accelerate performance.

My machine has an Athlon 64 X2 4200+ with 2 cores, both overclocked from 2.2 to 2.85 GHz, a gig of RAM, 2 160GB HDDs and an 80GB one, a DVD burner, a 6600GT video card, liquid cooling, silent 120mm case fans and a fanless PSU. It's the machine of my dreams, I have difficulty getting it to work to capacity- it has too easy a time with everything I throw at it! Yet it barely cost me over $1000.

sam fisher posted on Sep 26 2006 at 11:33 AM said:
I SAID IT DOES!
With this? "No, all these Dual CPU and dual core CPU's are for nothing" ?
.... whatever.
 
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Epicenter posted on Sep 26 2006 at 01:07 PM said:
^^^
Fluffyhamster: I agree, there's no reason for a box like that, not yet-- not for most users. Software isn't parallelized enough to take advantage of 2 CPUs a lot of the time, much less 4. We'll see the real advancements when the CPUs can break down 1 thread into many to run on the multiple cores to accelerate performance.

My machine has an Athlon 64 X2 4200+ with 2 cores, both overclocked from 2.2 to 2.85 GHz, a gig of RAM, 2 160GB HDDs and an 80GB one, a DVD burner, a 6600GT video card, liquid cooling, silent 120mm case fans and a fanless PSU. It's the machine of my dreams, I have difficulty getting it to work to capacity- it has too easy a time with everything I throw at it! Yet it barely cost me over $1000.

Wow, your hdd space poops on mine(My hdd came DOA and i'm lazy so i'm using an old 13 gig!), i'm too afraid to overclock my Athlon 64 X2 3800+, and your cooling beats my standard cooling(aprevia x-draemerII(two 80mm fans)). But my graphics card wins :lol: :lol: :lol: . 7600gs 512 meg, but only 128 bit interface(but i can overclock the crap out of it). With this all adding up to $600 i can't slow it down yet!
 
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You should have used the proper sarcasm tags. </sarcasm>

sam fisher posted on Sep 26 2006 at 03:18 PM said:
Fuck off you pre-pubescent 11 year old prick!
Wow, what a mouth.

fluffyhamster posted on Sep 26 2006 at 03:33 PM said:
Wow, your hdd space poops on mine(My hdd came DOA and i'm lazy so i'm using an old 13 gig!), i'm too afraid to overclock my Athlon 64 X2 3800+, and your cooling beats my standard cooling(aprevia x-draemerII(two 80mm fans)). But my graphics card wins :lol: :lol: :lol: . 7600gs 512 meg, but only 128 bit interface(but i can overclock the crap out of it). With this all adding up to $600 i can't slow it down yet!
Just put together a gaming rig for a friend of mine ... we packed an Athlon XP 2500+ Mobile (1.8 GHz), 1024MB of DDR400, A 4, 20, and 40 GB HDD, a DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive and an Antec TrueII 380 PSU, supported by a Biostar M7NCG Ultra 400 NForce 2 board into a wooden box with handles, overclocked the CPU to 2.4 GHz, and the 6600 AGP videocard from 300 to 440 MHz GPU, the VRAM from 500 to 650 MHz, with some better cooling. Mostly built from parts we had lying around. We added some parts that raised the price to just shy of $200. Its name is "Wormwood" .. before that, we called it "Athlon 64 USD". Because that's what it cost. :)

I think I'll make a thread about it... ;)
 
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Epicenter posted on Sep 26 2006 at 05:03 PM said:
You should have used the proper sarcasm tags. </sarcasm>

sam fisher posted on Sep 26 2006 at 03:18 PM said:
Fuck off you pre-pubescent 11 year old prick!
Wow, what a mouth.

fluffyhamster posted on Sep 26 2006 at 03:33 PM said:
Wow, your hdd space poops on mine(My hdd came DOA and i'm lazy so i'm using an old 13 gig!), i'm too afraid to overclock my Athlon 64 X2 3800+, and your cooling beats my standard cooling(aprevia x-draemerII(two 80mm fans)). But my graphics card wins :lol: :lol: :lol: . 7600gs 512 meg, but only 128 bit interface(but i can overclock the crap out of it). With this all adding up to $600 i can't slow it down yet!
Just put together a gaming rig for a friend of mine ... we packed an Athlon XP 2500+ Mobile (1.8 GHz), 1024MB of DDR400, A 4, 20, and 40 GB HDD, a DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive and an Antec TrueII 380 PSU, supported by a Biostar M7NCG Ultra 400 NForce 2 board into a wooden box with handles, overclocked the CPU to 2.4 GHz, and the 6600 AGP videocard from 300 to 440 MHz GPU, the VRAM from 500 to 650 MHz, with some better cooling. Mostly built from parts we had lying around. We added some parts that raised the price to just shy of $200. Its name is "Wormwood" .. before that, we called it "Athlon 64 USD". Because that's what it cost. :)

I think I'll make a thread about it... ;)

sounds cool, the only spare parts I found lying around was a floppy drive and a 13 gig hdd.
 
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You make me feel rich with my 200GB hard disk :p

But the rest of that PC is probably better than mine. :(

EDIT: Also DVD writer...
 
Shikaku posted on Sep 27 2006 at 11:56 AM said:
Aninhumer posted on Sep 27 2006 at 11:27 AM said:
You make me feel rich with my 200GB hard disk :p

But the rest of that PC is probably better than mine. :(

EDIT: Also DVD writer...

I bought a 300 GB hard drive for $95 in december... what a deal =)

I'm thinking about getting a 250 SATA for $60

Also, Dvd Rw
 
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Epicenter posted on Sep 26 2006 at 11:03 PM said:
You should have used the proper sarcasm tags. </sarcasm>

You are joking aren't you? That post was positively dripping sarcasm.

A blind man running for a bus would have turned his head in the direction of that post and said "Fuck Me. That's a sarcastic post if ever I didn't see one!"
 
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Aninhumer posted on Sep 27 2006 at 09:27 AM said:
EDIT: Also DVD writer...
Why do people make such a big deal out of these nowadays ... you can buy a great NEC ND3540A DVD+/-RW drive with double layer support and your choice of faceplate color for $28... they're not exactly a rare or expensive commodity.
 
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Epicenter posted on Sep 28 2006 at 09:49 AM said:
Aninhumer posted on Sep 27 2006 at 09:27 AM said:
EDIT: Also DVD writer...
Why do people make such a big deal out of these nowadays ... you can buy a great NEC ND3540A DVD+/-RW drive with double layer support and your choice of faceplate color for $28... they're not exactly a rare or expensive commodity.

I almost went cheap and got an $8 normal drive :)
 
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just built my new rig (well its kind of an upgrade because i kept my old HDD and DVD writer)

AMD Athlon 4200+ X2 (AM2 version)
1gb of DDR2 533mhz ram
80gb ide HDD
lite on DVD writer
nvidia 7600GT 256mb
internal card reader
msi K9N Neo mobo
40 gb external usb hdd
NO FLOPPY DRIVE

running
WINXP (MCE)
OSX86
WINVISTA RC2
SUSE LINUX 10.1

oo btw pointless getting a SATA drive unless its SATA 2 because the speed difference between SATA and IDE is pritty minimal, also there are a few games that will use both cores quake 3 and 4 will i think far cry will as well but im not sure.

sorry for the spelling mistakes
 
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