Finally had enough

Mike Jackson

Mike Jackson

Billy Brownnose
Messages
1,863
Name
Mike
Edit My Images
Yes
of my steam driven PC. It keeps chucking up all sorts of errors and overheats if it's left on for too long. I've stripped it down and cleaned it out on a few occasions but that hasn't helped. Considering I've been on the same machine for over 5 years now I've taken the plunge and ordered a new machine. I've not gone over to the dark side though it's another PC.

It's a Dell with Intel® Core™ i5 Processor 760 (2.80GHz, 8MB), Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64bit - English, 8192MB Dual Channel DDR3 [4x2048] Memory, 1.5TB (7200rpm) SATA Hard Drive, ATI Radeon™ HD 5450 1GB DDR3 graphics.

Not entirely sure how much faster it will be than my current setup (AMD 2800+ with 3GB of RAM) but I'm hoping it speeds up my raw processing. At the moment I have to leave the conversion over night if there are more than about ten files to convert.

Prepare for loads of questions when I start to try and migrate all the settings over when the new machine arrives.
 
It'll be a lot faster than your old machine, you'll be amazed what difference it'll make ;)

RAM is a possibly a little overkill, personally I would have probably stuck at 4GB, and saved some cash, but that's up to you :)

I'm sure someone will be able to help if you have any problems with the setup.

Also, if you don't mind, could I ask how much you paid for this? (fine if you don't want to discuss it)

And well done for keeping with the PC :D
 
RCAnderson said:
It'll be a lot faster than your old machine, you'll be amazed what difference it'll make ;)

RAM is a possibly a little overkill, personally I would have probably stuck at 4GB, and saved some cash, but that's up to you :)

I'm sure someone will be able to help if you have any problems with the setup.

Also, if you don't mind, could I ask how much you paid for this? (fine if you don't want to discuss it)

And well done for keeping with the PC :D
Click to expand...

Comes in just over a grand including MS office professional, Adobe acrobat 9, and Elements 8. The extra cost for the software was less than the cost for an upgrade and I figured that it was probably time to move on from office 2003. I don't use access or Outlook but it was cheaper to go for professional to get the latest publisher as I use it a fair bit. I also went for 3 years next day home service which was on offer (3 years for the price of 2).

I've always tended to go over the top with RAM since I improved the performance of my first PC by doubling the amount of RAM from 8Mb to 16Mb.

It's amazing how things move on. The first proper PC I used had an intel 486 chip and a 250Mb hard drive, we couldn't afford the option of a CD drive so everything was loaded by floppy. I think I've still got the Windows 3.1 flopps kicking about somewheer.

My first one at home was a real scorcher, it had a Pentium 80 and ran Windows 98.

Makes you think
 
That actually sounds like a fairly good deal, either Dell have stopped charging stupid amounts, or you've managed to find yourself the one system that's well priced. Although that might me mostly to do with the software...

Either way, you shouldn't be disappointed with it at all, when do you expect it to arrive?

My first PC wasn't that long ago (relatively speaking) (with only being 19), it was a P3, 256MB RAM, with a 40GB HDD, with Windows 98 installed, it takes me back :lol: I still actually use the DVD drive from that machine (although as a secondary), but that's all that's left worth using...
 
The only thing that lets it down is the graphics card, although thats still going to be faster than anything you could have had 5 years ago. That card will be perfectly adequate for everything apart from gaming though!
 
Gazza_DJ said:
The only thing that lets it down is the graphics card, although thats still going to be faster than anything you could have had 5 years ago. That card will be perfectly adequate for everything apart from gaming though!
Click to expand...

Yea, I was thinking that too, although from the sounds of the OP, he's not going to be doing much (if any) gaming on it, so shouldn't matter :D
 
RCAnderson said:
Yea, I was thinking that too, although from the sounds of the OP, he's not going to be doing much (if any) gaming on it, so shouldn't matter :D
Click to expand...

I do quite a lot of gaming, scrabble, solitaire, etc. :lol:

If I want to play games I use the Wii although I don't use that very often. It gets used more for BBC i player than gaming.

Main use will be image processing and a bit of desktop publishing apart from the vital use of surfing TP.
 
RCAnderson said:
RAM is a possibly a little overkill,
Click to expand...
Seriously!!!!!!!!!

Im running with 12 GB, i doubled from 4 to 8 and the increase in general performance was massive, then i stuck in another 4GB and things have also improved, i would say by about 10-15% more, certainally enough to warrant paying the extra £50 for the extra 4GB

OP is working with RAW files so any RAM will be a massive boost
 
Gary Coyle said:
i doubled from 4 to 8 and the increase in general performance was massive,
Click to expand...
:agree: Windows 7 with a number of programs that use a lot of memory (e.g. PS and LR at the same time dealing with 21Mpix files) running can get a bit ragged with only 4G. 8G just gives it the breathing space to have more than a couple of large programs open at any one time.

I do tend to be a heavy multitasker though. I'm using 3.6G of memory at the moment and PS and LR aren't even open....
 
It's finally come, 6 days after the courier said it would be delivered. All the settings (so far) have transferred across from the old machine and it's flying. Still got some software left to install but it's looking good so far.
 
Much to my surprise my broadband speed has increased as well. It's gone up from just under 6 mbits to around 9.5. I didn't realise a PC could throttle the speed that much.
 
Mike Jackson said:
Much to my surprise my broadband speed has increased as well. It's gone up from just under 6 mbits to around 9.5. I didn't realise a PC could throttle the speed that much.
Click to expand...

Hmmm interesting, as you would be right, it can't, not in terms of reported speed, that said you should always check the d/load speed at the router interface rather than pc to see what you are really connecting at.

If interested, open a command prompt, type 'ipconfig', note the number of the default gateway, enter that in internet explorer rather than a web address, at the (usual, some eg bt 2wires just let you in then prompt if you want to change a setting) prompt the user is normally admin and password either blank or admin or password or the serial number on bottom of router, whichever it is should be in the manul it came with.
Dig around for the adsl page with the connection details, far more reliable than windows reporting and a good thing to do if considering paying for a faster connect, in case you already pay for one faster than you can actually get, e.g. it may show you only connect at say 4 mb so no point paying to go higher than the usual standard 8 meg etc.
 
It's probably not worth bothering at the moment as I'm on an up to 8 mbit service so I'm getting better service than I'm paying for. Probably because the exchange is only 1/4 mile away.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top