I decided I needed a more powerful computer, because my single core Athlon 64 wasn't cutting it any more. I certainly couldn't afford a new one pre built so I looked about building a new one. Initially I was going to upgrade the motherboard on the current one but I have an OEM windows xp installation. I put all the parts together yesterday and crossed my fingers that everything worked out, and it worked out really well. I'm quite shocked at how easy it was to get working,

Old PC specs

AMD Athlon 64 (single core)
2gb Ram (2x 1gb PC2-4200 card)
512mb video card (now just an onboard video)
AsusTek Nosdum3 motherboard
300w power box

New PC Specs

AMD Phenomx4 (quad core)
2gb Ram (1x PC2-6200 card)
512mb video card (from old computer)
Gigabyte Motherboard
400w power box

I had to find out how much better it was then the old computer though so I put it through some tests using mudbox and GTA4 to do that. I used GTA4 because as far as pc games goes I have never seen a video game that eats as much resources as it does and that's mainly because the program is really poorly ported to the PC. It doesn't allow you to turn anything off, you have to have shadows, HDR lighting and motion blur and there's no options in or outside of the game. My old computer couldn't handle even the lowest settings of the game, however this one runs it flawlessly. If I try to increase settings it really slows it down so I guess I'm stuck with lowest of the low, Which is fine as long as I can drive bikes into cars and fling my character across the place : D. The test in mudbox was also interesting, before the Athlon 64 computer (old one) would just about run with minor lag on 100,000 verts (points that make up a 3d model) and would lake a fair amount on 350,000 verts. The new one has minor lag on 390,000 and gets fairly slow at about 1,500,000 verts but only when rotating the model or using a large brush on the model. Its still a bit low for what I would expect for 3d sculpting though but its only just enough to sculpt a 3d texture to a model.

So yeah the improvements are really noticeable which is what I wanted but there are a couple of things holding this thing back a bit. 1 is the hard disk, I didn't have the money for a new hard disk so I had to make do with a spare one I had lying around. Its capacity is 40gb and its an IDE one, about 5 years old I think so yeah its really slow and I need a better one. Ram card, Right now I have 1x2gb card in the computer that's meant to be running at 800mhz as far as I know, but is only running at 400. Weather or not that's a setting that has to be fixed in CMOS I don't know but I have a feeling it has to do with Dual Channel mode, fixing that would mean buying a new RAM card. Eventually I want to end up with about 8gb of Ram so all I need is 3 more Ram cards costing about 20 pounds each.

The old computer, stripped of its video card and DVD drive, has been relegated to an internet pc and storage of old files. the on board video card is really not that bad though.


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