I’m slowly tossing around the idea of getting a new computer. My current one works well but it’s showing its age whenever I want to get anything new for it (it’s a Dell I bought around 2003 or so, P-4 1.8, a gig of memory, I think the graphics card is an AGP Radeon 8700? 8900?..). I’m not a big cutting edge gamer but it’s getting to the point where I need to shop the $6.99 Jewel Case rack in the software department.
Last night I went looking just to look and, man, I have no clue what this stuff is any more. Back when I last paid attention, you bought a Pentium where the higher number was better. Memory was pretty simple. Hell, even the graphics cards were somewhat intuitive. Now the processors have cryptic (to me) names and additional descriptors like Quad or Duo which make me wonder if a Quad 4 is better than a Duo 6 (made those numbers up) and all of a sudden my motherboard apparently really matters and graphics cards are like buying a whole mini computer for your computer with its own cryptically named processors and special cooling and… yeesh. Forget the notion of building a computer, I don’t even know how to buy one any more.
I figure someone out there has to be defining this stuff and what’s roughly better than what. I was unable to find that person. I’m a smart guy and understand electronics well enough, I’m just out of date because it didn’t matter to me for the past 5-6 years. What’s the best way to catch up?
That article is dated. Don’t blame you though, in PC terms an article written this morning is outdated by that afternoon (well, it’s not THAT bad, not usually at least ).
In ye olden days (5 years ago), it was enough to know the clock speed of the CPU and the video ram of your GPU.
That is no longer the case. But keeping up isn’t that difficult either. It takes an hour or so of reading the latest articles on Ars Technica, Toms’ hardware or some other tech site every once in a while. No more than you would do if you were looking to purchase any other big ticket electronic gadget really.
All you need to know right now about your computer is:
CPU’s come in dual core and quad core varieties. Essentially multiple CPU’s all bundled inside a single chip. This is good because if one core is busy rendering your porn another core can be put to work doing something else like surfing the dope and running antivirus, etc. Creating a much snappier and responsive environment. Ghz don’t matter as much, instead families and brand names tell you more about performance. The top level CPU brands now are the Phenom II for ADM and the Core i7 for intel.
Video card memory no longer means jack. Low end video cards can be had with as much as a Gigabyte of VRAM, but they’ll still struggle to run the latest games. Again families and brand names matter more. The latest entries are: the 200 series from Nvidia (240,260,280,285,295) and the HD4800’s from AMD.
So if you are a PC gamer you are looking for either an intel i7 or AMD Phenom II (latest gen) or a Core 2 or Core 2 Quad (last gen intel chip, you don’t want a last gen AMD chip.), a 260 or higher Nvidia or HD4830 or higher ATI card. The vendor should be able to hook you up with the required motherboard and RAM (and you want 4 gigs of RAM minimum).
Budget versions of the above (specially if you go with a last gen CPU) can all be had (including a case power supply, etc) for under $500. For under $1,000 you should be able to get latest gen stuff that will not only run productivity software very well but also play any game for the next few years without a problem.
Tom’s April edition of Best Graphics Cards for the Money. Note the table at the end where you can see (roughly) where your old card stacks up to the newer cards.
My personal favorite is the Ars Technica three-tier PC builder’s guide which is updated every 3-6 months. It starts out as a forum post with the community weighing in on the pros and cons, and eventually gets published as a polished and complete web article. The choice of each component is justified so you will know whether you need to keep the part, upgrade it, or ditch it altogether (depending on your goals). The other Ars forums are generally full of hardware brand fanboys, though, so it’s tough to separate “AMD suxxxx!!!1111!eleven” from actual technical advice. I recommend the (edited and finalized) buyer’s guide because, back before the guide existed, I would do dozens of hours of research and come up with a spec that I considered solid before paying a dime. Once the guide came out, I thought “oh, they’re just shilling for Brand X” and did my research anyway… and damned if I didn’t arrive at the same answer as them on two consecutive builds. Now I skip the hassle and start with the Ars build, and do research to see which parts I want to change out (usually graphics cards, cases, and fans).
As a caveat, I’ve heard that Anand from Anandtech has been suspected of taking consideration for benchmarks and good hardware reviews (esp. when his results can’t be replicated and seem to contradict several other sites’ results) so I distrust his reviews out of the gate.
By comparison, Tom’s Hardware publishes their methodology and is usually very thorough - in particular their graphics card roundup (linked above) and their CPU roundups are widely-regarded as canon. Tom’s and SilentPCReview both do rigorous onsite testing with full disclosure of any consideration (e.g. free hardware to support testing) that they receive. I would trust either site to give you a good vibe on the quality of your Power Supply (and if you buy a commodity no-name power supply you’ll get what you pay for). SilentPCReview, especially the forums, is a great place to go to talk about the comparative merits of one part over another – just realize that the posters there are fanatical about building quiet systems. If you suggest a machine that sounds like a B-52 on takeoff they’ll probably accuse you of trolling.
Oh, and whenever you see an unfamiliar technology, chipset, or part mentioned just check Wikipedia for a good overview.
In that case, you’re probably want to go with the 4770 instead. Same cost as the 4830, only with more performance, less power draw & heat. One of the first 40nm cards on the market.
Ask not what you can do for your computer–ask what your computer can do for you.
I only care about whether a computer does things.
I don’t care what the stuff inside the box is called.
So I went to a small computer shop that sells and repairs computers.
I said "I want a computer with stuff inside it that will let me:
–watch youtube videos without waiting forever,
–operate a specific professional engineering graphics program
–hear simple music files.
–I don’t play complicated video games.
etc,etc…
They put together a box with stuff inside.
It works.
And that (to quote the thread title) is “how I got up to date” on all that I need to know about new computer stuff.
I spoke to the salesman in plain English. He wrote the specs in computerese.
I was recently trying to decipher the differences between processors and found PassMark Software. They run benchmarking tests and distill the “power” of a processor down to a single number which can be used to compare apples to apples. It appears they also do the same for video cards as well.
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