Time To Upgrade
I think it might be finally time to upgrade my windows box. Its main uses for me are a) Photoshop and image editing/cataloging/organizing and b) gaming, gaming and more gaming. Oh, and it runs my accounting software. Of those three applications, two of them are hardware intensive. I realized today that my current hardware is pretty old.... not as old as I thought originally, looking back it's only three years, however it's been a pretty busy three years. My single 2Ghz CPU machine doesn't know anything about "dual core" or "PCI-X", SATA.... heck, the best bang-for-buck hard drive at the time was 120G. Talking to some people today and found that the guy who has always shunned me for my upgrade lust (I'm talking to you Dana :) has a better machine than me! What's going on in this world! So anyway, I ordered myself a new system. I haven't been keeping up on hardware lately, so there are many many words on the quote that I don't understand, but the guy who spec'd it all out says it's a kick ass system. P4 dual core something or other, (my first foray into the Intel Pentium market since.... wow, the P2 era?), nVidia something or other (apparently a good gaming card but not the insane one that's got more cpu/ram/cost than the rest of your system) and other goodies. For people who have bought a computer in the last year or two probably old hat. Still, I'm happy and excited. Wonder if the hardware is all "Vista-Ready"?
What was the point of all of this? Oh right. After bitching about Battlefield 2142 and it's built in adware, I played Battlefield 2 again, and realized that the improvements in the BF2142 code were enough to have me completely annoyed with BF2, so I went and got it. No ads yet, lots of fun.... at least until I get into a small area with lots of people, at which point my computer throws up it's arms and screams for mercy. Same thing happens with Flight Simulator X, which screams any time I turn up the detail so that the ground is more than a muddy rendition with a box or two on it.
Update: Dana dug up the CPU specs and a PDF chart and a blog post on how to figure out if your chip is 64 bit compatible (which I had to rush around a bit to find out!).
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Alan,
If you haven't yet bought the system, let me make one recommendation. Buy a x64 box. If you are shelling out the dough, its very little more to get the upgrade capability now. You can still install 32bit XP/Vista until the software catches up, but at least you will have the base when you are ready. Then you can move to 64bit and not fret about the mobo/cpu issue.
Just a thought.
Thanks Dana. Looking at the Intel page at http://indigo.intel.com/compare_cpu/default.aspx?familyID=1&culture=en-US it looks like the E6600 is listed has EMT64
Actually, it's almost impossible to get anything but a 64 bit CPU. The core 2 duo line is all 64 bit, and I'm pretty sure all the dual core P4's are 64bit as well (most of the single core are 64bit too now, except for Celerons) All the AMD stuff, except some of the Semprons, are 64 bit.
P.S. I love Firefox 2.0's spell checking feature for text entry boxes like this one. It make me look like I can spell.