How old is your PC?

[alegator]

Mine is 5 years old, WnXP Pro, P4 3.06Ghz,2Gb RAM and I'm not in a rush to change it. What about yours?

[SquirrelDip]

I had a 3Ghz P4 (AGP) but when Intel released the Core 2 Duo I figured it was a worthy upgrade.

E6600 Core 2 Duo about a year old...

[budz]

I still have my 3.00ghz P4 processor but the ASUS P4P800SE motherboard died on me so I bought a cheap BIOSTAR P4 mobo to keep it going. I'm not willing to give up that NORTHWOOD P4 3.00ghz processor just yet! That computer is only used to surf the internet & emailing. No video editing on it since I built a new computer with a Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 a year ago & earlier this year I bought a Intel Allendale E2160 for another computer system.

[alegator]

Was it a "wow" effect when you changed from the P4 Northwood to the Core 2 Duo?

[JimmyJoeBob]

It was for me. I had a 3G Pentium with a 1G ram.

Moved up to a Core 2 Duo E6600 with 4G ram and my DVD-Rebuilder times for encoding went from 300mins down to 65min.

Also built a AMD X2 6000+ duel core with 2G ram and rebuild times were just about on par with the Core 2 Duo.

If I could only afford a Quad core now.

[alegator]

Was it also a wow effect for tasks other than video encoding?

[JimmyJoeBob]

Not so much as a "wow" as it seemed faster in most cases because it was a new install and fresh. The encoding was the baseline I was after anyway.

[alegator]

I plan to upgrade by mid 2008. If all goes well, Nehalem octo core should be powerful enough to wow me on the upgrade!

[gadgetguy]

Was it also a wow effect for tasks other than video encoding?

There are tasks other than video encoding?

[stiltman]

I have an old Dell Dimension 4200 (refurbished) that's about 5 - 6 years old. It started out with 1.6ghz P4 and 256mb RAM. Now it has a P2.6 and 512mb RAM

I just built a new Quad core Q6600 system about 2 months ago.

The new system is just for picture/video editing.

[alegator]

Was it also a wow effect for tasks other than video encoding?

There are tasks other than video encoding?

Well I was referring to simulation/math software, gaming, and yes...opening Notepad!

[yoda313]

I have an xp emachine that is almost four years old now - I remember posting abou it on off topic the day I bought it

My vista pc is less than a year old. I bought the vista pc in May I think....

It was a 1gig ram with an 80gb harddrive. I have since upgraded to 2gig ram and an extra 500gb harddrive (just bought Saturday). I also got a firewire card.

[Dv8ted2]

I have a computer that is roughly three years old, and I have a computer that was manufactured this year.

[SquirrelDip]

@Yoda:
http://dotnet.org.za/codingsanity/archive/2007/12/14/review-windows-xp.aspx

[budz]

Was it a "wow" effect when you changed from the P4 Northwood to the Core 2 Duo?

DVDRebuilder Pro takes much less time to process with the Intel E6400 Core2duo processor when comparing a P4 3.00ghz Northwood. I just successfully overclocked my Intel E2160 to 3.00ghz with some new Crucial Ballistic pc6400 ram & using the stock Intel heatsink fan. Cpu temp 35c!

[rallynavvie]

My DH800 workstation with the dual 3.06 Xeons is approaching 5 years old. It's having reboot issues now which I'm trying to narrow down but it will pressure me into getting a new rig sooner than I had wanted. I'll be building around the new Penryn-based Xeons for 8 cores of processing goodness. My F@H scores will start accumulating at ridiculous rates

My DN800 is still running as an HTPC at my cabin for 3 years. Even my first SMP rig, the Tyan Tiger, is still operating as a storage array on the rack above the DN800. I'm hoping I can figure out what's wrong with the DH800 and add that to the rack when I retire it for the dual-quad.

[yoda313]

@ squirreldip - :P :P :P Don't knock it till you try it My vista pc will be my htpc. I will be buying a wireless mouse/keyboard set this weekend and will finally put it in place. I will also be using some y splitters to send out the 5.1 from my sb audigy to my multi channel input on my sony amp. THat way I won't need to use my sb live usb adapter from my xp machine - that has a fiberoptic out but even with my 3 way fiberoptic switcher I'm out of room for fiber optics.

[Super Warrior]

Mine is 5 years old, WnXP Pro, P4 3.06Ghz,2Gb RAM and I'm not in a rush to change it. What about yours?

My only comp is a laptop. Dell Vostro 1000, bought early this year.

Laptops really are the FUTURE of computers, they perform just as good, take up very little space, easy to move around, and are much easier to work with and upgrade. In recent times they are pretty affordable too.

Desktops are such a pain in the ass to work with, take up an assload of room space, and difficult to sell because towers are so heavy it drives shipping costs through the roof.

[lordsmurf]

My main system was built in summer 2001, a Compaq built to order (BTO). But the only thing original still left is the motherboard and the case (not the insides, just the metal/plastic shell). The CPU, RAM, video card, soundcard, hard drives, DVD burners, USB card, power supply, cooling system, etc ... everything ... has been upgraded as upgrades were needed and/or available (newly created items). In the past 12 months alone I've swapped the ATI AIW card, swapped the USB2 card for a bigger one, updated to XP Pro SP2, and added a pair of 500GB USB2 drives. Many upgrades are maxed (1GB RDRAM, Intel P4 Northwood 2.8Ghz 400FSB CPU, all PCI card slots full, etc). It does everything I need. There's nothing "obsolete" about it. It's also tweaked for my exact needs. It runs faster than newer computers full of games, downloads and crap. When I have a bottleneck, it's generally the 7200rpm drives, but there's not much to be done about it (and it's still quite fast).

If for some reason I grow impatient with encoding time, I use my Core Duo laptop, which is a bit faster, especially with filtered encodes (CPU intensive).

[alegator]

Super[/url] Warrior]

Mine is 5 years old, WnXP Pro, P4 3.06Ghz,2Gb RAM and I'm not in a rush to change it. What about yours?

My only comp is a laptop. Dell Vostro 1000, bought early this year.

Laptops really are the FUTURE of computers, they perform just as good, take up very little space, easy to move around, and are much easier to work with and upgrade. In recent times they are pretty affordable too.

Desktops are such a pain in the ass to work with, take up an assload of room space, and difficult to sell because towers are so heavy it drives shipping costs through the roof.

Laptops can't be uprgaded as PC's. You can't upgrade the monitor, the mobo or sound card/videocard generally. And if you decide to do so, you end up with external hardware (external monitors, USB sound gadgets/speakers, etc) that makes the laptop no longer portable. Having said this, I think that laptops and PC's are not mutually exclusive but rather complement each other.
Speaking about the future of laptops, I still own a 1984 HP-110 laptop that is perfectly working, with an 8086 CMOS CPU, a whopping 272kb of RAM and complete with external printer and hard drive.Its acid lead batteries are still working. In 1984 this laptop was $5000 which today would be $10000. More details here: http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=445

[Super Warrior]

Laptops can't be uprgaded as PC's. You can't upgrade the monitor, the mobo or sound card/videocard generally. And if you decide to do so, you end up with external hardware (external monitors, USB sound gadgets/speakers, etc) that makes the laptop no longer portable. Having said this, I think that laptops and PC's are not mutually exclusive but rather complement each other.
Speaking about the future of laptops, I still own a 1984 HP-110 laptop that is perfectly working, with an 8086 CMOS CPU, a whopping 272kb of RAM and complete with external printer and hard drive.Its acid lead batteries are still working. In 1984 this laptop was $5000 which today would be $10000. More details here: http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=445

On my laptop i can fix/upgrade the: CPU, Ram, HDD, Disc drive, keyboard, touchpad, and monitor. Removing & replacing the LCD monitor, at least on a Dell, is not too bad from what i've seen.

Also the motherboard, which would be a major pain in the ass, but it could be done. No reason to do so unless the Mobo dies though.

As for the video card & sound card, those are probably integrated in the board but i don't need to upgrade those as my system is plenty powerful enough for my basic computing needs.

[pchan]

Was it a "wow" effect when you changed from the P4 Northwood to the Core 2 Duo?

DVDRebuilder Pro takes much less time to process with the Intel E6400 Core2duo processor when comparing a P4 3.00ghz Northwood. I just successfully overclocked my Intel E2160 to 3.00ghz with some new Crucial Ballistic pc6400 ram & using the stock Intel heatsink fan. Cpu temp 35c!

35 degree C

Budz... did mount a chiller over the cpu ?

[Xylob the Destroyer]

all 4 are in the 5-6 year range now....
3 are still doing just fine -- running XP with no problems and kicking ass.
I'd like to get a better video card for the HTPC, but it's getting nigh-on impossible to find AGP cards.
May have build a new HTPC in the next year or two!

The 4th is a p.o.s. Dell I got from a co-worker who had thrown it away. I got all the pics of his family off the HD for him, wiped it, and cleaned it out (NEVER seen so much dirt inside a PC before!!!!).
Installed Win2K on it and it makes a decent jukebox/server.