October 10, 2009

I’ve got 2 machines running on 7 already. I think my primary motivation was to use the HomeGroup (haha, Windows Live Writer doesn’t have HG on its dictionary.) feature. So far, I’ve tried out file and Windows Media Library sharing and it looks like its working as advertised. I’ll have to test Printer Sharing sooner or later.

My second machine’s (or my sibs’ primary PC, to be accurate) specs:

• ECS 945-PT Motherboard.
• 3.0GHz Dual-Core Pentium D 830. SpeedStep and NX Bit disabled. The forums at Tom’s Hardware equate it to a 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo, which is pretty sad considering it generates a lot of noise and heat. (And it’s only 1 point higher than my Celeron in the Windows Experience Index)
• 2GB of RAM – 1GB of cheapie DDR2-667 and 1GB of Kingston DDR2-800.
• 256MB NVIDIA 7200GS PCI-E with TurboCache (not my fault, dad bought it at a surplus store.) It’s not even a full point better than my Intel GMA950 in WEI (not that WEI is the best quantifier for these things), and Wikipedia says that the fillrate is worse compared to even our old DX8 Radeon 9250 AGP.
• 80GB of Storage. A 40GB Maxtor SATA and a 40GB Samsung SATA with bad sectors.
• Yeah, it’s a disaster.

I still don’t know if 7 is going to serve the 2nd machine better than XP had. I chose 7 because of the HomeGroup, DX11, better hardware detection and (presumably) better multi-core utilization. Right now, it doesn’t feel different, performance-wise to XP SP3. While the previous XP install bloated up pretty fast, ~6 months to be specific, I hope that 7 can do better.

The real problem at the moment is the GPU. Not only is the 7200 inadequate for even mid-end gaming (The Sims 3, Call of Duty 4, Medieval 2: Total War), it seems that its broken already. It works and it displays the desktop properly, but even with slight provocation from Windows Media Center, it seizes up and brings the whole machine down. This may be due to me trying to overclock it with RivaTuner in its XP days, but there’s not much evidence supporting that because it never seized up when it was OC’ed.

Window-shopping sucks.

I got a PCExpress price list from their Katipunan branch. Here are my candidates for the GPU replacement. With minimal research I picked out 5 at different price points (the last 2 in the clearance section.)

• Inno3d GeForce 9600 GSO with 512MB of DDR3, 256-bit @ Php3890.
• PowerColor Radeon HD4650 with 1GB of DDR2, 128-bit @ Php3190
• PowerColor Radeon HD3650 with 512MB of DDR2, 128-bit @ Php2000
• PowerColor Radeon X1550 with 256MB of DDR2, 64-bit @ Php810 (clearance)
• Gainward GeForce 6600 GT with 256MB of DDR2, 128-bit @ Php540 (clearance)

Unless a financial miracle happens I doubt I’ll be able to acquire the Top 2. I’ve never spent more than 2300 on a GPU :(

If it’s just a quick, cheap fix, I’m looking at the 6600. It’s not an exactly spectacular GPU, especially since it came from an era when Radeons from all points of the spectrum kicked the equivalently-priced GeForce rival. But at 540 Pesos, it’s almost painless spending for it. (Even ATI’s new owner AMD kicked Pentium 4 butt during those days. Even today, I consider AMD/ATI to be the leader in the low to mid-end sector, bang-for-buck-wise. Dad just keeps on buying Intel/NVIDIA without any research.)

At Php2000 the HD3650 is a good deal. Considering that at the HD3650’s price point, you only get a 7600 GS or 9400 GT GeForce. The 9’er is slower in throughput and the 7'er runs on old architecture. The only problem I can think of about the HD3650 is that its TDP of 78W looks pretty high compared to the generational equivalent HD4650’s 48 watts.