[rescue] Seeking opinions: change my desktop machine?

[John Floren]

At Wed, 24 Feb 2010 21:25:03 -0500,
Lionel Peterson wrote:
> 
> On Feb 24, 2010, at 1:14 PM, John Floren <slawmaster at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Right now, my desktop is a 1.8 GHz AMD with 512 MB of RAM. It's a dog,
> > even running Linux. I just rescued a 2x1.2Ghz AMD system; should I
> > take the RAM, hard drive, and video card out of my desktop and stick
> > them in the new machine, making that my new desktop box? I'm  
> > wondering what your opinions are on the tradeoff, i.e. 1.8 GHz vs. 2  
> > 1.2 GHz processors.
> 
> I'd lean towards the dual processor box, as it can accomodate two  
> execution threads at one time, and modern (current) OS are always  
> wanting to do more than one thing at a time.
> 
> More RAM would absolutely help, the more the merrier IMHO, but I take  
> it you are trying to upgrade with zero out-of-pocket expense. If you  
> were closer I'd open my spare parts bin to you, but I'm guessing you  
> are not in the USA...
> 

RAM is dirt-cheap these days, and considering that my motherboard is
probably too old to take the latest DRAM-goodness I could probably get
a few gigs pretty cheap. But yes, as you say, I'm trying to avoid much
in the way of out-of-pocket expenses, since I'll probably buy myself a
new computer in under a year anyway... I just bought a netbook so I'm
not looking to buy more computer stuff right yet.

I am indeed in the USA, in New York state in fact. I'll probably be
able to scrounge up at least another 512 MB without trouble; I was
recently given a dual P3 box with a gig of RAM, and Plan 9 definitely
won't need that much, so I'll look in to grabbing about half of
that. Now, if you just have RAM coming out of your *ears* I wouldn't
say no :)


> If you could spend even a little money you could really increase your  
> speed... 1.2 GHz even times two isn't much these days when running  
> current OSes...
> 
> At $WORK we use 2.8 GHz P4 systems, most with 2 Gig of RAM running XP  
> Pro and they are fine, but our Core 2 Duos or even just hyperthreading  
> P4s make a huge difference. ($WORK is a K-12 public school district)
> 
> Lionel

Even my little netbook feels pretty zippy, with a dual-core 1.6 GHz
and a gig of RAM. I don't even know how much of the feel of speed
these days comes from the actual MHz rating; seems like having at
least two cores around and a nice chunk of RAM is most important.

The way I figure it, the longer I hold out on my old machines, the
more amazed I'm going to be when I can afford to drop some real money,
maybe get myself one of those AMD 12-core chips.



John