Was wondering what people think of the i7 and the rest of the stats for this dell xps studio 9100. I try not to follow new hardware cause of the ever changing market. I may go five years sometimes before i upgrade, so i was wondering what the pro’s and cons are for a pc like this one.
Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English
Intel® Core™i7-930 processor(8MB L2 Cache, 2.80GHz)
9GB or 12GB FOR 100.00 more : Tri Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz - 6 DIMMs
23.0" Dell ST2310 Full HD Monitor with VGA cable
ATI Radeon HD5670 1GB GDDR5
1.5TB - 7200RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 1.56MB Cache
16X CD/DVD Burner + Roxio Creator 10 Premier - Ultimate Burn/Authoring
Also this is my first 64bit so what kind of problems would i have with my old sotfware. Is it true some things wont work anymore?
I have a 64bit computer and I think that most things work, are there any things in particular you want to know about? And the i7 is supposed to be real fast:)
@BlackMantis
8/16 bit software has been excluded since Vista x64, and by now most software packages run without a hitch on x64 machines. In the early day’s of x64 there were issues with a few x86 programs not functioning properly on x64 machine, but now an x64 machine is a very solid platform. You shouldn’t have any software issues. Just always make sure you get the x64 drivers for your hardware. If you accidentally install an x86 driver I believe Windows will throw a fit. Other than making sure you have 64bit drivers whenever you need to update them, you should be good to go without any issues.
I love my x64 machine, Vista Ultimate. I have had it since the dawn of Vista back in Spring 2007. Been there through it all with that horrible debacle of a launch M$ did. Clearly they had not debugged enough before releasing to the public. Very rough in those days, but now its great. Also, to clarify, yes, I did say I loved my copy of Vista Ultimate. It really is a solid computing platform now. At least I have tweaked my copy of Vista enough to make it that way
Thanks for the replies, There isn’t anything in particular, was just wondering about the rumors. I remember when everyone told me i was crazy for using Vista Premium when it first came out. I never had any problems with it though. That wasn’t my own fault lol. I’ve become very accustom to VP and i’m little worried about the jump to Windows 7 so i hope its as customizable as VP. I’m just a hobbyist slowly transitioning into an indie dev, and crave the power to do so. At any given time I’m unloading, downloading, sculpting a model, while several programs are running all at the same time anyone of the MMO’s i play could be training a pet or creating armor, and then one of my security programs will auto update as i’m listening to music on top of that lol. Sometimes it sounds like the fans will come loose and shoot through the wall.
My XPS 410
Intel duel core 6300 @ 1.86GHz per CPU
2G RAM
GeForce GTS 250 with 1G GDDR3
Has never let me down, but my card has slowed a little in massive MMO PVP battles.
In Unity if i have over a thousand rigidbody spheres rolling around or to many cloth objects it needs CPR.
I also haven’t been keeping up to date with hardware, but it may be worthwhile.
I’ve found some indepth comparisons and reviews on PcPerspective.
This article explains the basic differences between the Nehalem and Lynfield architectures.
As far as I can see the i7-920 is of the Nehalem type.
Here’s a few snapshots of the benchmarks they show in the article listed above:
They have similar comparisons for the GFX cards.
It seems to me that if you can get one with i7-870 which is a Lynfield you may be better off, but then I’m not sure myself. The performance difference would be very small - and then you’d have to see what the price difference would be.
LOL its true minus the unity thing ofc(that wasn’t meant to be part of it), its a real work horse. I never close anything i’m working on to do something on the fly, i just minimize what i’m not looking at. When training a pet on hero online listening to music using sculptris while downloading from frostwire. and if i think of something, i will google it right then and there. And then my security program will kick in and download an update on top of that. So maybe not all of those things in my prior list was going on at the same time. But it is a kick but machine. for what it has under the hood. I really push it. And some days it will be four or five movies from frostwire downloading while i’m doing a full backup to my other PC witch takes hours to do but it copies it on my PC before transfer. I never think twice if i need to upload something to my site or a media hosting site. I paid a bundle for it but its worth every penny and four years old. I have upgraded the video card a couple times but never blown one up. and i open it every month and blast dust off its mother board and fans. My video card has a built in fan as well. And i’m only pushing a 19 * 19 monitor but its a super clear screen. People are always asking me why there screen never looks so clear. Price with monitor speaker upgrades and highest grade printer dell makes with largest preview display was 2000.00 But four years ago two G’s of ram and duel core was a hot knife through butter. Now a days its the standard LOL
I have to watch it with 8GB of ram, with Unity (present scene uses 2.5+ GB), Max, Photoshop (1.46 GB) and After Effects
all open at once uses about 6.5GB of ram just static. If I want to render something in AE I usually shut down
one or more of the others so the computer doesn’t hang while trying to store stuff in memory.
@blackmantis The article I linked to is actually one that compares the i-870 with some other processor (can’t remember and must leave house soon). But it does explain the differences in architechtures between the lynfield and nehalem and also the tri channel ddr if I remember correctly.
They have some more indepth stuff on that site. May be of help.
It may be a bit messy as it’s full of info and comparisons but search for the specific models you’re interested in.
I found their GFX cards comparisons interesting as I knew very little about them.
@Don - That sounds like a massive project What’s the AE used for ? only logos and stuff?
“@Don - That sounds like a massive project What’s the AE used for ? only logos and stuff?”
Yeah, it feels massive, but that’s only because it’s just me doing everything but the scripting.
I use AE to build the environmental soundtracks, intros, animated computer screens and other 2D animations for things like power on visuals and animated pages for books and posters in the game.
