OOT: Thread Overflow Depository (AKA: The Hijack T

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Imperator Fyron said:
Newer Pentium IVs have it built in...

New CPU will probably cost around 300 to 400 dollars US, unless you want the very newest... which might run up to 600 or so. Then, you have to get a new motherboard, which will be another 130 to 200, depending on what you get...

Still says something about ibm that it took them that long to get around to it.

[Fyron]

IBM does not make Pentiums. That would be Intel. So technically, IBM never got around to it.

Intel had essentially no real competition during most of the 90s. It has not been until the past few years when AMD came about that they have needed to really innovate. They had no reason to develop such technologies until recently, really.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Imperator Fyron said:
IBM does not make Pentiums. That would be Intel. So technically, IBM never got around to it.

Intel had essentially no real competition during most of the 90s. It has not been until the past few years when AMD came about that they have needed to really innovate. They had no reason to develop such technologies until recently, really.

Can I get a quick rundown on what getting another 2ghz cpu in there would entail? How much of a speed boost would it provide, please?

This is mostly just curiosity, since I don't have the money, so don't strain yourself.

[Suicide Junkie]

A new motherboard, and rebuilding your OS probably.

The speed improvement will max out at about +80%, for bigtime number crunching.
Anything that uses the disk will be just as crappy as before, and memory-intensive work will hold you back too.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Suicide Junkie said:
A new motherboard, and rebuilding your OS probably.

The speed improvement will max out at about +80%, for bigtime number crunching.
Anything that uses the disk will be just as crappy as before, and memory-intensive work will hold you back too.

Is it worth it for games? Doesn't sound like it. Thanks.
Well, games don't typically hit the disk, or they'd be unplayable on any machine.

Games do quite a bit of number crunching, to calculate vectors for bullets and collision detection, and all that.
It will help, but the graphics card will almost certainly still be your bottleneck.

[Fyron]

The speed of your RAM will hold you back as much as the speed of the onboard memory of the video card. Almost no games (none, probably) actually use all of even a 2.0 GHz processor. The rest of the computer is too slow to keep up, so it inevitably has to wait, thus wasting cycles. Getting a second CPU really doesn't do much for games... Rendering 3D images in Wings 3d and such will definitely see a boost, though it might not be worth the cost of a new motherboard, case (most desktop cases won't fit a server motherboard too well) and CPU.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

narf poit chez BOOM said:

Is it worth it for games? Doesn't sound like it. Thanks.
Well, games don't typically hit the disk, or they'd be unplayable on any machine.

Games do quite a bit of number crunching, to calculate vectors for bullets and collision detection, and all that.
It will help, but the graphics card will almost certainly still be your bottleneck.

Hey SJ, you hit the edit button, not the quote button.

[Kamog]

The first computer I ever used was a Commodore Pet. It had a small green monochrome screen, and a slow, slow tape drive. The programs were written in BASIC. The very first video game I played was on that Commodore Pet. It was Space Invaders, and the graphics were very blocky. But it was wonderful...

The very first word processor I used was called "Magic Windows" and it ran on the Apple IIE. We inserted control characters before and after sections of text to get formatting like bold and underline. I was so happy with it because a word processor was so superior to an electric typewriter. I learned to type on an IBM electric typewriter...

The very first graphics program I used was Print Shop on the Apple IIE. I used it to make title pages for reports and things. When I think back, I realize just how clunky those graphics were and how slow that program ran, but at the time I thought it was so great.