Xp vs Vista, and processor questions...
Discussion
wolves_wanderer said:
Plotloss said:
Price difference is £50 between the two and I'm considering a dalliance with water cooling...
In that case go for the Q6600. I am running one of the older B3 rev chips at 3.2 under good air cooling. If you get one of the new G0 revision chips (that run cooler and overclock better) you should see 3.4-3.6 under water.You may get up around 3.8 - 4.0 with the 6750 but I would suspect that you will benefit from the extra cores more than 400MHz, especially if you intend keeping the machine for a while.
Just don't expect the full bang for buck until your using some mega applications
Truth be told I only notice speed when either gaming (and even that not too much), or when rendering. The rest of the time an old P3 450 is ample to just 'do things'
Dave
You'll benefit from the multiple cores even running single threaded apps as the OS will use some intelligence in assigning thread affinity so where as before you'd have a single threaded app taking up all the cpu and you couldn't do anything else, now it'll max out one core and you still have 3 to support other processes.
m12_nathan said:
You'll benefit from the multiple cores even running single threaded apps as the OS will use some intelligence in assigning thread affinity so where as before you'd have a single threaded app taking up all the cpu and you couldn't do anything else, now it'll max out one core and you still have 3 to support other processes.
How do these cores manage data, are they each designed to do certain types of things better than the others, or are they all the same, merely directed to max out independently so as not to grind machines to a halt?I got the impression (at least tried to, probably failed mind) that when one core was working, if the others were idle, they didnt chip in at max power to try and make the app in use lightening fast, or is not the case?
UKbob said:
m12_nathan said:
You'll benefit from the multiple cores even running single threaded apps as the OS will use some intelligence in assigning thread affinity so where as before you'd have a single threaded app taking up all the cpu and you couldn't do anything else, now it'll max out one core and you still have 3 to support other processes.
How do these cores manage data, are they each designed to do certain types of things better than the others, or are they all the same, merely directed to max out independently so as not to grind machines to a halt?I got the impression (at least tried to, probably failed mind) that when one core was working, if the others were idle, they didnt chip in at max power to try and make the app in use lightening fast, or is not the case?
Using Win XP, might be different in Vista. Some other apps, like PS or early versions of Aftereffects would just max out core 1 and that was the best you'd get when rendering frames out for example, and the other three cores would be left empty.
Basically, it's still far from optimal. Quad cores will be better now and in the future, now because if programs don't take up all four cores, then the ones left not used will run the windows apps so system response will be lots nice generally, and then in the future when software can core manage better it will be better too.
It's mainly, can you afford it... if you can go for it.
Dave
Mr Whippy said:
It's mainly, can you afford it... if you can go for it.
Agreed, I recently got a games machine that is a overclocked quad core unit (6600 @ 3.4ghz) knowing full well that not all cores will be used efficently right now.If anyone has a quad core machine using vista you can download the quad monitoring gadget for windows sidebar. I have been watching it to try and figure out how the cores work together but there doesn't seem to be any pattern as to how they are utilised.
My findings, personally:
I was an early adopter of multi-core technology, back when the X2 first came out. The moment I jumped on the bandwagon, I never looked back. In all my years of frequent catch-up computing, it was, without a shred of doubt, the single biggest jump in technology and user experience I have ever had, and all my three subsequent CPU purchases have all been multi-core offerings. Simply put, it was a revelation, for not a whole lot of money.
Real world benefits:
1. Very few programs are able to use both cores. This may be a negative for outright performance, but as far as stability goes, it's incredible. On a single core system, if software you had running were to throw a wobbly and take up 100% of processing power, you'd be pretty stuffed, with the general course of action being the reboot button on your case. With a multi-core system, it just robs one core, leaving you the other to process the termination of said wobbly program. It really is that simple, and makes for a far more reliable computing experience (especially if you're a power user and things are more prone to crash on you).
2. Significant increase in multi-tasking speed. Remember, the fact that very few programs aren't optimised to use more than one CPU is irrelevant in most cases, because Windows is. If you multitask a lot, Windows distributes the processing power across the cores to balance out the load. Your computer feels far more zippy and responsive as a result.
3. CPU-intensive operations, like video rendering, are doubled in speed. It is like a white elephant to find that a doubling of something's speed or capacity translates to exactly double the real-world benefit. Take SLI or Crossfire - real world, you'll see an increase of maybe 30% maximum of two graphics cards rather than just one. Doubling your RAM does not translate to a doubling of system performance. However, with CPU-intensive operations, and when both cores are on the job, the time it takes is literally halved or quartered compared to using a single-core chip. The speed increases are phenomenal. Most major CPU-intensive software is now multi-core capable. Even for those that are not, in many cases you can run two instances and get the benefits as if they were (leaving Windows to manage the processing balance). For example, I have a 3D rendering application that only uses a single core. By opening another instance of the application, and by assigning different set of frames to render for each instance, they both use each of their cores at a respective 100%, giving me real benefits in the same way I would see them if the application happened to be multi-core optimized.
Bottom line: Do it. I am not sure if the tangible benefits of quad over dual are very realised (unless you do a lot of hardcore rendering or processing), but dual over single is just a different universe. Even back then when NOTHING was "optimized".
I was an early adopter of multi-core technology, back when the X2 first came out. The moment I jumped on the bandwagon, I never looked back. In all my years of frequent catch-up computing, it was, without a shred of doubt, the single biggest jump in technology and user experience I have ever had, and all my three subsequent CPU purchases have all been multi-core offerings. Simply put, it was a revelation, for not a whole lot of money.
Real world benefits:
1. Very few programs are able to use both cores. This may be a negative for outright performance, but as far as stability goes, it's incredible. On a single core system, if software you had running were to throw a wobbly and take up 100% of processing power, you'd be pretty stuffed, with the general course of action being the reboot button on your case. With a multi-core system, it just robs one core, leaving you the other to process the termination of said wobbly program. It really is that simple, and makes for a far more reliable computing experience (especially if you're a power user and things are more prone to crash on you).
2. Significant increase in multi-tasking speed. Remember, the fact that very few programs aren't optimised to use more than one CPU is irrelevant in most cases, because Windows is. If you multitask a lot, Windows distributes the processing power across the cores to balance out the load. Your computer feels far more zippy and responsive as a result.
3. CPU-intensive operations, like video rendering, are doubled in speed. It is like a white elephant to find that a doubling of something's speed or capacity translates to exactly double the real-world benefit. Take SLI or Crossfire - real world, you'll see an increase of maybe 30% maximum of two graphics cards rather than just one. Doubling your RAM does not translate to a doubling of system performance. However, with CPU-intensive operations, and when both cores are on the job, the time it takes is literally halved or quartered compared to using a single-core chip. The speed increases are phenomenal. Most major CPU-intensive software is now multi-core capable. Even for those that are not, in many cases you can run two instances and get the benefits as if they were (leaving Windows to manage the processing balance). For example, I have a 3D rendering application that only uses a single core. By opening another instance of the application, and by assigning different set of frames to render for each instance, they both use each of their cores at a respective 100%, giving me real benefits in the same way I would see them if the application happened to be multi-core optimized.
Bottom line: Do it. I am not sure if the tangible benefits of quad over dual are very realised (unless you do a lot of hardcore rendering or processing), but dual over single is just a different universe. Even back then when NOTHING was "optimized".
-DeaDLocK- said:
1. Very few programs are able to use both cores. This may be a negative for outright performance, but as far as stability goes, it's incredible. On a single core system, if software you had running were to throw a wobbly and take up 100% of processing power, you'd be pretty stuffed, with the general course of action being the reboot button on your case. With a multi-core system, it just robs one core, leaving you the other to process the termination of said wobbly program. It really is that simple, and makes for a far more reliable computing experience (especially if you're a power user and things are more prone to crash on you).
Hehe, problem is if you ARE a power user, your using multi-core apps, so four instances of Maxwell render and one of 3DS Max == system won't respond until it's finished Or, if your lucky, ctrl alt del will pop up in a few minutes, and then be accessible over the next 10 to turn the affinity off one processor, then it's all rosy again
Still, I agree on the whole, they are better, at home especially I run say a render in the background on core 1, and then play my game which only uses core 0 anyway, so get an ok render speed AND can play a game fine
Dave
malman said:
TheLearner said:
...
You're missing two, possibly three releases
its also missing windows286 and windows386 before windows 3.1 had those on an Apricot F1 with infrared keyboardYou're missing two, possibly three releases
Update on Vista 
Love it, Looks great. Nice and intuitive...
It is, however, THE most appallingly pathetic OS in terms of stability, ever. Not that anyone here didnt know that, but it really is terrible. Vista itself has never once crashed, in fact it seems rather good at not falling over itself. But the applications all do, and frequently. Outlook up to 5 times a day. So far more frequently than ME as I recall, its one hell of a bastard of an operating system in that respect, which makes it a bit strange. All the more reason to abandon ship.
Love it, Looks great. Nice and intuitive...
It is, however, THE most appallingly pathetic OS in terms of stability, ever. Not that anyone here didnt know that, but it really is terrible. Vista itself has never once crashed, in fact it seems rather good at not falling over itself. But the applications all do, and frequently. Outlook up to 5 times a day. So far more frequently than ME as I recall, its one hell of a bastard of an operating system in that respect, which makes it a bit strange. All the more reason to abandon ship.
UKbob said:
Update on Vista
Love it, Looks great. Nice and intuitive...
It is, however, THE most appallingly pathetic OS in terms of stability, ever. Not that anyone here didnt know that, but it really is terrible. Vista itself has never once crashed, in fact it seems rather good at not falling over itself. But the applications all do, and frequently. Outlook up to 5 times a day. So far more frequently than ME as I recall, its one hell of a bastard of an operating system in that respect, which makes it a bit strange. All the more reason to abandon ship.
I'm getting quite tempted by going to Vista Ultimate 64-bit for proper RAM paging (I currently use 4Gb, but could be tempted by 8Gb), but the moment I hear stuff like that it makes me just want to stay with XP Pro... Love it, Looks great. Nice and intuitive...
It is, however, THE most appallingly pathetic OS in terms of stability, ever. Not that anyone here didnt know that, but it really is terrible. Vista itself has never once crashed, in fact it seems rather good at not falling over itself. But the applications all do, and frequently. Outlook up to 5 times a day. So far more frequently than ME as I recall, its one hell of a bastard of an operating system in that respect, which makes it a bit strange. All the more reason to abandon ship.
LukeBird said:
UKbob said:
Update on Vista
Love it, Looks great. Nice and intuitive...
It is, however, THE most appallingly pathetic OS in terms of stability, ever. Not that anyone here didnt know that, but it really is terrible. Vista itself has never once crashed, in fact it seems rather good at not falling over itself. But the applications all do, and frequently. Outlook up to 5 times a day. So far more frequently than ME as I recall, its one hell of a bastard of an operating system in that respect, which makes it a bit strange. All the more reason to abandon ship.
I'm getting quite tempted by going to Vista Ultimate 64-bit for proper RAM paging (I currently use 4Gb, but could be tempted by 8Gb), but the moment I hear stuff like that it makes me just want to stay with XP Pro... Love it, Looks great. Nice and intuitive...
It is, however, THE most appallingly pathetic OS in terms of stability, ever. Not that anyone here didnt know that, but it really is terrible. Vista itself has never once crashed, in fact it seems rather good at not falling over itself. But the applications all do, and frequently. Outlook up to 5 times a day. So far more frequently than ME as I recall, its one hell of a bastard of an operating system in that respect, which makes it a bit strange. All the more reason to abandon ship.
Sorry if this sounds like another smug Apple fanboy but I've been on 64-bit workstations since 2003... I know that the Opteron was 64-bit and available just before the G5 Macs, but IIRC there was only a limited-support Linux operating system for it back then. I know it took Microsoft a while to get XP 64-bit capable. It took Apple some time too... the first G5s ran 64-bit kernel and BSD userland APIs but the GUI was 32-bit... but blimey the G5s rocked if optimised carefully for 64-bit and Altivec. Not for nothing were ALL the fastest machines on Seti@Home back then Macs (my Quad was fastest in the world at one point...) - it's a useful geek dick-waving benchmark
because it's fairly immune from cheats, and does show real scientific computing performance...So forgive me for knowing feck-all about Windows, but surely by now XP should have a 64-bit kernel and APIs and allow you to use proper amounts of RAM effectively. Hell, even if it's a 64-bit kernel with 32-bit limited user processes, you'll still be able to allocate 2 GB per process, which is good enough for most people. 32-bit kernel though??? Bleah - I have enough limitations with only 3 GB usable in my Macbook (4 GB installed, but the damn Intel northbridge wastes a gig in 'memory mapped I/O' - it's the model before the Santa Rosa chipset, which can address the full 4 GB)...
TheLearner said:
Plotloss said:
UKbob said:
And does anyone else remember Windows 97, or ever see it in use?
3.1, 3.11, NT3.51, 95, NT4, 98, 98se, Me, 2000, XP, XPSP2, VistaBut not Windows 97...
But, as Bob asked if Vista is a Me... not in the way you're thinking. It's as stable as XP, but is an Me as really the up take of it doesn't seem to be all that rapid (keeping in mind XP seemed to appear every bloody where quite quickly) and with Windows NT 7 scheduled for release in 3 years time... I can see a lot of people keeping XP-SP3/SP4 around until then.
cyberface said:
LukeBird said:
rubbish....
Eh? Doesn't XP have a 64-bit version that can use the CPUs properly and use decent amounts of RAM? Sorry if this sounds like another smug Apple fanboy but I've been on 64-bit workstations since 2003... I know that the Opteron was 64-bit and available just before the G5 Macs, but IIRC there was only a limited-support Linux operating system for it back then. I know it took Microsoft a while to get XP 64-bit capable. It took Apple some time too... the first G5s ran 64-bit kernel and BSD userland APIs but the GUI was 32-bit... but blimey the G5s rocked if optimised carefully for 64-bit and Altivec. Not for nothing were ALL the fastest machines on Seti@Home back then Macs (my Quad was fastest in the world at one point...) - it's a useful geek dick-waving benchmark
because it's fairly immune from cheats, and does show real scientific computing performance...So forgive me for knowing feck-all about Windows, but surely by now XP should have a 64-bit kernel and APIs and allow you to use proper amounts of RAM effectively. Hell, even if it's a 64-bit kernel with 32-bit limited user processes, you'll still be able to allocate 2 GB per process, which is good enough for most people. 32-bit kernel though??? Bleah - I have enough limitations with only 3 GB usable in my Macbook (4 GB installed, but the damn Intel northbridge wastes a gig in 'memory mapped I/O' - it's the model before the Santa Rosa chipset, which can address the full 4 GB)...
) There is indeed a 64-bit version of XP, but it was a bastardised half-arsed attempt that was dropped almost before it was launched...Driver support is of the non-existent variety...
So with XP being 32-bit I am restricted to approx 3.4Gb of RAM (the amount of paged RAM is the (for me) 4Gb minus the amount reserved for each motherboard function and plug-in cards)
I did ponder going to XP 64-bit for about a microsecond before realising how idiotic it would be...
No drivers for anything, no (AFAIK) 64-bit optimised programs....
Although I guess the first 'desktop' program to be optimised for 64-bit will be CS4?
njsolutionsuk said:
TheLearner said:
Plotloss said:
UKbob said:
And does anyone else remember Windows 97, or ever see it in use?
3.1, 3.11, NT3.51, 95, NT4, 98, 98se, Me, 2000, XP, XPSP2, VistaBut not Windows 97...
But, as Bob asked if Vista is a Me... not in the way you're thinking. It's as stable as XP, but is an Me as really the up take of it doesn't seem to be all that rapid (keeping in mind XP seemed to appear every bloody where quite quickly) and with Windows NT 7 scheduled for release in 3 years time... I can see a lot of people keeping XP-SP3/SP4 around until then.
When win2k came out there were lots of compatability problems with apps and drivers, but once they were sorted it was very good.
Im going to stick with XP for the time being, as I tried vista and although I didnt have any major problems with it I didnt see any real advantages, so I switched back. The biggest advantage of vista was the new search, but I am using google search on XP and its basically the same thing.
LukeBird said:
cyberface said:
LukeBird said:
rubbish....
Eh? Doesn't XP have a 64-bit version that can use the CPUs properly and use decent amounts of RAM? Sorry if this sounds like another smug Apple fanboy but I've been on 64-bit workstations since 2003... I know that the Opteron was 64-bit and available just before the G5 Macs, but IIRC there was only a limited-support Linux operating system for it back then. I know it took Microsoft a while to get XP 64-bit capable. It took Apple some time too... the first G5s ran 64-bit kernel and BSD userland APIs but the GUI was 32-bit... but blimey the G5s rocked if optimised carefully for 64-bit and Altivec. Not for nothing were ALL the fastest machines on Seti@Home back then Macs (my Quad was fastest in the world at one point...) - it's a useful geek dick-waving benchmark
because it's fairly immune from cheats, and does show real scientific computing performance...So forgive me for knowing feck-all about Windows, but surely by now XP should have a 64-bit kernel and APIs and allow you to use proper amounts of RAM effectively. Hell, even if it's a 64-bit kernel with 32-bit limited user processes, you'll still be able to allocate 2 GB per process, which is good enough for most people. 32-bit kernel though??? Bleah - I have enough limitations with only 3 GB usable in my Macbook (4 GB installed, but the damn Intel northbridge wastes a gig in 'memory mapped I/O' - it's the model before the Santa Rosa chipset, which can address the full 4 GB)...
) There is indeed a 64-bit version of XP, but it was a bastardised half-arsed attempt that was dropped almost before it was launched...Driver support is of the non-existent variety...
So with XP being 32-bit I am restricted to approx 3.4Gb of RAM (the amount of paged RAM is the (for me) 4Gb minus the amount reserved for each motherboard function and plug-in cards)
I did ponder going to XP 64-bit for about a microsecond before realising how idiotic it would be...
No drivers for anything, no (AFAIK) 64-bit optimised programs....
Although I guess the first 'desktop' program to be optimised for 64-bit will be CS4?
Realistically, most GUI apps don't need more than 2 GB addressable RAM - scientific apps running monstrous datasets often do, and that's where the G5 shone (Virginia Tech bought a job lot of them, linked them all up and ended up on the Supercomputer leaderboard...) since scientific computing is often command-line batch stuff that was 64-bit way back 5 years ago with the Mac and OS X. The real benefit of 64-bit on the desktop comes with multi-core CPUs - you can run multiple heavy apps at the same time, each using up to 2 GB without hurting. The only other 'apps' I use heavily that consistently need more than 2 GB of RAM are databases, and that's really server stuff (though it's nice to have a Mac workstation that's beefy enough to run Oracle on 4 CPUs with 4 GB of RAM, and still have 4 CPUs left over and another 4 GB to play with.... that was expensive-server territory not too long ago).
What other GUI apps *right now* could do with more than 2 GB addressable RAM? Photoshop, even with multi-megapixel RAW pics, is a batch operation so any plugin dealing with the entire photo can do it in chunks without any *major* problem - it's not as if bringing the entire picture into RAM to process it is significantly faster than splitting the photo into 4 chunks and processing those individually. Real-time video effects??? Get enough RAM to hold an entire DVD's worth of video (you'd probably need three times that, for buffering) and you could scan through whilst adding effects in real-time if your CPUs and memory bandwidth were fast enough. But surely the video boys want to use uncompressed video to edit, and compress it right at the end?? We're not anywhere near feature-length movie *uncompressed* in RAM yet...
The multitasking is enough for me, which is why OS X, IMO, did the right thing - focus on getting the kernel 64-bit and hang the GUI. Just let us run loads of apps concurrently by filling the machine with RAM - each app having a 2 GB limit wasn't the problem...
Anyway back to the OP - someone mentioned water cooling and longevity. I'd just like to warn that it may not work like that... my factory-designed Apple water-cooled monster failed after a couple of years. Now it could be that aftermarket overclocker gear is much better engineered and designed than Apple top-end kit, which was warrantied and sold as working tools, rather than souped-up games machines or 'tuning parts' for overclock-hacker maniacs... but I'm not so sure. Apple over-engineered that water cooling system at vast cost to try to ensure the longevity wasn't affected. Unfortunately it wasn't enough - and loads of water-cooled G5 powermacs are dropping like flies right left and centre. Apple are giving offers on air-cooled Mac Pro replacements rather than repairing the water cooling systems in the G5s... Nice experiment, but I don't think I'd go with a water-cooled desktop as a production machine again.
cyberface said:
In terms of entire apps - yeah probably. Plenty of plugins for Photoshop were 64-bit Altivec optimised even back in the G5 days though.
Realistically, most GUI apps don't need more than 2 GB addressable RAM - scientific apps running monstrous datasets often do, and that's where the G5 shone (Virginia Tech bought a job lot of them, linked them all up and ended up on the Supercomputer leaderboard...) since scientific computing is often command-line batch stuff that was 64-bit way back 5 years ago with the Mac and OS X. The real benefit of 64-bit on the desktop comes with multi-core CPUs - you can run multiple heavy apps at the same time, each using up to 2 GB without hurting. The only other 'apps' I use heavily that consistently need more than 2 GB of RAM are databases, and that's really server stuff (though it's nice to have a Mac workstation that's beefy enough to run Oracle on 4 CPUs with 4 GB of RAM, and still have 4 CPUs left over and another 4 GB to play with.... that was expensive-server territory not too long ago).
What other GUI apps *right now* could do with more than 2 GB addressable RAM? Photoshop, even with multi-megapixel RAW pics, is a batch operation so any plugin dealing with the entire photo can do it in chunks without any *major* problem - it's not as if bringing the entire picture into RAM to process it is significantly faster than splitting the photo into 4 chunks and processing those individually. Real-time video effects??? Get enough RAM to hold an entire DVD's worth of video (you'd probably need three times that, for buffering) and you could scan through whilst adding effects in real-time if your CPUs and memory bandwidth were fast enough. But surely the video boys want to use uncompressed video to edit, and compress it right at the end?? We're not anywhere near feature-length movie *uncompressed* in RAM yet...
The multitasking is enough for me, which is why OS X, IMO, did the right thing - focus on getting the kernel 64-bit and hang the GUI. Just let us run loads of apps concurrently by filling the machine with RAM - each app having a 2 GB limit wasn't the problem...
Anyway back to the OP - someone mentioned water cooling and longevity. I'd just like to warn that it may not work like that... my factory-designed Apple water-cooled monster failed after a couple of years. Now it could be that aftermarket overclocker gear is much better engineered and designed than Apple top-end kit, which was warrantied and sold as working tools, rather than souped-up games machines or 'tuning parts' for overclock-hacker maniacs... but I'm not so sure. Apple over-engineered that water cooling system at vast cost to try to ensure the longevity wasn't affected. Unfortunately it wasn't enough - and loads of water-cooled G5 powermacs are dropping like flies right left and centre. Apple are giving offers on air-cooled Mac Pro replacements rather than repairing the water cooling systems in the G5s... Nice experiment, but I don't think I'd go with a water-cooled desktop as a production machine again.
That's another thing I'm getting (stupidly) tempted in doing, hmmm water-cooling.... Realistically, most GUI apps don't need more than 2 GB addressable RAM - scientific apps running monstrous datasets often do, and that's where the G5 shone (Virginia Tech bought a job lot of them, linked them all up and ended up on the Supercomputer leaderboard...) since scientific computing is often command-line batch stuff that was 64-bit way back 5 years ago with the Mac and OS X. The real benefit of 64-bit on the desktop comes with multi-core CPUs - you can run multiple heavy apps at the same time, each using up to 2 GB without hurting. The only other 'apps' I use heavily that consistently need more than 2 GB of RAM are databases, and that's really server stuff (though it's nice to have a Mac workstation that's beefy enough to run Oracle on 4 CPUs with 4 GB of RAM, and still have 4 CPUs left over and another 4 GB to play with.... that was expensive-server territory not too long ago).
What other GUI apps *right now* could do with more than 2 GB addressable RAM? Photoshop, even with multi-megapixel RAW pics, is a batch operation so any plugin dealing with the entire photo can do it in chunks without any *major* problem - it's not as if bringing the entire picture into RAM to process it is significantly faster than splitting the photo into 4 chunks and processing those individually. Real-time video effects??? Get enough RAM to hold an entire DVD's worth of video (you'd probably need three times that, for buffering) and you could scan through whilst adding effects in real-time if your CPUs and memory bandwidth were fast enough. But surely the video boys want to use uncompressed video to edit, and compress it right at the end?? We're not anywhere near feature-length movie *uncompressed* in RAM yet...
The multitasking is enough for me, which is why OS X, IMO, did the right thing - focus on getting the kernel 64-bit and hang the GUI. Just let us run loads of apps concurrently by filling the machine with RAM - each app having a 2 GB limit wasn't the problem...
Anyway back to the OP - someone mentioned water cooling and longevity. I'd just like to warn that it may not work like that... my factory-designed Apple water-cooled monster failed after a couple of years. Now it could be that aftermarket overclocker gear is much better engineered and designed than Apple top-end kit, which was warrantied and sold as working tools, rather than souped-up games machines or 'tuning parts' for overclock-hacker maniacs... but I'm not so sure. Apple over-engineered that water cooling system at vast cost to try to ensure the longevity wasn't affected. Unfortunately it wasn't enough - and loads of water-cooled G5 powermacs are dropping like flies right left and centre. Apple are giving offers on air-cooled Mac Pro replacements rather than repairing the water cooling systems in the G5s... Nice experiment, but I don't think I'd go with a water-cooled desktop as a production machine again.
Must, resist...
With regards to 64-bit apps. I guess in reality that we are so far from any tangible benefit of 64-bit apps that they are likely to only stay in the areas you suggested.
I mean I could have 8Gb RAM if I wanted (and Vista would probably be able to shuffle it around fairly well) but with most apps not using close to 2Gb, it'd only be for mega-multi-tasking!
Be interesting to see if CS4 will be 64-bit and if so, how it compares in a like-for-like basis with CS3. Which I'm still trying to work out some bits of!
njsolutionsuk said:
TheLearner said:
Plotloss said:
UKbob said:
And does anyone else remember Windows 97, or ever see it in use?
3.1, 3.11, NT3.51, 95, NT4, 98, 98se, Me, 2000, XP, XPSP2, VistaBut not Windows 97...
But, as Bob asked if Vista is a Me... not in the way you're thinking. It's as stable as XP, but is an Me as really the up take of it doesn't seem to be all that rapid (keeping in mind XP seemed to appear every bloody where quite quickly) and with Windows NT 7 scheduled for release in 3 years time... I can see a lot of people keeping XP-SP3/SP4 around until then.
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