But MY computer isn't slow...is it?

The impressive case is a paper tiger

Published on November 19, 2007 By Draginol In GalCiv Journals

At home, when I'm coding or playing games I do it on my trusty Dell XPS Gen 3 PC. It's blue, it's loud, and it's powerful. Or at least it was in 2005 when I bought it.

But this weekend, when I benchmarked my various PCs, the trusty machine came in last. By far. My new laptop is much faster. Heck, my OLD laptop is faster.

So now I'm in the position of trying to decide whether I should retire the Dell home mega machine (not mega anymore) and instead simply get a docking station for my ThinkPad T61 and use that for everything at home instead.

Though, it does go to show that PCs don't become obsolete very fast anymore. My new machines may be much faster on paper but I don't feel that much difference. The Dell from over 2 years ago is still fine for playing Company of Heroes, Galactic Civilizations II, and any other game I've recently thrown at it.

Comments (Page 2)

dystopic

on Nov 29, 2007

for my own two cents, i think it has as much to do with it being a Dell as anything. they skimp on quality in a lot of ways you might not know to check for when purchasing a new PC. so while they advertise big primary numbers (processor speed, RAM volume), IMO they're typically cutting corners when it comes to things like memory standard and chipset.

tickhromeroi

on Dec 07, 2007

Draginol,

You don't mention how you benchmarked the machines. Usually, the graphics side of laptops (both GPU and the actual display, itself) are miserable (Laptop LCD Roundup: Road Warriors Deserve Better). So, if you only tested processing power instead of the graphics ability, then you might want to do some more testing.

More generally, a couple of years ago, I was thinking about not building my own desktop machines any more and just buying laptops. Since my wife needed a new computer at the time, I bought her one of the best laptops I could afford. It's a fine machine. But, being locked into the laptop vendor's proprietary mindset has driven the idea of "just laptops" right out of my head. In general, with laptops, if anything breaks, you're toast. Replacing drives or memory are about the only thing a user can do with these things. Heck, even getting updated video drivers is darn near impossible. Essentially, the laptop makers want you to trash that old laptop and buy a new one for more performance or newer drivers. And, updating, changing, or just plain re-installing the OS might be impossible.

So, in a nutshell, retire the old Dell. But, don't bother with the docking station, either. Instead, go to someplace like Silent PC Review and try building yourself the quietest computer you can. It's not just a job, it's an adventure.

dystopic

on Dec 07, 2007

So, in a nutshell, retire the old Dell. But, don't bother with the docking station, either. Instead, go to someplace like Silent PC Review and try building yourself the quietest computer you can. It's not just a job, it's an adventure

i'm currently building my first computer from components, and it really is a lot of fun. it takes a lot of learning, and some work, but i believe the rewards are well worth it.

i'm sure you could make a very quiet PC for yourself, and it'd probably cost less and run with more stability than anything you can buy pre-made.

xXAequitasXx

on Dec 08, 2007

Currently using my first built computer; jumped right in and changed heatsinks, overclocked, a little of everything. Never will I go back, as not only am I getting a better price/performance ratio, but the damn thing looks nicer, is more reliable (quality components), and, most importantly of all, it was damn fun to build.

Frankly a lot of the problems with new games running slowly have less to do with the state of hardware and more to do with sloppy coding.

It's nothing to do with sloppy coding, barring the relatively new OS to get to grips with. It's simply that the game market (at least the traditional high graphics stuff like FPS's) has moved away from graphics as the demanding feature (you can thank the consoles for that). To bring up your example; COD4 is still the same old segmented shooter of old, while Crysis is attempting to simulate a couple of square miles simultaneously. It's not the graphics slowing the system down, it's the physics, the AI and simply having the entire area loaded into the system at once rather than being able to feed gradual segments through.
I've got two boxes at home, one with a quad core 2.6Ghz Intel, one with a 3.0Ghz Dual Core. Both can run Crysis at maximum graphics settings with near identical performance (40-50 FPS). Try turning physics up to full on the dual core and it becomes a slideshow (6 - 8 FPS, dropping to 1 FPS if anything moves), while the quad core sees around a 6 - 7 FPS drop maximum. The Quad has a Geforce 8800GTX, while the Dual has a 7900GT. Something tells me it isn't the difference in cards causing the slowdown there

It has to do with "sloppy" coding as well; simply as hardware has increased, developers/coders have found themselves with much more legroom than previous generations of coders had, in both flexibility and capability--basically there hasn't been as much of an emphasis on conservation because there hasn't been as much of a need. Does this mean that they're any less talented or lazier? Not necessarily, but to disregard the coding side is a bit naive.

Also, unless you're running Crysis @ 12x10 on XP (which isn't technically "max" details anyways), there's no way you're running the game at 40-50 fps on a dual core 7900GT machine, sorry, especially not considering even the 8800ultra struggles. I also have not seen this slideshow effect of cranking the physics out to full with a C2D (I have mine at 3.2)...Crysis is far more GPU bound than anything--even though it will benefit from a quad core, it's a moot point considering even the 8800ultra has problems running it.

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