About 5 years ago I decided that I had enough of building my own PCs. It stopped being fun for me and became a chore. So at that time I came up with an experimental PC purchasing plan. I would spend $2k-$3k on a PC that will then last 3 years and then upgrade.
The plan worked great. So great in fact that my last PC lasted 5 years. :D
Its still a great PC. At the time I mostly gamed. Sure I was coding at work, but when I got home, I was gaming. Therefore, the specifications for the computer were gaming related. In end the PC’s specs were roughly : 3 Ghz intel p4; 3 gigs of ram; 512mb PCI-E x16 Nvidia
Still a great machine for gaming.
But now I spend near 100% of my time coding. When I do game, my friends and I all have xboxs. Its cheaper and easier to hook up online and play than a PC. At least I think so.
Now when I code, I have multiple Visual Studio sessions open, maybe streaming a video, maybe downloading files, etc. My poor single processor PC was under a very demanding load.
But riding in to save the day is my new PC I bought from Dell.
Its specs:
- XPS 730X, Intel Core3 I7-950 (3.06GHz, 8MB cache)
- 6GB Multi-Channel DDR3 at 1066MHZ (3x2GB DIMM)
- SLi, Dual nVidia GeForce 9800G512MB
- 300GB Western Digital Velociraptor - SATA-II, 3GB/S 10000RPM, 16MB Cache
Niiiiice. :) The thing is freaking enormous.
This is my first PC with a multiple core and with a 64 bit processor (and OS).
So far tonight I’ve done nothing but install Win 7 and an assortment of applications. Its amazing how many little addons and applications you forget you use on a daily basis.
I am not an OS guy. I don’t really care for command lines nor all the super duper features. I just like things to work. I am one of the few out in there that liked Vista and didn’t find anything wrong with it.
But Win 7 is supposedly da bomb so why not upgrade? The most I’ve noticed about Windows 7 is the new taskbar (which I like). I think the main trend I’ve noticed going from Vista to Win 7 is that the most common tasks I do are closer… if that makes sense. So things that were 2 clicks away are now 1 click away.
I’m going to get back to playing with my new toy. I look forward to the many years of development I will get out of this machine.
Life is good.