Last second changes to my new computer?

[ebaudry]

Bout to get a new computer, my laptop can't quite keep up with everything i ask of it. I want to do all the following simultaneously, can it handle it?

6 tables, various sites
PT
PAHUD
itunes radio
internet browser
DVD/CD burning
Media Player
I'd like to use 3 2001/2007 monitors, am i ready for that with this set up?

Price okay?
Do i need a seperate sound card?

Dell Dimension 9200
$1509


PROCESSOR Intel® Core™2 Duo E6300 (1.86GHz, 1066 FSB)
OS: Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005
MONITOR 20 inch Ultrasharp™ 2007FP Digital
MEMORY 2GB 533MHz Memory
HDRIVE 250GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™
OPTICAL DRIVE Dual Drives: 16x DVD-ROM Drive + 16x DVD+/-RW w/ dbl layer write capable
GRAPHICS CARD 256MB nVidia Geforce 7300LE TurboCache
SOUND CARD Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio
FIREWIRE IEEE 1394 Adapter

[BiPolar_Nut]

You may want to consider bumping up a couple processor speeds to the E6600 since it has twice the L2 cache of the one you spec'd (Especially if you're going w/ the extra bloat of Media Center).

Also, I'm not sure how you'd run 3 monitors w/ one card (which appears to be a single-head card)

Edit: Oh yeah, almost forgot. You could save a few bucks (more than a few, actually) by reducing your RAM from Dell and ordering it separately from newegg.com, outpost, or other online retailer and you could arguably get better quality memory as well.

[ebaudry]

[ QUOTE ]
You may want to consider bumping up a couple processor speeds to the E6600 since it has twice the L2 cache of the one you spec'd (Especially if you're going w/ the extra bloat of Media Center).

Also, I'm not sure how you'd run 3 monitors w/ one card (which appears to be a single-head card)

Edit: Oh yeah, almost forgot. You could save a few bucks (more than a few, actually) by reducing your RAM from Dell and ordering it separately from newegg.com, outpost, or other online retailer and you could arguably get better quality memory as well.

[/ QUOTE ]

Would i then need 3 video cards or 1 with 3 outputs?

The RAM is a free upgrade, thanks for the suggestion.

Is doubling the L2 cache a large difference? Might the dual core 2 be quick enough already? I'm unclear on the function and hence utility of L2 cache.

Thanks

[BiPolar_Nut]

Either 3 single-output cards or one dual + one single. If they're all nVidia based cards, then you can use nVidia's utilities to manage the monitors. I haven't seen triple-head cards, but I have seen quad cards.

L2 Makes a HUGE difference in computations. L2 is basically light-speed memory on the processor itself. Processors are constantly having to move stuff around temporarily to complete an execution sequence. The more cache available, the less the CPU needs to ship out the temp data all the way to the RAM sticks, only to pull it all the way back in to the CPU to finish out the instruction before spitting the result back out to RAM again. There's an insane speed difference between operations that can be done in cache w/o system RAM compared to needing to use some system RAM space.

Lack of L2 Cache is why Celerons suck compared to P4's, they have 1/2 the L2. That was also the selling point on Xeons...more L2 than their P-III/P4 counterpart. If you remember the old DEC Alphas in the early-mid 90's, part of their blazing performance for the time was also larger caches (tho there were other drastic differences in chip architecture so that isn't a fair comparison).

The base core 2 duo has 2MB L2, which is already substantially higher than what you currently have, and your FSB will also be faster which also makes a substantial speed increase. It's a tough call. You'd definitely be impressed w/ the system you spec'd for at least a week, maybe 6 months, hard to say. Since you say you'll be playing "various sites" there's a good chance you'll be playing at some of the sites that I've read other people complaining about for system performance. I don't recall which sites get the most complaints, but there are often posts like "I can 12 table all day at site <x>, but my system will come to a crawl after an hour of 3-tabling site <y>". This is due to poorly written poker client software and there's nothing you can do about it except build an overkill system.

You would get longer usability out of the faster processor (as in, it will do what you need before it can't keep up w/ the new apps/OS thereby delaying the time until your next upgrade).

It comes down to how much you are willing to spend. I don't know the price difference between those 2 processors. You may be better off sticking w/ what you have on a performance per dollar basis.

If you have a large PT database, you would probably see a noticeable (but not drastic) performance increase using a 10k RPM hard drive instead of the 7200, but again, those drives are more expensive for less storage space.

What are the specs of your current laptop? If they're low enough and *almost* still usable in your opinion, then you can probably go w/ your original specs and be happy.

[guller]

Upgrade that graphics card. It is an integrated motherboard chip / not a separate graphics card. It says 256MB of memory but it actually only has 128MB on board and steals 128MB from system ram. You will have a lot better performance from the upgraded card.

I just got the XPS 410 which is basically this same system. I upgraded to the E6600 and the Geforce 7900GS. You won't be disapointed, very fast at everything.

The integrated sound is fine.

[ebaudry]

[ QUOTE ]
Upgrade that graphics card. It is an integrated motherboard chip / not a separate graphics card. It says 256MB of memory but it actually only has 128MB on board and steals 128MB from system ram. You will have a lot better performance from the upgraded card.

I just got the XPS 410 which is basically this same system. I upgraded to the E6600 and the Geforce 7900GS. You won't be disapointed, very fast at everything.

The integrated sound is fine.

[/ QUOTE ]

Can that video card power 3 2001FPs or do i need an additional card?

[guller]

I'm not sure on that. I know the 7900GS has 2 DVI ports and can power 2 monitors.

For overall better system speed and performance upgrade to at least the next higher card. I think they wanted $50 to upgrade to the Radeon X????Pro card, which is also way better than the LE. Both of the upgrade cards have 256MB of memory on-board and don't rob the system ram.

Edit, I just noticed you wanted to power 3 monitors. Yes, you will definately need to buy a separate additional card which is going to have to be regular PCI. Even more reason to bump up your regular PCIexpress stock card for better performance.

[ebaudry]

Thanks for everyone's help, i ended up ordering the following thanks to the input. I have a day or so to change it if i messed up [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]


Dell XPS410
$1775


PROCESSOR Intel® Core™2 Duo E6600
OS: Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005
MONITOR 20 inch Ultrasharp™ 2007FP Digital
MEMORY 2GB 667MHz Memory
HDRIVE 320GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™
OPTICAL DRIVE Dual Drives: 16x DVD-ROM Drive + 16x DVD+/-RW w/ dbl layer write capable
GRAPHICS CARD 256MB nVidia Geforce 7900GS
SOUND CARD Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio
FIREWIRE IEEE 1394 Adapter


I chose the free upgrade to Vista...

This look alright? I know i could have saved $50-75 buying the RAM elsewhere, i decided to buy it all finished.

The video card i bought powers 2 monitors... to power a third, i can simply add a single-head nVidia card and use the included utilities to sync everything up?

Thanks a lot for all the input.