Results 1 to 8 of 8

Thread: System Specifications & Recommendations

  1. #1
    Community Leader Jaxilon's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2009
    Location
    A beach in Ecuador
    Posts
    5,548

    Default System Specifications & Recommendations

    Ok, all this talk about notebooks and 64 bit operating systems got me to wondering what if anything I should be thinking of for my upgrade path. First off, I'm pretty much planning on getting a tablet before I start rebuilding but if there is something I can do that isn't going to cost me an arm or a leg I might do that sooner. So, for those of you who know and are willing please offer up your advice. For the rest, maybe you can share your system specifications for bragging purposes or so the rest of us can see how we match up with the big boys. I know I'm way overdue for an upgrade I just haven't needed one yet.

    The thing that bothers me most is when my machine is chugging over simple things like turning on/off a layer. That and the limit on how large an image I can create (although I think this will always be the case).

    I used Speccy to create this report and just published the results to share here (In case you didn't know how to do this):

    Speccy system report

    Hehe, I just know some of you guys are going to make me so jealous!

    Edit: Oh, and for the record I built this system quite a few years ago for playing games.
    “When it’s over and you look in the mirror, did you do the best that you were capable of? If so, the score does not matter. But if you find that you did your best you were capable of, you will find it to your liking.” -John Wooden

    * Rivengard * My Finished Maps * My Challenge Maps * My deviantArt

  2. #2
    Community Leader Guild Sponsor Gidde's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    Michigan, USA
    Posts
    3,673

    Default

    That's not that bad. I rebuilt mine about 15 months ago and all I really have you on is CPU and RAM. I'll edit with detailed secs tonight, but I've got a 4-core AMD cpu and 6Gb of ddr3 (i believe).

    Edit: Nope, it was ddr2. Wasn't sure on that bit.


    Here's specs: http://speccy.piriform.com/results/g...fMOLxWXJj0qKBU
    Last edited by Gidde; 02-04-2011 at 05:38 PM.

  3. #3
    Guild Artisan Clercon's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Location
    Eslöv, Sweden
    Posts
    952

    Default

    I must agree with Gidde, it's not too bad. My system is nearly the same, My CPU is 2,6 Ghz and I have a newer graphics card with 1 GB of VRAM. But apart from that no big differences. So far I haven't experienced any slowdowns while drawing maps. Sometimes a reinstallation of your system might do wonders :-)
    My finished maps

    Mapping Worlds (My blog about mapping)

    Imaginary maps (My facbook page devoted to mapping)

  4. #4

    Default

    I used to build my own PCs, but recently I've decided that my time is valuable enough not to spend it on research and assembly, so I went with a box from HP.
    http://speccy.piriform.com/results/X...VKZ2voKSe4icxL

    In brief, it's an i7 920 with 12 MB of RAM running Vista64. It's a lot of computer, but I do a lot of work in Maya and other visual effects software, so I needed something quite powerful. And the removable drive bay is very handy since I create insane quantities of data.
    Bryan Ray, visual effects artist
    http://www.bryanray.name

  5. #5
    Guild Member Facebook Connected
    Join Date
    Mar 2010
    Location
    A, A
    Posts
    52

    Default

    Get yourself the most RAM you can cram in there, and the absolute fastest harddrive you can afford. Those are the big bottlenecks on most computers. Running filters or rendering are number-crunch-tastic, but most of my problems seem to come from having too slow of a harddrive or not enough memory.

  6. #6
    Software Dev/Rep Hai-Etlik's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    48° 28′ N 123° 8′ W
    Posts
    1,333
    Blog Entries
    1

    Default

    Well, I have an i7 930 (4 cores, 2 way SMT, 2.8 GHz core clock.) with 6 GiB of DDR3-1333 7-7-7-20. It's running Ubuntu 10.10 and is named Smaug.

  7. #7
    Administrator Redrobes's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2007
    Location
    England
    Posts
    7,193
    Blog Entries
    8

    Default

    I'm on some kind of intel quaddie with 4GB of DDR2. I run XP x64 which is kinda unusual but I like it a lot. I have a pretty good nVidia graphics card but nothing silly. I turn off my swap file now so its 4Gb or bust but its faster that way. I think that if I were building it again I would add a solid state drive to it and put some of the more frequently changing files on that. To be honest, if I were doing this all again I would go with Ubuntu 10.10 instead now as well. I have a somewhat old 4Gb dual core ubuntu 10.10 machine too with a silly graphics card which someone sold me for a song which I use as a test machine for some stuff I do but not generally mapping. I would urge all people putting together a major machine to go x64 now even if you don't have 4Gb+ of ram.

    A removable drive bay is a kind of luxury but you can do just as good with external USB hard drives for backup. They are not quite as fast but I like the fact that for almost all of the time they are not connected to the main box and therefore unaffected by a terminal power spike.

    I also have a UPS on my main machine too which I think is a bonus if you have moderately dodgy power. Its prevented a few hard stops in the past so it might have paid for itself by now.

  8. #8
    Administrator waldronate's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2007
    Location
    The High Desert
    Posts
    3,549

    Default

    In your case, Jaxilon, I'd recommend upgrading first to a 64-bit OS like Windows 7 in order to take advantage of the full 4 GB of memory at the same time as the memory on the video card. I would hazard a guess that you currently have around 3GB free under XP; the OS upgrade would give you 1GB extra available plus a full-sized video aperture.

    The next upgrade would probably be memory because it's relatively cheap ($75 or so would give you 8GB). If you really want to keep the old system limping along, you might want to upgrade to a 4-core or 6-core processor (which may or may not require an upgrade, depending on your motherboard).

    I'm running a Q6600 with 8GB running a dual-boot XP32/Win7x64 configuration (I have 2.5 GB available under XP and 8GB available under Win7). My upgrade options are somewhat limited because I'll have to upgrade the motherboard, processor, and memory all at once - $700+ for the combo I want. Probably a new power supply, too... I'll probably just end up buying a whole new box early next year when the Ivy Bridge processors come out, but that sort of thing usually ends up being $2500+.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •