Building Own Computer

[gutturalpiss]

This reminds of a good friend. In secondary school he used to write history essays without fullstops. It was funny reading it and naturally you won't stop either, so I found myself to be out of breath. After reading, came the next task - figure out what he meant to write :lol:

I highly doubt any visual/non-visual operating system will, in the future, be written in OOP. One would need low-level code for software that closely communicate with hardware, and C/C++ is not going to be abandoned anytime soon. I think what he meant is a Java UI, like the JDS on (Open)Solaris. Well, it's not entirely Java (based on GNOME), but it offers you the complete experience. Java itself, is indeed, one of the slower bytecode languages so GUI is as far as it can go.

 

[HideX_X]

actually java is still fast u shld go try it out yourselve has i know a java expert working for our government and nus on certain programs.
It was clear that java is faster/it seems slow but its not try it to believe it and yes java is hard but ppl pay lots for you to do it lets not start here with visual basic thats like basic
and yes 64bit is visually better what i meant is i like the way the os is compared to xp

 

[godchuanz]

HideX_X,

I'm sorry I really don't know what you're talking about. There are so many false statements in your post I don't know where to start! Do you know how Java works? Or did you get your information from your "expert friend"?

I'll just say:
- There is no OS called "64bit". Do you mean 64bit XP is visually better than 32bit XP? And 64bit Vista is visually better than 32bit Vista?
- Java is slower than C/C++
- Java is easy to use (in fact, it's one of the easiest languages)
- We were not even talking about Visual Basic (it's also easy to use)

One more thing: You mentioned that people pay lots for Java programming? Can you help link me up with some of these people? I think I'm pretty good at Java.

 

[Cheez]

HideX, Vista is "visually" more appealing than XP. That's for sure. The eye-candy is nice but also a bloat on the system. But between 64-bit Vista and 32-bit Vista, I'm not exactly sure there's any difference "visually". They all have Aero (except Basic). Perhaps you are referring to is Vista Ultimate extras which include the exclusive DreamScene that shows the wallpaper as a video instead of a still image. For all versions of Vista (except Basic which has no 64-bit version), one will need to purchase 32 and 64-bit versions seperately. But for Ultimate, 32 and 64-bit are included in one package.

But I believe eye-candy wise, 32-bit and 64-bit Vista are the same except for Ultimate DreamScene (which can also work in 32-bit).

What you are comparing is Vista with XP, not 64 or 32-bit. And yes, Vista does look nicer, but takes up more resources as a result. For those who wants to stay in XP but yet like the nice eye-candy of Vista, there are always alternatives (eg Stardock's Windowblinds and other Stardock products, some of which takes up less resources than Vista but give you the eye-candy).

In my DAW machine, I need the max power. So I used XPlite - basically got rid of the entire IE integration. It's an XP that looks exactly like Windows 98. It doesn't matter - what matters is that it gives me max power. The time latency between the welcome screen and showing the wallpaper is about 1 sec, and my software are ready to run. For my regular work boot partition, I'm OK to have slight performance decrease with some eye-candy (I also have the free Objectdock and the paid Windowblinds - looks cool!). It looks like Vista + Mac combined...

As for java and programming etc, godchuanz and gutturalpiss are the experts.

 

[widdly]

I highly doubt any visual/non-visual operating system will, in the future, be written in OOP. One would need low-level code for software that closely communicate with hardware, and C/C++ is not going to be abandoned anytime soon.

Smalltalk is an OOP OS. It has a microkernel written in asm for bootstrapping then everything else is written in object orientated smalltalk (including the drivers). For a microkernel architecture then OOP would work nicely.

Of course you are not going to find it on many desktops any time soon. OS research is pretty much dead thanks to a certain monopoly.

 

[gutturalpiss]

Ahh yes, I meant core OS components specifically (including both kernel and user space), less the (G)UI. Wasn't taking embedded/mobile into consideration. In fact, Java is really dominant in that segment if you take a look at cellphones. Well, I think Sun won't give up on the "Ultimate Java Experience" thing either, in any case; Solaris is a good bet.

HideX, you're talking about graphical applications, yes? If so, although not significantly, a Java app would be slower in execution than say, one written in .NET/C#. It's a good and welcome language, nevertheless. Similarly, on (Open)Solaris, non-Java apps run slower because the native environment itself is in Java (libraries can be loaded faster/preloaded already). For every different software situation there is an appropriate language, and the following thread discusses "newbie" languages, where Java is one: Programming languages - www.hardwarezone.com.sg

 

[blueprintstudios]

ok sorry for the noob question for once but I wanna confirm with you guys rather than find out for myself the hard way or anything.

my current pc only got 2gb ram. (2 x 1gb, 4 ram slots), I'm considering to upgrade the ram since it's cheap now. but if i'm not wrong , XP only supports either 3.2gb/3.75gb/4gb ram (depending on your hardware) . I've been googling forums all over and there's been different results.
i'm still not sure what the /pae thing does , there're ppl saying it helps, and just as many saying it doesn't. whoever can help enlighten it'll be great.

but anyway. my concern is, if XP really only detects 3.25gb of ram. so no point my remaining ram slots I buy 2x 1gb ram again.
4 x 1gb ram = can only use 3.25gb.
VS
2 x 1gb ram + 2 x 512 ram = 3 gb all utilized.

I asked one of the guy at simlim for his opinion whether I should just get 2x 512mb (plus my 2gb) = 3gb, all running dual channel. and oh yeah, this whole thing is about filling up my mainboard and using dual channel.
then he told me this "interesting" (unbelievable actually) thing that "huh? just update to service pack 3 lor. then it'll detect 4gb ram" . so now i'm like "shit is this for real". I havent tried sp3 yet , i dont fix if not broken but thought maybe some of you guys would know better. cos so far I know only 64bit can recognise ram beyond 4gb.

thanks in advance.

 

[godchuanz]

32-bit XP and Vista can only detect 4GB addressable memory. Minus some addresses for other components in your PC, you're left with somewhere 3-4GB (depending on your hardware configuration). With either SP2 or SP3, you still need to enable PAE if you want 4GB.

PAE is a workaround that allows more than 4GB on 32-bit systems. On Vista or XP, even with PAE enabled, you should get the full 4GB RAM, but not more than that. This has got to do with the way Windows handles application's memory space.

Dual channel is faster than single channel, but most people will say not by a significant amount.
Sometimes, having 4x1GB (and filling up all DIMM slots) is slower than 2x1GB. Most people fill only half their DIMM slots. Apparently, this is the optimum. No guarantees though.

If you really need more than 2GB, I feel the best option is to upgrade to 64-bit and skip PAE altogether. But of course, you can still use 4GB and enable PAE to squeeze that last bit of juice out.

 

[Cheez]

I'm not sure if the /PAE switch is the same as the /3GB switch for XP. In the past, the /3GB switch is used very often to get 3GB instead of the 2GB limit in XP. Most people working with DAW has no problems using the /3GB switch.

Microsoft stated that with the /PAE switch, up to 4GB can be detected by XP. However, they also cautioned about hardware incompatibility - which may result in you having to startup in safe mode.

I would agree with godchuanz to upgrade to 64-bit and get 8GB of RAM (or more if your mobo can support it) if you need that much RAM. I'm also upgrading to 64-bit with 8GB RAM. Still in the process of acquiring the parts - need to make it low cost. Got the Q9300 OEM CPU for a good price. Also got my 4x2GB 800 RAM for a good price off Ebay. Considering Asus P5E (or one of its variants) as mobo.

 

[godchuanz]

PAE and the /3GB switch are not the same.
Actually /3GB has nothing to do with how much RAM you have. It concerns the virtual address space. Unless you have an application so big that it requires 3GB worth of addresses, you should leave it disabled.

PAE is ultimately only a workaround, and the proper long term solution is to go 64bit.

Cheez, where did you get the OEM CPU from?

 

[Cheez]

Oh I see. Thanks for the explanation. For 3GB, it's not so much as to how much the software needs for memory. In DAW applications, the number of plugins depend a lot on RAM. The more RAM, the more you can load per instance. Similar for softsamplers - the more RAM, the more samples you can load per instance.

I got the OEM CPU from Ebay. Originally considered Q6600. But the price of the Q9300 is the same as the Q6600 and also faster (the slightly lower cache apparently didn't affect much in benchmarks). So decided to go for the 45nm instead. Only thing with OEM CPUs is I have to get my own cooler and fan, which I don't mind. Already considering Thermalright coolers.

 

[blueprintstudios]

alright first of all thanks to you helpful guys (godchuanz/cheez) who're experienced, an ego idiot wastes more time finding out answers for himself than to put the pride down aside and ask people nicely for knowledge.

godchuanz : "having 4x1GB (and filling up all DIMM slots) is slower than 2x2GB". ah yes i'm aware of that, but when I bought this PC about a year back, the price of ram was killer. now's peanuts. I've yet to test out XP64bit, will have to ask my friends and see how my system works with it (+ borrow their ram too.) I'm using this mainboard :
Asus P5B-V
ASUSTeK Computer Inc.

should be able to support 8gb ram (4x2gb) right?

if xp64 don't work too well with my daw,or not to my liking , I'll just stick to upgrading to 4gb ram and running that /pae thing. I don't really use up 4GB anyway cos i'm not a hardcore sampler. my cool edit personally modified version only 10mb , runnable on a USB stick. stupid right, my original box cd is 600mb, then if you take just the necessary setup.exe it's 30mb++, then after installing , there's so many extra stuff to strip like worldly language and reading other kind of file extensions (I only work with ape, pcm wav and mp3.) = 10mb. (with abit of registry modification) one thing i hate about upgrading "versions" is the file size gets bigger and the inefficiencies/purposes are still the same.

cheez = thanks for the /3gb advice also, I'll first try the /pae, if not lanlan incompatible then I give /pae a shot. and oh yeah, I fixed a DAW pc recently for a friend(also a softie, but low profile guy) , i swear by Asus mobo man. avoid freaking MSIs. I got 6 MSI mobo at my workplace and all of them have problems one by one. big regret.

oh before I forget, is anyone using seagate sata hard disks?, they got this jumper behind to set from 1.5gbps to 3gbps speed. do you actually remove it? (to set to 3gbps) I do that for all 4 of my seagate drives (80,320x2,500), but not sure if i'm causing any harm.

thanks all again... time to pimp ma'shiat up... after next month's pay...

 

[gutturalpiss]

(2*1GB in Dual-channel) + (2*512 in Dual-channel) is perfectly fine. The drop in performance occurs when you mix up DIMMS of different timings and latency, and of course raw speed and FSB ratio (optimum for 667/2=333; 1:1 recent mobos 1333 FSB (since 1333/4=333)). Almost all boards since Core 2 Duo have support for up to 8GB of memory with 4 DIMM slots. Enthusiast and workstation/server ones can hold 16-64, like DFI.

The slight overhead in filling up all DIMM slots is near non-existent, so there is no need to worry. Even when you have a less-than optimum mixed-up arrangement, more memory is always better. Sure, it would be slower technically to load jobs into memory, but you'll have a larger block to hold larger data and practically you won't notice a thing even if you have bad RAM timings. Anyway, your Asus board is rated at 1066 max FSB so don't bother getting anything above 533 (or 667; same price) unless overclocking/special deal/free. AMD on the other hand, has no such problem since they have integrated memory controller on CPU die, and not the motherboard northbridge. That's why I prefer AMD for workstations since the memory handling is significantly better; more reliable; less latency.

Gigabyte for me :mrgreen: Yes, that's actually the so-called "SATA II" speed (300MB/s). You have to make sure your motherboard's SATA controller supports 3GB, else you may opt to get a PCI card, or of course you can leave it at 1.5GB. No harm because the SATA cable is backward/forward compatible so it will fall back to slowest rate if the controller cannot keep up.

 

[blueprintstudios]

nice nice.. thank you gutteralpiss for the heads up on the seagate sata issue! feel alot more confident about my direction now.

 

[Cheez]

In DAW apps, SATA or SATA II will probably make very little diference if at all. The bottle neck is the drive seek and write time. Bottle neck is not at the transfer rate, which is fast enough. I wouldn't worry too much about it.

 

[blueprintstudios]

oh no actually the transfer rates's for my "backup" / saving process. i'm the backup-siao.

 

[HideX_X]

Note to threadstarter u done with ya computer if not our input is no longer needed

 

[vickomaniac]

heh i havent had the chance to go down yet,
but soon, im moving to my new place at the end of the month so busy busy.
but thanks to all guys!

and feel free to use this thread for your discussions, it's fine by me

 

[l0u5y]

hey guys. im making a new pc for my music stuff. im currently still using my laptop which i use for my school work, msning, gaming and stuff for music production which i dun think its wise. ive read up cubase forums and they say that the intel q6600 and the asus p5k mobo is most stable. im a hardcore sampler biatch but i also do some recording and stuff. my fren tells me that i shud get 3 hard drives instead of 1 big one coz its fastest for the sampler to stream into my library or sth like dat. and every different brand of ram differs?

so these are the parts im getting:
Intel q6600 quad 2 core 2.4ghz
Asus P5k mother board
Kingston 2gb DDR2 667mhz x 4 (alrdy have it)
some matrox gfx card which card support 4 monitors(alrdy have it)
Coolermaster Real Power 850W

im not sure if i shud get xp64 or vista. becoz i have 8gb of ram so i might as well get 64bit. and cubase 4 is not 64bit yet rite? is there any disadvantages if i use cubase 4 on 64bit os?

 

[HideX_X]

lou5y i thing u should contact me.. i can help u out contact me at 96589565