Design

One of the classes I’m taking is a design class and it is causing me to cock my head to the side as I look at this current design. Most of it works but a few things need some tweaking. Perhaps on my upcoming vacation to Washington, D.C. I will spend some time tweaking the design. That leads into my next topic.

Washington, D.C.

If you happen to live in the downtown DC area or know of great places to eat on the cheap, drop a line. I’ll be doing this entire trip on a $500 budget including airfare, so after flight and hostel I’m drop to $300 for food/entertainment. Hook me up with some hints before I spend the last two days digging through trash cans.

Upcoming

Besides redesigning this place I’m also going to convert this over to a more personal website. I’ve had to censor myself a good bit in the past as I used this blog as a launch platform from which I could jump into the computer hardware industry. Now that I’m entrenched in reviews, I no longer have to be so professional on my little corner of the Internet. Guess I’ll have a little bit of fun with that and shoot some video while I’m at it.

Next update before I fly out for DC. Hoping I can drag my laptop out with me to DC, Wi-Fi might be an issue though.

Core i7 is without a doubt a server architecture with it’s heavy emphasis on connectivity, memory bandwidth, and scalability. These properties don’t necessarily make Core i7 a bad desktop chip but it definitely isn’t a huge improvement over Core 2’s Conroe and Penryn architectures. For typical applications like gaming, audio, and video playback, Core 2 was more than sufficient for most consumers. Making the jump from a dual-core two threaded Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 to a quad-core eight threaded Intel Core i7 920 doesn’t result in a four fold increase in performance. Typically you are looking at a 10% to 15% performance increase, mostly due to the increased memory bandwidth, lowered latency, and subtle architectural changes that have increase performance per clock cycle.

Where Core i7 does hold massive improvements are in highly specialized applications that can fully utilize many processors in highly parallelized(is that a word?) scenarios. Things like video encoding, file compression and decompression, and high performance rendering all witness significant performance gains simply due to the huge jump in available threads for these applications to utilize. Dual-socket Nehalem systems have been shown to literally annihilate quad-socket Phenom systems like Anandtech’s SAP preview.

So once again, where do we stand? I can confidently say that Intel’s Core i7 is definitely overkill for the general consumer. If anything we’re moving towards netbook style computers based around Intel’s Atom architecture with sufficient power to perform HD playback and your average activities of answering email and surfing the web. For the gamer, it is a very tough call between Core i7 and Core 2 Duo, chances are the additional costs of Core i7 make the limited performance gains not a prudent financial investment. The way I see it, the hardware is there, now we just need the programmers to utilize it. Until then, stick with your E8600s.

Newer is Not Better

Intel just released their heavily anticipated Core i7 lineup based on their Nehalem architecture. This architecture is no doubt fast but we aren’t seeing the performance jump that we saw going from the Athlon 64 to the Core 2 Duo nearly 2 years ago. This is due to Intel focusing more on multi-threaded performance rather than single-threaded performance.

Unfortunately a gamer your main focus is running a typically single-threaded or sometimes weakly multi-threaded application as fast as possible. To stretch your budget out as much as possible I can happily point you in the direction of the Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 and E8600 processors. I suggest buying “older” Core 2 Duo processors for a few reasons. First, the processors themselves are cheaper. Second, the motherboards cost half as much, $300 versus $150. Third, DDR2 is much cheaper than DDR3, further saving you money. Getting 90% of the performance for half of the cost is hard to argue with.

Nvidia was Right

A few months back Nvidia stated that the CPU matters less to gaming than the GPU does. To the Tech savvy this was like saying “The World is round” and presenting this fact like new research. This has always been true, the CPU exists in a gaming platform to feed the GPU and perform generic tasks like sound generation and gameplay organization.

With current gaming there are three resolutions or markets. The low-end consists of 1280×1024 and 1440×900 resolution monitors, the mid-range between 1680×1050 and 1920×1200 monitors, and the high-end with 2560 x 1600 resolution monitors. When shopping for a graphic card you need to first figure out which bracket you sit in before figuring out what GPU is necessary for you. Most gamers these days sit in the mid-range bracket with the low-end market diminishing and the high-end market slowly growing.

Low-end Gamers

For the low-end gamers there is nothing better than the HD4830 that was just recently released. It’s priced around $125 and features enough processing power to be effective for another 12+ months. If you don’t mind spending another $25 the HD4850 makes an even better deal by offering a significant jump in performance without much of a jump in cost or power consumption.

Mid-range Gamers

For the mid-range gamer it gets to be a bit trickier with many options available to you. The GTX260 and HD4870 1GB offer great value however CrossFire HD4850s are another great option. Aiming between $200 and $300, the cheapest option would be a GTX 260 896MB for roughly $250. The HD4870 1GB costs $10 more and offers roughly identical performance so it’s a tough call here. Lastly CrossFire HD4850s will run you $300 and offer a large performance jump over either HD4870 or GTX 260 albeit with greatly increased power consumption and requiring a CrossFire motherboard.

High-end Gamers

The high-end market has a slew of options available to it with prices ranging from $400 to $1000+. Given the near doubling in resolution going from a 24″ to a 30″ monitor, effectively gaming at this resolution simply becomes a scaling problem. Thankfully with CrossFire and SLI you can just throw more GPUs at the problem until your wallet is empty. I personally would start with an HD4870 X2 for $480 and see if that is enough performance to suit your needs. Otherwise SLI GTX 280 are another option although that nearly doubles the cost. In the end it’s all about the budget, I myself am quite conservative for my daily gaming computers so the HD4870 X2 would be my card of choice.

Motherboards and Memory

You can’t have a computer without a motherboard. For all the options I’ve mentioned above besides the SLI GTX 280s, I would suggest picking up a decent Intel P45 based board. Something in the $125 to $150 range will be fine and make sure it supports DDR2, not DDR3. DDR3 is still a bit expensive and should only be purchased if you are either a benchmarker or buying a Core i7 system.

When picking out memory, search for two things. First, capacity, you’ll want at least a 4GB kit of memory, two 2GB sticks. Secondly, speed, you’ll want DDR2-800 CAS5 for most systems or DDR2-1000 CAS5 for overclocked systems. I specify the faster memory for overclockers as you’ll typically want between 450FSB and 500FSB and a DDR2-800 kit could limit you if it doesn’t overclock well.

Storage

Solid state drives have received the greatest amount of press lately however your reliable platter based hard drive is still quite competitive and functional. SSDs are great however the price to performance and storage ratios are all wrong for the average consumer. That being said, there are a few ways you can approach your storage system.

The traditional route involves one drive for everything. If you want to do this, grab a 1TB drive for around $150 and call it a day. I would also suggest a second drive to backup your data on, ideally another 1TB drive. Now, if you would like to mix it up a bit, keep on reading and pay attention as things could get crazy.

I know I said SSD are a bad idea but in some cases they can actually be a great buy. My first suggestion is a bit crazy but also insanely fast. Buy two 30GB SSDs(OCZ Solid Series will do) and combine them via RAID0. This will give you 60GB of incredibly fast storage, perfect for installing your operating system and your games. Then grab a terabyte drive and store all your movies, music, and miscellaneous data.

Another option would be to grab two 300GB VelociRaptors and RAID them together. Unfortunately these will cost you much more than the SSDs and offer similar performance in most instances. However, you will have 600GB of speedy storage. I personally prefer the SSD option but some people still prefer a hard drive and it’s additional storage.

Wrapping it all up

I’ve covered a lot in this article but only brushed over the issues at hand. At the end of the day for gamers, Core 2 Duo is roughly better than Core i7, GPUs are better than CPUs, memory capacity is better than speed, and storage can be handled however you like. If anyone would like some specific advice feel free to drop a comment and I’ll do my best to make a well rounded suggestion.

The Rules

• You can only enter once.
• The contest is open to anyone! US winners may have to provide tax information.
• Email addresses from colleges will be given two votes. Be cool, stay in school!
• Winner will be selected at random using Random.org

The Task

This contest is very simple. Drop a comment down below with a suggestion on the blog design, a topic you’d like me to cover, or just tell me how your day is going. The contest will run till October 25th, 2008 at midnight EST. Visit Time.gov if you want to wait till the last possible second to submit your comment. Good luck!

Update!

First off I’d like to say thank you to everyone who has submitted a comment! There are just under 4 hours remaining so if you have for some reason been debating on posting a comment, do it soon. Any comments posted past midnight will not be counted. I suspect it’ll take me a day or two to sift through all the email addresses, remove any duplicates, and then randomly select a winner. Good luck everyone!

The Specs

When I was intially asked to choose a laptop and saw the dv4t, I wasn’t very impressed with the specifications. The base dv4t costs $599 currently at HP.com and packs an Intel Pentium 2GHz T3200 processor, 1GB of memory, a 14.1″ screen, a 160GB hard drive, Intel integrated graphics, and a DVD-RW drive. When I opened the box though I was quite shocked. This particular dv4t was packing an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.8GHz T9600 processor(unavailable on HP.com!), 4GB of memory, a 320GB hard drive, a Nvidia 9200M GS graphic card, a Blu-Ray drive, and a 250GB “SmartBay” hard drive. Since a few items packed into this laptop aren’t currently available for the general public I’d estimate this laptop has a worth around $2200, 3.6 times that of the base model. In addition to the hardware specs the laptop also includes an integrated webcam and a fingerprint scanner.

Since this laptop is being marketed towards the student or single-computer individual, I tried my hardest to solely use the laptop and bring it along whenever I could find an excuse to. Weighing in at 5.2 pounds and 15.7″ from corner to corner, the dv4t isn’t a light netbook but it isn’t a desktop replacement either. I was easily able to carry the dv4t and charger on walks across campus, to friend’s houses, and around town. Speaking of the charger, battery life on average was about 3 hours with general web surfing and writing.

dv4t as an Entertainment Center

College students typically have a scarcity of space in their dorm rooms and therefore must make the best use of their limited space. As a general laptop this dv4t functions perfectly with ample processing power and sufficient memory to make even Vista seem snappy. The 320gb hard drive has a separate 10gb partition on it for HP’s recovery software leaving you with a little under 290gb of storage space, more than enough for anything besides a hefty movie collection. Using the laptop to watch movies worked out well but in the age of high definition television the 14.1″ 1280×800 pixel screen was a bit limiting. Hopping onto my bed though and watching a movie with my girlfriend went well, just don’t expect to open up a movie theater with this as the focal piece.

Temperatures and Cooling

Laptops are notorious for having incredibly high idle temperatures and even higher load temperatures. With the laptop sitting at idle in Vista the processor cores were idling around 41C with the room temperature around 26C. Tossing the laptop onto my bed so that it’s exhaust port was slightly blocked with my blankets raised the idle temperatures up to 44C. This was actually quite surprising and very acceptable for a laptop, my desktop even idles at higher temperatures than this. Loading one processor core to 100% increased the temperatures to 61C on the desk and 66C on the bed. At this point the center of the backside of the laptop was starting to warm up. Loading both cores resulted in 74C on the desk and 81C on the bed. Watching an H.264 encoded 720p MP4 resulted in a processor utilization of ~25% so you shouldn’t even see greater than ~60C while watching a movie in bed. Given the ample amount of insulation on the backside of the laptop, it never became unbearably hot although the exhaust port did blow out a hot stream of air.

Observations

A few things stand out on the dv4t that bugged me a bit. First and foremost, the trackpad. HP chose a metal cover for the trackpad and my finger just stuck to the thing rather than slide. This makes using the trackpad for more than 15 seconds frustrating as your scrolling and dragging turns into a jerky dance across the screen. Having the audio ports on the front of the laptop caused problems as I then had my speaker cables sitting underneath my right arm when typing which was an annoyance. Using the QuickPlay buttons at the top of the laptop could be frustrating at times as the sound buttons would choose at times to simply be unresponsive.

Now for the things I really liked. The keyboard keys have a key travel similar to a regular desktop keyboard, great for hammering out lots of text quickly. The keyboard itself is also fullsized, no miniaturized keys that you have to nitpick at. The Altec Lansing speakers were both crisp and loud enough to satisfy my desire for music on the go. The HP SmartBay was a great idea as I immediately removed the BluRay drive and inserted the spare 250GB drive. I’d like to see the ability to RAID the internal and SmartBay and include a dock for the BluRay drive in the future. RAID1 in a mobile platform would provide even greater data safety in the case of drive failure.

All in all the dv4t was a solid laptop that impressed me with the hardware it was packing. Even in a cheaper trim it’s still a decent option for a college student. For the cost of this particular laptop I’d prefer an Apple Macbook Pro but for the sub-$1000 bracket the dv4t would be a great option. Check back here tomorrow to see how you can go about winning this laptop.