A tale of two PCs

[KyanWan]

Last time I was at a computer show is when I bought this card - while I was in high school: [ame]http://www.amazon.com/ATI-Technologies-Inc-Xpert-98/dp/B00001MXYR[/ame]

For kicks, I checked out the old computer fair people in this area - and their "show" looks more like a flea market.

I remember even the last time I was at a show - over 10 years ago - they had a lot of junk third party stuff, even people selling old garbage parts ( like monitors I could have scraped out of the dumpster @ my mom's work. )

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For that MS testing junk - just ignore it. The newer the hardware the worse the tests run. It always happens. Any parts newer than the installer confuse the thing. It thinks "WTH? 2ghz? This speed is too fast. Let's mark it down to ... 2 mhz. Yeah. Must be a typo."

I mean, it's a natural reaction from a Microsoft program, right? MS makes so many errors, why don't the hardware makers make them too?

I do get a kick out of him playing the Reader Rabbit matching game on a PC that he build... it seems kind of backwards, but I think it is important to start them young!

Now that's cool.

If you ever get a busted old PC - let him take it apart & put it back together.

Way back when ... that's the kind of stuff I did.

TVs, cable decoders, radios, toys, my computer ...

uh ... just that ... only, my parents didn't know ... ROFL!

 

[5starGeneralAlphaSnake]

Wow thats bad.

 

[Deacon]

Now that's cool.

If you ever get a busted old PC - let him take it apart & put it back together.

Way back when ... that's the kind of stuff I did.

TVs, cable decoders, radios, toys, my computer ...

uh ... just that ... only, my parents didn't know ... ROFL!

That's exactly what I let him do. I have to sets of bins in my office. Anything in the bottom bins he can take w/o asking. The top bin is for "daddy" only. His first build was with a bunch of USB and other pinned cables when he was 16 months. He sat there and managed to hook them together into a loop. I taught him watch type of connector each one is and he went from there. My wife was upset that he was playing w/ a cardboard box for days and nothing else. When I looked at it I noticed that he had reconstructed a mock-up of my PC inside the cardboard box. Cables and all... that he could get to. Hell, he even had some of the tubing for my liquid cooling in there.

We're getting ready to build another PC out of parts and he'll be doing all the work himself. I'll try to take picks and post what I can.

PC Update

On the PC front, my Vista score is MUCH higher now. 4.3 w/ the on board video. Everything else is 5.9. I don't hold too much stock in these numbers, but I was downright insulted at the 1.0 rating at first.

I spent most of my night doing Vista updates and the like. Tonight I'll get the rest of the HDDs in place, move data, and re-install steam. I should be ready for gaming by late tonight or tomorrow. After that I'll see if I need to upgrade my video card yet.

The on board video is a HD Radeon 3300 w/ 128MB of DDR3 memory.

-Deac

 

[Deacon]

I played TF2 on my new system last night. FPS was only 30, but it never dropped below that. That was using the onboard GFX card with everything set to high and AA set to off. My screen size was 1650x1080.

I'll be running a 3dmark test on it tonight.

-D

 

[yellowbadger52]

Wow that is very cool your son is playing with old pc parts. Just think by the time hes 8 and you need a new pc dont order from dell just buy what your want and have him put it together for you.

It sounds like you have a very solid set up right now. It seems like its very similar performance wise to the rig i play on when im home from college but a little better.