Fastest performance, best value?

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I am currently running XP Pro 32-bit with a 3 gig Pentium 4 with 1 gig of RAM
in a SOHO environment. My most taxing app is MS Access running a 250 meg
database with lots of bells & whistles. The database regularly uses 100+% of
my CPU. The rest of the apps are pretty standard Office apps. I rip CDs
often with Win Media Player 11, which uses 100+% of my CPU.

I would describe myself as a "practical" early-adopter, but not a gearhead.

After Jan 1, 2007 I plan to buy a new computer. I am thinking of a
2nd-from-the fastest Core2Duo with 64-bit Vista, the new Office 2007, 10k or
15k SAS drives and 2 gig of RAM. Alternatively, I might use the 5100 series
Xeon chip.

What configuration would be the fastest, but also best value? Will the
Office 2007 version of Access be a speed demon on 64-bit Vista with a
Core2Duo, or does 64-bit make a difference with these basic Office apps? I
haven't been able to find a concise article that lays this out for the SOHO
user.

Thanks for your thoughts.
 
After Jan 1, 2007 I plan to buy a new computer. I am thinking of a
2nd-from-the fastest Core2Duo with 64-bit Vista, the new Office 2007, 10k or
15k SAS drives and 2 gig of RAM. Alternatively, I might use the 5100 series
Xeon chip.

What configuration would be the fastest, but also best value? Will the
Office 2007 version of Access be a speed demon on 64-bit Vista with a
Core2Duo, or does 64-bit make a difference with these basic Office apps? I
haven't been able to find a concise article that lays this out for the SOHO
user.
Click to expand...

Dual Core is definitely the way to go. 2Gb of RAM is excellent as well (I'm
running a AMD x2 4800+ with 2Gb RAM, and two WD SATA 10000 RPM Raptor drives
in a RAID 0 array. Both XP, Windows Server 2003 and RC1 are blazing fast. No
issues.

64 is best left behind for a while. Lack of driver support being the major
issue. Once you go dual core, the performance difference between 32 and 64
bit apps wont really matter.

What do you mean by SAS? Regardless, stick with SATA as they are cheap and
fast. Western Digital's 150Gb Raptor drive offers the performance of a lot of
SCSI drives, at a fraction of the cost. Installing two and using RAID 0 to
further boost performance is also recommended.

This way you balance price with performance.
 
I'd go with a much larger amount of RAM. 2GB is small nowdays. I'd think
that 4GB would speed your database up a bit. I've had 2GB for 6 years now,
of course I use TrueSpace 3, 3D Studio MAX and several other 3D modeling and
rendering applications and 2GB of RAM is minimal for that sort of thing.
Recently I upgraded to 6GB (max for my MB) and I saw a huge drop in render
times and I plan on gong to a motherboard (MB) that supports either 8GB or
16GB depending on my buget over the next few months.

Regards,
Skon
 
The ammount of memory you need is really dependant on what you are using. If
you are doing a lot of heavy gaming, or graphic design, then yes, whether
using x86, or x64, beef up the RAM. That and make sure you get a good graphic
card. They make new fancy dual GPU cards that have 512 Meg to 1 gig video
memory.
For other situations, it may not be needed. This computer, AMD Athlon 64 X2
Live, 2 Gb PC 4200 DDR2, WD 250 GB SATA, INVIDIA 6150LE, for the most is an
internet, music and media worhorse. It seems to work fine, no slow times and
no skips or issues.
The biggest mistake I see people make, which causes the most complaints in
these forums about performance, seems to be with folks not having systems
that are made to fit their needs. One thing to to remember. Thoush Vista
required more computer ability, it manages the computer's performance better.
That is all good, as long as you understand that through it manages the
performance better, it still does require the more computer ability.
More on that is that if you are using the bare minimum requirements, your
computer will not run as fast as the same computer did in XP. the minimum
requirements for XP was much lower. Thus, the system you use now, may have
screamed in XP because it was well above the requirement. It will be slower
in Vista because it barely meet the standard.
Just as the upgrade from 3.1.1 to 95, and the upgrade from 95 to 98 and
later XP, the more enhanced the OS is, the more ability it has, the more
resource it requires.
I know this may seem somewhat elementry to many users, and I don't mean to
offend anyone by going into a lecture about this, but it is often overlooked.
Luckly, the lifespan of an OS is usually around 5 years, so if you meet a
good standard right now, for Vista, it will probably hold for a while. But
when you upgrade your OS, you should be prepared to upgrade your whole
computer.
Besides, 5 years is more than a life span for a computer now a days anyway.

Hope this helps :-)
 
Even if your just doing word processing and web browseing you will see a
differance even in load times of applications. When I had only a meager 2GB
of RAM it would take MS Word aprox 15 seconds to load. With 6GB my system
loads MS Word in just under 2 seconds. Of course 10k rpm HD's, a 512MB PCIx
video card over clocked, 2.8GHz Pentium Dual Core CPU over clocked by 20%,
several judicious edits to the registry & disableing services I don't need,
and a 2GB flash drive on USB 2.0 using Ready Boost for the system swap file
doesn't hurt either! ;-) Ready Boost is definatly worth while. Just that
one thing perceptibly sped up my system more then any other single tweak.

Regards,
Skon
 
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