   Help convince me that I need a new PC
  OK, the time has come. I'm once again looking at all the hotness that's out there on the market, and drooling. A lot.Here's my current situation:My development machine is an AthlonXP 2400+, 1GB RAM, 75GB across 2 hard drives, and a GF4Ti4800. It does fine for coding and such but is aging; it can't really handle running the games I work on.I have a server machine that's an AthlonMP 2800+, 1GB RAM, 80GB hard drive, and no video hardware. It's a blazing fast workhorse server, and I'll probably keep it as a server.My gaming rig is an Athlon64 3200+, 1GB DDR400, 80GB 7200 EIDE hard drive, with a Radeon X800XL 256. It very smoothly handles the games I play and work on, but let's face it, it's just not sexy top-end hardware anymore.My laptop (and this is the real kicker) is a Celeron 1GHz, 256MB of RAM, and a 20GB hard drive. It slogs through Win2000 and VS6, and won't handle any more than that. In short, it's an ancient and rapidly decaying dinosaur beast. The battery life is also an abysmal 2 hours on maximum battery saving settings, which just sucks.Now, I have a dilemma. I want a beefy, kickass development rig; switching my gaming box into my dev machine and getting a new gaming rig would solve this. That's how I got my current dev machine, and I refuse to run gaming and development on the same machine; the stuff I need to do both is just too different to run stably on a single system.However, I also really really really want a better laptop, because travelling with this thing is a pain in the arse. It doesn't do well anymore, and having to find a power outlet every 45 minutes kind of defeats the point of having a laptop. It's fine for email, random web surfing, and maybe watching a DVD or two, but it's a useless work machine at this point, especially if I want to do development on the road.To be practical, I really don't need a major laptop upgrade just yet; my next travel is in a week and I don't have time to get a new box by then. After that I don't plan on travelling for quite some time again, so realistically the laptop is low priority. More to the point, I'm sick and tired of writing code on one PC and having to go test it on another one across the room.So, people of Gamedev.Net: your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to persuade me that I need a new PC. I want one already, and I know more or less what I'd get, but I just can't quite bring myself to rationalize the purchase quite yet. Help me spend my vast sea of riches.   
  This is easy.Log on to your gaming machine.  Go to www.srtest.com and select "The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion" as the product. Then run the test and it will check your system specs and rate them for that game.  After doing that, you will see that your gaming rig is out of date, and it's time to retire it for a new one.   ;  I think you should get a new PC, and hand those old "slow" ones down to me.  I would reluctantly take them off or your hands.   ;  Self-inflicted peer-pressure, brilliant. [grin]   ;  Oblivion will be all chuggy. You don't want chuggy Oblivion.   ;  You don't really need a new desktop, though I can't see how you survive on so little disk space (then again, I do video editing, so I eat hard drives for breakfast).The Radeon card is actually pretty descent for the time being - I just went from an X800Pro 256MB to a 7900 GT OC 256MB, and for most games there is not a lot of difference yet (and I run at 1600x1200 minimum). There is a difference, but right now I doubt you'll find it worth your money (I only upgraded because I needed to do the ugly AGP->PCI-Express upgrade).By the processor I assume you have a 939 motherboard, which means you do have upgrade options. Maybe it's just that I have been buying computers forever, but the progression in speeds is just so slow that I can't see a very worth while upgrade for a 3200+ unless you where willing to drop some serious cash on an X2 4600+, X2 4800+ or high end FX (even I didn't do this, as the price/performance curve past the X2 4200+ just isn't worth it). I went from a Barton 2800+ to an X2 4200+, and it took a lot of waiting to do it. As far as games, it hasn't made a great deal of difference, though desktop work is much faster (I'd almost suggest you build an X2 development machine).To be honest all I'd really recommend is buying a 1GB ram upgrade for both computers and then consider exactly what kind of power vs portability you want in a laptop. If both machines use PCI-Express, you might drop the X800XL into the development machine, and get a newer video card for the gaming machine.Only one column had an unfilled bar graph - apparently XP 64bit would be better then my current XP Pro SP2.   ;I'm currently running an all new computer, except for the video card which I haven't upgraded yet. GeForce FX5500 which I swear is slower then my AGP GeForce TI4600! Hopefully I'll be picking up a GeForce 7900GT within a month or so.Quote:My laptop (and this is the real kicker) is a Celeron 1GHz, 256MB of RAM, and a 20GB hard drive. It slogs through Win2000 and VS6, and won't handle any more than that. In short, it's an ancient and rapidly decaying dinosaur beast. The battery life is also an abysmal 2 hours on maximum battery saving settings, which just sucks.I would love to have a laptop that fast. [wink] I do most of my development on a 400Mhz celeron that is maxed out at 288MB of ram with a 10GB hdd and to top it off the battery doesn't work. But the couch is SO much more comfortable then my computer chair. [grin]   ;  Yes... yes... new hardware for Oblivion. That's a great excuse, thanks!What I'm thinking at the moment is to pick up an X2 proc for my current gaming rig and turn it into my main development box, then build a new gaming rig and use the Athlon64 in that. The processor is great for current games and will definitely hold its own for a while longer, and the 939 mobo will leave me with a processor upgrade path in the future if I wish. I'll probably snag another X800XL since it's a great value-for-money card and still plenty beefy (I'm honestly not too hung up on the notion of having cutting-edge video hardware). That'll give me a really solid development platform, a gaming machine basically in line with what I have now, and decent upgrade paths for both should I need to go that route in a couple of years.Laptop wise... I'm really hunting for an excuse to pick up a MacBook Pro, but that's still such a huge chunk of change that I'm really struggling to justify that one just yet, especially considering I'd have to buy another Windows license. Maybe if I can get a raise...;Quote:Original post by ApochPiQLaptop wise... I'm really hunting for an excuse to pick up a MacBook Pro, but that's still such a huge chunk of change that I'm really struggling to justify that one just yet, especially considering I'd have to buy another Windows license. Maybe if I can get a raise...Well, I recommend them everytime laptops come up, but personally I go with the company that actually designs and builds the MacBook Pro, Asus, not the company that gets a 1 or 2 Asus models (and now that they are Intel we can see positively that they are *downgraded* versions of existing models) and markets them with a fruit logo.   ;  i'd just save up until later this year and build a beast. amd and intel are both putting out new chips soon and d3d10 cards are hopefully only a few months away.   