Chosing a new PC

[The Natural Philosopher]

Every time for me out of a sample of one :-)

Can. but not always and not always seamlessly. If the right 2 bit libraries are not available, you are in serious geek territory to get things working.

But doesn't work properly. Ditto acrobat.

Things that have caused me issues were

32 bit HP scanner module. Simply did not work Lack of proper CUPS support for brand new laser printer. Didn't work on the OSX Tiger either. Needed to find something close.. NOT a 32/64 bit issue Google earth. Needed extra stuff to work 32 bit Adobe acrobat. Didn't work at all. 64 bit Flash plugin. Breaks on some sites.

Now that's on Lenny. Debian have new release and it looks a lot better. Maybe the non-free stuff will work.

I wouldn't go back to 32bit, but don't expect there to be instant third party support for 54 bit to the level that exists on 32 bit.

[Skipweasel]

High resolution shouldn't be a problem - I snaffled a spare 19" TFT the other day which runs at 1280x1024 and even my 2003 laptop can drive it.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I bought an end of line 1650 by something LCD cheep. Even the Intel onboard shit drove it reasonably. Enough for text and static graffix.

Full screen Flash movies stressed the CPU tho.

[Skipweasel]

WSXGA+ (1680x1050) or UXGA (1600x1200) probably. Might be cheap, but all I had to do was walk off with mine. Legitimately, I might point out.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Thats the bunny.

or UXGA (1600x1200) probably. Might be cheap, but all

[Huge]

Some interesting architectures you're running there. :o)

[Skipweasel]

Well, they do get a lot of unpaid work out of me, and have done for years, and the monitors are just sitting around doing nothing.

[Daniel James]

There are (and were) "Energy Efficient" versions of, for example, the quad-core Athlon II that have a TDP of only 45W despite being 45nm technology. The i3 chips are 73W (Clarkdale) or 65W (Sandy Bridge, which wouldn't have been available at the time?) despite being only 32nm.

Of course, TDP is only a rough indication of the actual power drawn by any particular chip, but it gives an idea of the upper limit.

It's true that the i3 CPUs have more L2 cache than the Athlon IIs, and that their clock speeds are higher than the EE version of the Athlon IIs .. but the Athlons are cheaper and are true quad-core rather than dual core with hyperthreading. I think my money's still on the AMD parts where power consumption is important.

Cheers, Daniel.

[Daniel James]

1680x1050? That'd be WSXGA+ in the mad babbling of monitor makers.

Cheers, Daniel.

[John Stumbles]

I'm thinking that if I run a basic 64-bit Debian on the machine with VirtualBox, I can then run a 32-bit distro in one VM so I should be able to use whatever works with my peripherals. Wouldn't I?

[tony sayer]

In article , Daniel James scribeth thus

My machine is now some 5 years old is a 1.7 Ghz but does all I need fro it including some complex maths and radio coverage prediction stuff. The only thing that might push me to a new machine is newer ones seem to be very quiet nowadays;)...

[John Stumbles]

Any particular atom board (& supplier?) you'd suggest? I've got a variety of cases & PSUs around, and the gig of RAM in the dodgy rig I'm replacing anyway, if they'd work with the Atom.

Got them anyway. If the Atom mobo has >2 SATAs I could put the disk with the OS + snapshot backup in there as well and save an external USB drive. In fact I'd have to do something like that unless the Atom has IDE since my raid disks don't have the OS on and I don't want to faff around reformatting them to add a non-raid partition.

[Tom Anderson]

It has more *architectural* registers - ones that a program can refer to explicitly. But CPUs since the 90s have had more actual registers than that, and have used register renaming to supply them to the program. That has never been perfect, and it hasn't made compiler writers' lives any easier, but it means the impact of adding more registers to an architecture is not as great as you might think.

Someone must have done a properly-controlled benchmark of 32-bit vs 64-bit on the x86 at some point (same hardware, same source code, same compiler). It doesn't seem like it would be hard to do. Does anyone know of one?

tom

[The Natural Philosopher]

Yes. Probaly use a windoze for the scanner at least, as Xsane is a bit crap.

But you do need to talk to printers directly. Thst not a 64 bit issue tho, its a cups PPD issue.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I bought mine from

because they are local. Other sources are

beware: these things may not fit the cases you have. DDR-3 is the RAM you need, but you don't need much for a server really. half a gig is fine. If you can find DDR-3 hat small..

No, its 2 drives only IIRC.

You need t go to a slightly different board with a fan fr 4xSATA

I could put the disk with

I think if you have case and PSU and disks, then a low power ATOM based mini-itx board is the way to go, if it fits the case. Otherwise expect to spend a bit more on that.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Many linux ones were done.

I read em all when making up my mind.

As you might expect, graphics and data crunching a lot better, normal stuff not much different, program loading a bit worse on 64 bit.

Really where it counts, is driving your screen, or doping huge processing on graphics or video style objects.

[The Natural Philosopher]

yes. I don't expect to upgrade any time soon either.

But get that lot backed up now. 5 years is about MTBF on most disk drives.

[tony sayer]

What!, As long as that;?...

[Clive George]

Isn't that a sort of motorcycle?

[Steve Firth]

Have you considered a Qnap NAS? They are interesting beasts with 1,2 or 4 drive bays in the SoHo versions. They have gigabit LAN, up to four external USB ports and eSATA. They provide most of the functions that you are after not news or web, but third party add-ons may cover that - since they are a Linux server with a plug-in architecture. They are also low power and can, depending on model, have up to 12GB of storage. More if you make use of the eSATA and USB.

a look at the TS112, 212 or 412. Prices range from £150 to £365 if you shop around. The 212 is probably the price "sweet spot".