Mechaman wrote:Of course, telling my dad about it today results in a "Well, our hardware guys say that they can't do the level of resolution that a CRT can.." (?)
I guess I'll have to hit the stores and see if I can feel them out.
Anyways, has anybody had experience with the new Athlon MP processors? I'm interested in going dual-proc, and I'm torn between getting nice fast MPs on a Tyan Tiger, or going with an older dual P3 board.
I'm not really interested in overclocking, either.
Well, the res thing is pretty much bull. The Dell 2000FP has a native 1600x1200 res, and the refresh is irrelevant with DVI, use 60hz if you're going to use the VGA in.
The sony GDM F520 I previously had would do higher resolutions, but 1600x1200 was the highest it would go at 85hz refresh, that's the lowest I can stand for any length of time, therefore, the higher res modes on the sony were useless to me (2048x1536 max, or wtf ever) even at 85hz, the Sony caused eyestrain much earlier than the Dell, so there you have it, for me at least.
BTW, the GDM F520 is considered to be one of the best crt's you can buy. I say meh.
As for the other part of your question, for video editing I'm running a Tyan Tiger MP with two 1900+ MP's. I've built many systems, and let me clearly state that this one was a bitch and a half to get running and stable. I honestly don't know if I'd do it again, given the chance to get my money back and do it over.
I still can't run it with all four RAM banks filled, so I'm running with 768 MB,and a stick sitting in the desk drawer.
It had problems recognizing my CD/DVD drives as DMA Capable, even thought the drives all work fine in other machines.
You have to do screwy stuff just to get normal avi's to play properly:
1) open WMP
2) in task mgr, select the WMP process, set priority to above normal, change cpu affinity to cpu 0 only, minimize task mgr.
That's what you have to do just to play back most mpeg 4 files without skips.
Does it sound fun yet?
Bottom line: skip the dual AMD if you don't want to go through crap like this, or are not an experienced system builder.
Want more input? Have a read at
http://forums.2cpu.com/index.php.
Check out all the people going through hell with dual AMD systems...
My Eyes Are The Victim's Eyes.
My Hands Are The Assailant's Hands.