Nickface's Workstation Quandry
Posted: March 8th, 2007, 21:51
So here's the deal. I can pick up an old Dell workstation for fairly cheap on my end. I talked about something similiar to this before in <a href="http://www.5punk.co.uk/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=5400">this thread</a>, but what kept me from doing so was the fact that the workstation in question then was AGP only.
So here's my new question. I have another system that has come into my sights, and this time it does have PCI-E. But there's one or two things that has put me on the fence as to whether I should buy this system.
First off, here's the specs:
For those want the cliff notes, it's got Dual 3.6 Xeons, 4gb of RAM, and a Quatro FX3400. My concern rests with the processors.
These are older-ish xeon and are not multi-core, which seems to be all the rage now. Is not having multi core processors going to keep me from playing games and doing other stuff in the next two years? The second thing that has me guessing is the ability to run Fista. I have seen several threads on various other boards talking about getting Fista going on this workstation, some seem to have no problems, others have had nitemares. I just want to be able to run it without having the thing spaz out and die, judging by hardware and such alone, should this be a viable Fista PC?
So here's my new question. I have another system that has come into my sights, and this time it does have PCI-E. But there's one or two things that has put me on the fence as to whether I should buy this system.
First off, here's the specs:
Code: Select all
Quantity Parts # Part Description
1 5120P CORD, POWER, 125V, 6FT, SPT2, UNSHIELDED
1 D7593 PROCESSOR, 80546K, 3.6G, 1M, XEON NOCONA, 800, E0
1 X0392 PRINTED WIRING ASSY, PLANAR (MOTHERBOARD), TUMWATER, PWS670
1 D7593 PROCESSOR, 80546K, 3.6G, 1M, XEON NOCONA, 800, E0
1 H2703 CARD (CIRCUIT), VOLTAGE REGULATOR MODULE, CONTROLLER, 10.1
1 6W610 KEYBOARD, 104, UNIVERSAL SERIAL BUS, UNITED STATES, RELATIONSHIP PRODUCT GROUP, SILITEK
1 T1409 MOUSE, UNIVERSAL SERIAL BUS, 7BTN, WHEEL, OPTICAL, LOGITECH
2 8Y664 DUAL IN-LINE MEMORY MODULE, 1G, 400M, 128X72, 8, 240, 1RX4
2 G2196 DUAL IN-LINE MEMORY MODULE, 1G, 400M, 64X72, 8, 240, 2RX8
1 F6306 KIT, SPEAKER, 120V, NMB, A215, MIDNIGHT GRAY, DELL AMERICAS ORGANIZATION
1 F4991 KIT, DOCUMENTATON ON FLOPPY DISK, SOFTWARE, POWERDVD, 5.1
1 U5769 ASSEMBLY, Digital Video Disk Drive Read Write, 16X, HALF HEIGHT, NEC CORPORATION, CHASSIS 2001
1 N1192 COMPACT DISK READ WRITE, 680M, IDE (INTEGRATED DRIVE ELECTRONICS), 5.25" FORM FACTOR, 48X32, HITACHI LG DATA STORAGE, CHASSIS 2001
1 C0646 DISPLAY, FLAT PANEL DISPLAY, 20, DUAL, 2001FP, MIDNIGHT GRAY, DELL AMERICAS ORGANIZATION
1 N4083 CARD (CIRCUIT), GRAPHICS, 256, FX3400, HEGA12
1 5R212 FLOPPY DRIVE, 1.44M, 3.5" FORM FACTOR, 3MD, NO BEZEL, NEC CORPORATION, CHASSIS 2001
1 F3007 HARD DRIVE, 36GB, S, U320, 15K, 68P, SEAGATE
1 N4391 ASSEMBLY, CABLE, HARD DRIVE, SCSI (SMALL COMPUTER SYSTEMS INTERFACE), 4DROP, TRANSFORMER METROPLEX DESKTOP
1 G7624 KIT, SOFTWARE, OVERPACK, WXPPSP2, COMPACT DISKETTE W/DOCUMENTATION, ENGLAND/ENGLISH
1 P2489 KIT, CARD (CIRCUIT), NETWORK, WIRELESS, UNIVERSAL SERIAL BUS, TR1300These are older-ish xeon and are not multi-core, which seems to be all the rage now. Is not having multi core processors going to keep me from playing games and doing other stuff in the next two years? The second thing that has me guessing is the ability to run Fista. I have seen several threads on various other boards talking about getting Fista going on this workstation, some seem to have no problems, others have had nitemares. I just want to be able to run it without having the thing spaz out and die, judging by hardware and such alone, should this be a viable Fista PC?
