buying a computer – a digression on the building

This was going to be a digression on the previous post, but it got a bit long. It spun off the bit about “gotta” vs “wanna”. Way back in the dawn of time (1983) I started in the computer field. And people even then started asking ‘which computer should I get?’ Now as a salesman I wanted you to spend money, but as a person who wanted you to get the best you needed which led to repeat business, I developed my ’simple plan’. See, hardware is the last thing you should examine. Operating systems are barely before hardware. The FIRST question is the software. And even there, I have a pattern.

I advised (still do) that my client make a list of everything they’d like their computer to do. Actually they should make three lists, though for some it was easier to make one list and then split it. The three lists are “gotta”, “wanna”, and “oooooh”. More precisely: the first list is what your computer MUST do; the second list is what you’d like your computer to do but which can be sacrificed (partial or complete); and the third list is things that if you can afford it later you’d like the computer to do but which you don’t need or want at the time of purchase. Example: I need to be able to write a heavily footnoted book that contains chemical diagrams; I want to play World of Warcraft; it’d be nice if I could monitor my house’s security system from it someday. I then make a list of software that will meet your needs (not all word processors will do the example gotta, and only WoW will allow you to play WoW. As to security, while the field is very broad the protocols are surprisingly common.)

With the list of software in hand, we worked together. Ideally we’d have talked enough that I could narrow the list and rank the ones left. You – or we – would go somewhere to try out each package. (Back in the dawn of time, WordPerfect and WordStar were almost the same, but they did a few things differently. Some preferred one, some preferred the other, and many just didn’t really care. Just as an example here.) Hopefully and probably we will find one or two packages that have some very narrow requirements. Once more with an example, for quite some time if you wanted an engineering quality computer aided design package you were stuck with AutoCAD, and that program only ran on computers running Microsoft’s operating system. Further it had some minimums in terms of processing and graphics that meant you couldn’t buy a starter level box. There are finally (so I’m told) options for the professional, but that wasn’t true in the past. ANYWAY…

The software narrows our operating system choices. Our operating system will probably narrow our hardware choices. Other ‘gotta/wanna/oooh’ (henceforth GWO) items may further narrow the choices. For example the client may need a graphic tablet. Possibly they need to do video-conferencing. They may need a larger monitor – or maybe two monitors. So on, so forth, some of which will narrow the choices in the computer itself.

Once all that is done, THEN we can look at the actual computer. We know the minimums we need. Experience tells me that unless you plan to buy a computer every couple of years you should get a bit more than you need – and more experience says that if you can afford it you should choose plug-in modules instead of integrated boards. However that’s all to be determined. Thing is, we’ve avoided the most common complaint of computer buyers – “it’s ok, but I wish I could do…” Well, not necessarily avoided. But we’ve definitely made the complaint less likely.

Building a computer, 2 of…

The next several posts will be working on parameters, not actual parts. Parameters in the end nail what the motherboard choice will be. Again there are two things to keep in mind. I want affordable now, I want usable five to seven years down the road. The electronics will (usually) last that long, the issue is making sure your system can handle what’s normal. The means of resolving that issue is ensuring your computer can be upgraded piecemeal. I’ll note that this pretty well kills the choice of an integrated motherboard – one where so many pieces (like video and audio, among others) are integrated. Not entirely, mind you – provided in addition to the integrated pieces there’s room for the upgrades. So… let’s get started.

Today’s topic is video. PCI, AGP, PCIe… Lotsa choices, and all are pretty decent today. So, what about tomorrow? The answer is PCIe – and I want at least two such slots for my video. Why? Dual boards.

Dual boards is not for dual monitors. While nice, I’ve never needed the viewspace (though I’ve wished for it as a luxury). No, the big thing is SLI and Crossfire. Both are basically the same thing, but with different chips and protocols. Basically, it’s two graphic boards sharing one video screen between them, each taking about half the load. I say about because one board combines the results and puts them on the monitor. Now it’s worth noting that there are already a few boards that do the dual processor on one card, but (so far) there are some problems with that, and even so they’re built to work in conjunction with another card. So my motherboard has to be ABLE to run two graphic cards ’sharing the load’. That means two PCIe slots. It also means a chip or two that makes the board SLI or Crossfire capable.

Why not both, and why am I not picking one over the other? For that matter, what’s the difference? The answer to all three comes to about the same – one is primarily AMD, the other is primarily Intel. There are a couple of motherboards that allegedly handle both protocols, and provided first that all my ‘gotta have’ requirements are met and second that adding the ‘want to have’ elements such as this won’t break the bank, I’ll consider them. Beyond that – I’ll be getting to whether I’m going with an AMD or Intel chip, but that’s going to be a separate article instead of a digression.

For now, however, the first requirement is set. Two PCIe slots reserved for video, and the board has to be SLI and/or Crossfire capable.

The inevitable digression turned out to be a post in itself. It’ll be up a bit after this post – and it’s really “buying a computer for the neophyte”.

[edit - added] OK, I left off something kind of critical. “What about AGP?”

AGP boards are better than PCI boards. For that matter they tend to be a little better than PCIe boards – and certainly cost competitive. However, they have a few problems. First and foremost, they’re not THAT much better than PCIe. They aren’t (yet) capable of dual graphic processors (3.0 is supposed to change that, but it’s not working well enough to trust yet). I think it’s pretty obvious that multiple processors is the ‘way of the future’ – maybe on one board, maybe not. That may be mistaken, but while 3.0 may do it there aren’t any motherboards building for it – no chipsets that support 3.0 particularly well at this time. AGP is somewhat following the beta line in the betamax vs VHS battle. So… If I can have an AGP slot for no particular additional cost, I’ll pick it up. Call it ‘nice to have’ (or ooooh, as the next article will discuss.)