How many of you guys using the latest in pc technology?

[manarak]

Example: In comparing a Toshiba and Asus laptop side-by-side in a store, both running Win 8, both with 4GB RAM, both with 750GB SATA 5400RPM hard drive, very close in price, etc., the Toshiba was noticeably faster/snappier when jumping around in opening and closing Win 8 menus and programs, just doing different computer tasks. But each laptop had a different variation i7 CPU....the Toshiba had a i7-3632QM CPU and the Asus a i7-3537U CPU....and oh what a significant difference those variation numbers follows the i7- can make. The i7-3632QM is a quad core which can run 8 threads at a time where the i7-3537U is a dual core that could only run 4 threads at a time. The i7-3632QM also had a GPU clock frequency around twice that of the i7-3537U...and there were other significant differences. See more at this CPUBoss Link on the comparison of the two CPUs.

This illustrates my earlier point about new technologies often having other focuses than performance quite well.

More horsepower isn't always desirable. In your example, the i7-3537U has a much reduced power consumption compared to the other CPU (almost 50%), which makes it a winner if your focus with the laptop is running processes that aren't too CPU intensive and want to maximize battery life.

Yeap, reduced power was a definite plus for the i7-3537U...would it have resulted in your battery lasting twice as long when the laptop's other power consumers are included like the motherboard, hard drive, screen, etc? I doubt it. But there would be some battery life improvement. "For me," the significantly better benchmarks of the i7-3632QM and the real world speed increase I experience when playing with the two laptops side-by-side would have overshadowed the lower power usage of the i7-3537U since my laptop pretty much spends 95%+ of its time on my dining room table and plugged into the wall....battery life for me is not really an issue as I just want to have computer I can use anywhere in the house and move around easily/quickly when needed. Heck, I wouldn't even take a laptop on a personal trip with me anymore since the advent of smartphone and tablets. But for a person who really needs to go mobile with a laptop at lot the reduced CPU power usage would be a bigger consideration. Maybe an analogy for these two particular CPUs with very similar part numbers (i.e, both having the i7 in there model number) was one was really an 8 cylinder engine with good horsepower where the other one was a 6 cylinder engine with less horsepower but better gas mileage.

correct - the CPU remains the largest single power user in a modern laptop designed for mobility, so a reduction of 50% of the CPU's power intake is a significant advantage.

The other power consumers also have new power saving tech, such as dimmed display, hdds switching their motor off, etc.

I have a small netbook which I can use for nine hours if I am careful.

Edited November 11, 2013 by manarak

[FiftyTwo]

If you want fast web browsing better to try

Firefox + http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Firefox-Load-Pages-Faster

It makes a big difference.

[Fookhaht]

The best way to move to the newest technology is to dump your PC and pick up a Mac. From a former PC owner for 33 years. Why, in god's name, did I wait so long? Sent from my iPhone using Thaivisa Connect Thailand

Don't you just love those folks who drive by, scream "buy Apple" out the window, then speed away.

No, I'm still here. Did you want to listen to the longer-version of my sermon?

Didn't think so.

[bangkockney]

Well, I do use GPUs for data crunching so...

[KRS1]

The latest technology is always big time overkill for the real need of the masses. Buy hey, manufacturers' and stores' advertising have always made it sound like it's durn near a necessity to have the latest model and a there are many people who "just gotta have the latest stuff" because some benchmark shows a 10% percent speed gain which usually equates to much less little real world use speed gain. Plus, if you are not using the latest technology then you must be a social recluse. My 7 year Pentium Core Duo laptop now running Win 7 recently broke, got it repaired (motherboard) for Bt3000 in 2 days, hopefully good for X more years, it's now sending you this post.

exactly, what are you going to save ? like 1 maybe 2 seconds?

I use photoshop and dreamweaver and my i5 is not any noticeably faster than a regular old pentium.

are you using the same old 32 bit OS with both?

the i5 on a 64 bit system with enough RAM should be very very much faster than, say, a P90 running 32 bit XP for processes like filtering, HDR processing, etc.

i had an acer with i5 and now a Lenovo with i5...both 64 bit

[manarak]

The latest technology is always big time overkill for the real need of the masses. Buy hey, manufacturers' and stores' advertising have always made it sound like it's durn near a necessity to have the latest model and a there are many people who "just gotta have the latest stuff" because some benchmark shows a 10% percent speed gain which usually equates to much less little real world use speed gain. Plus, if you are not using the latest technology then you must be a social recluse. My 7 year Pentium Core Duo laptop now running Win 7 recently broke, got it repaired (motherboard) for Bt3000 in 2 days, hopefully good for X more years, it's now sending you this post.

exactly, what are you going to save ? like 1 maybe 2 seconds?

I use photoshop and dreamweaver and my i5 is not any noticeably faster than a regular old pentium.

are you using the same old 32 bit OS with both?

the i5 on a 64 bit system with enough RAM should be very very much faster than, say, a P90 running 32 bit XP for processes like filtering, HDR processing, etc.

i had an acer with i5 and now a Lenovo with i5...both 64 bit

yes, but what do you call a "regular old pentium" ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium#Pentium

[KRS1]

yes, but what do you call a "regular old pentium" ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium#Pentium

the cheapest ones when buying a laptop.

[Richard-BKK]

The best way to move to the newest technology is to dump your PC and pick up a Mac. From a former PC owner for 33 years. Why, in god's name, did I wait so long? Sent from my iPhone using Thaivisa Connect Thailand

I just buy a Intel i7 4770K with a good Z87 mainboard and all the memory that fits on it and you can run everything you want... you can even say that Apple OSX 10.9 Maverick runs as fast or maybe even faster than a real Apple Mac...

[Briandajew]

I continuosly upgrade, my latest build is Intel 3770K, clocked at 4.5GHz (Yes it is a sad little hobby) - Asus P8Z77-V Deluxe, 32GB RAM, DDR 3 1600MHz. Intel 520 series 248 GB SSD, AC1750 Linksys router, I need to upgrade my Graphics card - Nvidia GTX 460 1 GB - OC. My only regret is upgrading from Win 8 Pro x64 to win 8.1 - it is a step back as far as I am concerned -
If you have Win 8 and like it - (some of us did) - stick with it - Win 8.1 is a backward step, the search function is absolute crap!

[robblok]

OK and quad core ( older I know)

16gb ram

2 Tb hard disk

2 ssd drives on 256 other 128 MB( biggest speed increase in years)

4gb gforc 760 VGA hooked up with 3 high quality monitors

Qnap nash drive with 4 1 tb disks

I work on it a lot so I like it to be fast and I sometimes play games.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

[Briandajew]

The best way to move to the newest technology is to dump your PC and pick up a Mac. From a former PC owner for 33 years. Why, in god's name, did I wait so long? Sent from my iPhone using Thaivisa Connect Thailand

Don't you just love those folks who drive by, scream "buy Apple" out the window, then speed away.

Ha ha! I wouldn't have ANYTHING from Apple if they gave it to me free! Overpriced shit!

[Briandajew]

The best way to move to the newest technology is to dump your PC and pick up a Mac. From a former PC owner for 33 years. Why, in god's name, did I wait so long? Sent from my iPhone using Thaivisa Connect Thailand

I just buy a Intel i7 4770K with a good Z87 mainboard and all the memory that fits on it and you can run everything you want... you can even say that Apple OSX 10.9 Maverick runs as fast or maybe even faster than a real Apple Mac...

is the i7 4770k open for over clock? like the i73770K? (I guess you are on socket 2011....) not sure whether I want to upgrade or move over to socket 2011, it looks like the 1150 is making a comeback.

[Richard-BKK]

The best way to move to the newest technology is to dump your PC and pick up a Mac. From a former PC owner for 33 years. Why, in god's name, did I wait so long? Sent from my iPhone using Thaivisa Connect Thailand

I just buy a Intel i7 4770K with a good Z87 mainboard and all the memory that fits on it and you can run everything you want... you can even say that Apple OSX 10.9 Maverick runs as fast or maybe even faster than a real Apple Mac...

is the i7 4770k open for over clock? like the i73770K? (I guess you are on socket 2011....) not sure whether I want to upgrade or move over to socket 2011, it looks like the 1150 is making a comeback.

The Intel i7-4770K is an Haswell (socket 1150) chip, actually not much difference between the i7-3770K and the i7-4770K. The i7-4770K has the new Intel HD 4600 graphics and some buffers are increased from 32-bit to 64-bits per cycle... If you have a i7-3770K system with an additional Nvidia graphics card you not need to upgrade, as the performance is only a very very small bit better.

My system is not overclocked, it runs fine as it does right now... As you can see I can load MS-Windows 7 Ultimate and Apple Mac OSX 10.9 without the temperature of my processor temperature to get over 42c degree.

[Fookhaht]

 

The best way to move to the newest technology is to dump your PC and pick up a Mac. From a former PC owner for 33 years. Why, in god's name, did I wait so long? Sent from my iPhone using Thaivisa Connect Thailand

Don't you just love those folks who drive by, scream "buy Apple" out the window, then speed away. 

 

Ha ha! I wouldn't have ANYTHING from Apple if they gave it to me free! Overpriced shit!

Classic "Fox and the Grapes" reenactment.

Sent from my iPhone using Thaivisa Connect Thailand

[Richard-BKK]

So what for nice Apple Mac do you have?

[mikewet88]

I just pick up a Macbook Air 13" during Red Friday offer. Haswell cpu + OSX Maverick are perfect for these ultraportable laptop. Battery life is awesome. Very little battery lost when close lit and sleep.

Going to use this on anywhere beside my Hackintosh.

[NeverSure]

I build my own. I'm not a gamer. My philosophy is to buy last years (or so) hot stuff that has been updated and has dropped in price by about 1/2.

BTW, If an older computer slows down, it may just need more RAM to handle all that's been added over time.

When I recently upgraded my computer, including Win 7 64 bit so I could use more RAM, I was more than happy. New MOBO, CPU, RAM, video card, hard drives, etc.

My new MOBO came with NO ide slots for a floppy or HDD's or cd/dvd drives. Thus the new HDD's, and memory sticks replace the floppy.

I am more than happy with it and expect to get 5 years out of it.

[Lockheed]

The best way to move to the newest technology is to dump your PC and pick up a Mac. From a former PC owner for 33 years. Why, in god's name, did I wait so long? Sent from my iPhone using Thaivisa Connect Thailand

I think I would of gone down the Mac road by now but there's always a bit of software they can't run and there is no mac equivalent.

At one stage the Macs had a big lead in graphic design and a few other areas but the PC has caught up now, I'm running Adobe Creative Cloud and the functionality of some of the programs is greater than the Mac equivalents etc.

http://www.ghisler.com/

I've got the latest speced PC, Haswel I7, SSD, Two screens, Two backup drives, Win 8 and a quiet case.

I started to think about a new build when Sandy bridge was in the picture and then started work through the specs and Ivy came along and by the time I was ready to order, Haswel was a few weeks away so I waited a little while but in that time the SSD's had matured because they weren't getting much life out of them in the Sandy Bridge era,

[harrry]

The best way to move to the newest technology is to dump your PC and pick up a Mac. From a former PC owner for 33 years. Why, in god's name, did I wait so long? Sent from my iPhone using Thaivisa Connect Thailand

You had to wait till senility set in to make that decision.

[tominbkk]

I got a fairly top of the line PC about 3.5 years ago, 8 gig ram and good audio and video cards (but not the top). Went to a shop at Laksi and had them put it together for me per my discretion. Running Windows 7 Pro. Spent around 38K for it, sans monitor (already had 21 inch monitor).

So far has played any new game I have thrown at it with aplomb. No reason to change yet.

[SailingHome]

The latest technology is always big time overkill for the real need of the masses. Buy hey, manufacturers' and stores' advertising have always made it sound like it's durn near a necessity to have the latest model and a there are many people who "just gotta have the latest stuff" because some benchmark shows a 10% percent speed gain which usually equates to much less little real world use speed gain. Plus, if you are not using the latest technology then you must be a social recluse. My 7 year Pentium Core Duo laptop now running Win 7 recently broke, got it repaired (motherboard) for Bt3000 in 2 days, hopefully good for X more years, it's now sending you this post.

Agreed, though buying the latest best means it will keep up with new software and other things for longer - less cost in the long run of having to replace. Personsonally, new tech far surpasses my needs, so I don't spend the money.

[ignis]

Guess at some stage everyone will have the latest technology...

my PC rebuilt in 2006, late last year case was bad, bought a new case, few months later my big graphics card went, replaced with a even better new one, then the Power supply went, bought a new one and a better one, then Ram took on a mind of its own, had 4x 1GB, in the end was down to just 2 GB that worked, DVD burnt out, had more problems could not find out what so had to take to a shop, CPU some pins were not working, [they said] no they could no longer get that AMD CPU... So now have the latest AMD CPU, 8 Core Motherboard and 8 GB Ram all in the less than a year old case, change the Motherboad may as well go to Windows 8, so yes at some stage we all have the latest technology....

On the other hand my top of the range 12 year old had the latest technology back then - Sony Laptop

Likewise my 38,000 baht Acer Laptop is now 7 years old, one still on XP the other on Vista.. both used every day.

To me a higher end with latest technology will last many years, and when things start to fail appears one item after another fail..

Edited January 26, 2014 by ignis

[Chicog]

Get everything I need tech wise, I tend to get a fair bit as part of the job.

Can't see a need for anything new at the moment.

[inthepink]

I build my own. I'm not a gamer. My philosophy is to buy last years (or so) hot stuff that has been updated and has dropped in price by about 1/2.

BTW, If an older computer slows down, it may just need more RAM to handle all that's been added over time.

When I recently upgraded my computer, including Win 7 64 bit so I could use more RAM, I was more than happy. New MOBO, CPU, RAM, video card, hard drives, etc.

My new MOBO came with NO ide slots for a floppy or HDD's or cd/dvd drives. Thus the new HDD's, and memory sticks replace the floppy.

I am more than happy with it and expect to get 5 years out of it.

New Motherboard, CPU, RAM, video card and hard drives? That's not an upgrade, that's a new PC in an old case!

[tjansen]

I don't know how to post a new topic. Sometimes I happen onto the NEW TOPIC button, but I can't find it when I want it.

But, here is my question / problem. I have a Lenovo Yoga 8 Model B6000-HV Tablet.

I downloaded a PDF file from my email. The file has English and Thai script. When I try to open the file, I am asked to choose between three ways to open it.

One way gives me the ability to navigate (quick scroll to any page by grabbing the slide bar), but this way doesn't display the superscripts and subscripts on the Thai letters.

Another way displays those scripts, but I can't navigate to a page. All I can do is continue to scroll down by swiping the screen, a couple of pages at a time. There are over 1000 pages in the document, so this is not too handy.

Any help?

[EyesWideOpen]

Tech addict... :-) Running a PC with an I5 chip, which was

a huge improvement over the old Pentium 4 that was in it. Don't

do any gaming , so took a pass on the I7 chip. Am sticking with

Win 7. Downloaded and took a look at Win 8. Will just wait for Win 10.

The Macbook Pro is an 2009 one running at 2.66. But with a new

SSD drive and 8 gigs of RAM it works great.. Mac software can

be a bit wonky if you are used to Windows, but the hardware

is superb.

Edited November 7, 2014 by EyesWideOpen

[robblok]

OK and quad core ( older I know)

16gb ram

2 Tb hard disk

2 ssd drives on 256 other 128 MB( biggest speed increase in years)

4gb gforc 760 VGA hooked up with 3 high quality monitors

Qnap nash drive with 4 1 tb disks

I work on it a lot so I like it to be fast and I sometimes play games.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

Quad core.. died.. now a i7 5820 3.3GHZ with a real expensive motherboard X99 Deluxe Asus

[ravip]

Well, I run a HP ProBook 4530s (dual boot) - Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 8.1 x64

Server 2k8 is a bit sluggish, but OK just to tamper around.

Summary

Operating System

Windows 8.1 Enterprise 64-bit

CPU

Intel Core i5 2430M @ 2.40GHz 44 °C

Sandy Bridge 32nm Technology

RAM

8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 665MHz (9-9-9-24)

Motherboard

Hewlett-Packard 167C (CPU 1) 38 °C

Graphics

Generic PnP Monitor (1366x768@60Hz)

Intel HD Graphics 3000 (HP)

Storage

596GB TOSHIBA MK6476GSX (SATA) 40 °C

Optical Drives

hp DVDRAM GT50N

Audio

IDT High Definition Audio CODEC

Generated with Speccy v1.26.698

[innerspace]

I5, 16gb ram, 3x22" screens on linux. With an i5, 8gb ram and dual screen windows for photoshop alongside.

Not the latest, but still high enough to do the job and then some more.

Also on the desk a raspberry pi b+, latest but far from hi tech, still impressive.