mindless ramblings

MAJOR GEEK POST… if you are not geek-inclined please scroll down and read my food posts instead!

After a few months of rock solid computing on my Athlon64 system, the first signs of instability have started to creep in. I’ve been getting a couple of BSODs over the past few days. I’m not sure if it is related to the fact that I accidentally kicked my computer with my knee but it sure is annoying. I hope it’s something minor like a loose connection rather than a proper hardware problem. I actually want to reformat the whole damn thing as I haven’t done so for almost 2 years but backing everything up would be a herculean task.

Besides the BSODs, I’ve been wondering what upgrade path I could take next. At it’s current state, several of my intended upgrades will cause a domino-like need to upgrade other parts at the same time. That’s definitely not budget friendly at all.

Here’s a quick list of options, maybe just for my benefit to see what’s the right path to take. In an ideal world, all options would be bought and installed immediately. Too bad this ideal world doesn’t exist!

• 2GB of ram – The easiest upgrade (and one of the cheapest too). Since trying World of Warcraft out for a month I’ve realized that 1GB just isn’t enough for higher-end applications. Although 1GB is plenty enough for regular use, the game quickly starts stuttering in the large cities, especially since I play in a window with basically Winamp, MSN and everything else running too. More RAM never hurt a development enviroment too, especially if you deal with databases and stuff. My choices for RAM would be either the Mushkin PC4000 2X1GB 3-4-3-8 kit or the OCZ Plantium PC3200 2X1GB 2-3-2-5 kit. Both are priced at under $300 at the time of writing and OCZ even has rebates to lower the cost even more. As Anandtech’s article says, 2GB kits are now able to provide the performance that only 1GB kits were able to provide. Never a better time to upgrade!
• Dual-core CPU – It’s frustrating to see your entire CPU usage hogged by a random application that is stuck in a deadlock or race condition. Thankfully, dual-core CPUs are dropping in price quickly and it is actually fairly affordable to the average consumer. The entry-level AMD Athlon64 X2 3800+ (2 3200+ CPUs!) is rapidly dropping in price and I would definitely spend that extra bit to get a dual-core if I were building a system today.
• 7800GT or higher – World of Warcraft has shown me that my video card is pretty decent if a bit lacking at higher resolutions/detail settings. My 6600GT is fine for the average gamer, but playing games on a 20″ LCD or larger at native resolution needs a bit more ooomph. With the 7900 series due to be released soon, it would be prudent to hold off until later. Another wise decision would be to move up to a card with 512MB of video memory. More memory never hurt anyone! Still out of my budget anyway as I’m definitely not gonna spend $555 on a video card.
• 20″ or 24″ widescreen monitors – Not a performance upgrade, not to mention that it would require a new video card just to run dual-DVI outputs (I have 1 DVI and 1 VGA at the moment). I do like the potential of increased screen space, together with the ability to watch non-letterboxed 16×9 video.

The bad thing is that with the CPU and video card options, a new power supply would also be required. Since I am getting a new power supply, why not get one with a new case too? The crappy thing is that all this will be considered old in a year and the whole process will start again! If you think about it like that, the monitor is the best value-for-money purchase there as people generally keep their monitors for a long time as compared to the other stuff.

I don’t think I’m gonna come to a conclusion for a while, for some reason I am leaning towards saving up a whole bunch and getting everything in 1 go for maximum effect. Hopefully this will come sooner rather than later, but that’s probably not gonna happen!