It's time to play every computer geeks favorite game....

[vtlion]

I just may PM you about that vid card after the weekend.  There is a PCI-e slot open.

Estimated arrival is tomorow.  I plan on stress-testing the system in the first few days, running all my usual games and work software using some of the more resource-hungry files and configurations, so I'll know for sure if I need to beef her up (though I hope not).

[natedawg120]

bad thing about video cards is if you play games you ALWAYS need a new one

[NiceGuysFinishLast]

I get WinXP pro with SP2 installed as a free download, then just burn the .iso. Hooray GT! I also get visual studio, secureCRT, mcafee, all sorts of cool stuff

[jdanna]

Those are SWEEET.  lol

We actually have two Octane sytems at work right now running our NMR spectrometers.  Gotta love those things.  They are tanks.

i know, i love them. i worked in IT long enough to learn to hate computers. regular PCs and macs bore the crap out of me and i hate having to do anything to them.

But i still have a fascination for actually interesting systems. I have an octane, an indigo2, and indigo, and a pile of old sun crap laying around.
Also have an original turbo NeXTstation, with the original keyboard, mouse, monitor, external cdrom, and laser printer. That thing is hella cool.

Unfortunatly our last piece of SGI hardware that was actually in use has been retired, it was an old octane that we ran discreet smoke on.
We traded that in on some quantel eQ systems. but for my money, smoke is still the best editing/effects system ever created.

The octane and the octane2 and tezro after it all share the same overall design. The internal interconnects can move MASSIVE amounts of data because of the crossbar switch architechture, that to this day no other manufacturer has been able to even come close to.

Comparing the crossbar swtich to say, PCI, or even whatever the new pci-like stuff that PCs are using these days, is like comparing a GigE managed switch to an old 10/100 hub.

its a damn shame SGI thought they could still sell workstations for 20 grand these days, if they had just been able to bring their prices down a bit, they wouldnt have had to stop making workstations and IRIX.

[FearedGS500]

i get . 2000,xp,98,visio pro 2003,visual studio.net 2003 pro,virtural pc2004, project professional 2003,access 2003, allll  FREE  gotta love my college ......

[CirclesCenter]

1st:

Your old computer is not worth anything as a computer. As a period piece some of the components are worth a bit. Notably the slotted Athlon processor and the Voodoo video card.

2nd:

I have a Socket 754 Sempron 2800 (Stock 1.6 GHz.) overclocked to 2.5 GHz. (0.1 over-volt) No fancy stuff. Air cooled Corsair value select at DDR 500 (Yes corsair's cheap ram does DDR 500 with 0.05 overvolt.) Unless you are buying a winchester core 3500 (poor oc) you should see a 25% or larger gain in speed with a decent overclock. My 56.25% gain is on the high end for a Sempron. Semprons typically top out at 2.4 ghz for stability.

BTW warranties don't mean anything these days and as long as you don't get greedy and ham-fisted about it you won't pop your processor.