Time to upgrade?

Dorsetmike

Member
Yesterday I took a few Gigabytes of Video at a local folk festival, I am now sat here while my poor old Dual core 2.3Ghz PC chugs through converting to MP4 format from the Panasonic's AVCHD, it's now been running for 3H53mins and is so far only at 14% (7 out of 44 files of various length)

So I've been browsing Amazon for PC specs and prices, looks like I'll be making a hole in £350 to £400. I've narrowed my search to Quad core around 4GHz, 1 TB drive, 8 Gb RAM and Windoze 7; just waiting for my bank statement to drop through the letter box to see if I can do it without causing apoplexy for the bank manager.
 

Krummhorn

Administrator
Staff member
ADMINISTRATOR
My Dell (XPS Studio 8100) has the Intel Core i5 CPU (quad core) - 760 @ 2.8 GHz .. Windows 7 Professional, 64 bit - 8.0 GB Ram
Video is NVIDIA GeForce 310 with 512 MB.

I could have opted for the Core i7, but that is mostly for serious gamers.

Seems most apps today are memory hoarders ... I can upgrade to 16 GB if needed, but so far 8 GB has been plenty. Very happy with my Dell machine ... replaced an older Dell 2400 whose mother board finally crapped after 8 years of wonderful service. It was time to upgrade anyway ... not seeing any need whatsoever to go beyond Win 7 at this point. Besides, I've just figured out its inane methods of storing files in odd places. :lol:.

My internet connection is DSL - 50 MB Down/ 5 MB Up - a Fiber optic router is about a block away. We have our own WiFi network for streaming tele and movies.
 

Dorsetmike

Member
Finaly bit the bullet, ordered an AMD Quad core 4.1GHz, 8Gb Ram and 2Tb drive running Windoze 7 pro 64 bit, with next day delivery just crept over the £400 budget.

Now have to see how it copes with video, I'll probablt keep the one I'm using now to do the long winded format conversions while I get on with editing on the new one, may get a quicker drive for the old one though, one of the Seagate Hybrid SSHDs hard disc with added solid state storage, or maybe a pure SSD if I can afford one big enough to run Windoze and a few other apps.
 

Krummhorn

Administrator
Staff member
ADMINISTRATOR
Congrats, Mike ...

Sounds like a good idea on getting SSHD's ... wish I had gone that route for my external, but my older technology 1.0 Tb is working out well enough for me. I mainly use it for backups.

Glad you opted for Win 7 pro 64 bit. I think you will like its functionality better over the 32 bit.

If you are using Firefox for a browser, Mozilla does have a 64 bit version called Waterfox that runs much faster than Firefox itself. But ... Waterfox does not have all the bells and whistles for ad blocking, etc, as its predecessor.
 

Dorsetmike

Member
The new one just arrived an hour ago, unpacked it but not started work on it yet, food called! (burger and hash browns - quick if not quite "good food")

The new one doesn't have a Hybrid drive, just a conventional Seagate 2TB, 4.1GHz AMD A10 6800 quad core with the graphics processor integrated with the CPU, just one big chip. I'll start with 8Gb RAM & up it to 16 if I need to.

Have to install windoze and all my other apps, wonder how many are 32 bit only?????? I did read that 7 pro 64 has an XP simulator or something.

I've not decided yet what to do with the old one, do I strip the innards out and put in a new faster mother board, or do I retire it and put the drive and some ram into my third machine, or do I give it away, who would want an XP machine now anyway?

Ah well, time to power down and get to work I suppose.
 

Dorsetmike

Member
Spec: AMD /A10 6800K quad core 4.1GHz, 8GB RAM, 2TB HDD Win7 pro 64bit

A few problems, the opening screen is out of sync, part of RHS appears on LHS, Text broken and unreadable except at the dosplaced bit, result could not read initial settings menu to set boot device etc.

Eventually got Windoze installed, but had to set Screen resolution to 1400x 1050, as 1920x1080 overlapped the edge of the screen all round, hence task bar only had a thin sliver showing

Graphics are on board (Radeon 8670D), monitor is a Samsung 23".

Now having fun (---not) getting passwords, profiles address book and such like guff sorted!
 

teddy

Duckmeister
They are still selling machines with XP on the second hand market. Provided you do not want the highest spec and security is not too much of an issue they are still good.

teddy
 

Dorsetmike

Member
Yes they do, however my main reason for upgrading was I needed something much faster for Video editing, the old machine took 5 hours to convert 10 files (out of 44, I got fed up waiting), I'm still struggling with getting the new one set up as I want it, downloading drivers, transferring all sorts of odds and sods, Browser bookmark, passwords, installing loads of applications. I've had to reinstall windoze twice cos the installation screwed up what went to which drive partition and a load of other nausea
 

Dorsetmike

Member
I've found I can run some of my older apps with a bit of fiddling, but still have a display problem, as above, gradually getting most of my apps transferred. Can't figure a way round the screen resolution though, that annoys me somewhat!
 

Dorsetmike

Member
Display problem solved, the Samsung monitor was not compatible with the new PCs graphics; I would have thought that was an area which was an industry standard! Evidently not standard enough!

So I now have a new monitor as well.

Just in case anyone else is contemplating an upgrade, Samsung Monitors (some at least if not most) are not compatible with PCs having a Gigabyte motherboard with AMD processor and chipset including built in Radeon grahics. My monitor was not that old, manufactured Sept 2012, I bought it just over a year ago, it ran quite happily on my Gateway PC with Intel chipset and processor.
 

JHC

Chief assistant to the assistant chief
That is very strange Mike I would have thought any reputable PC would ensure its out put signal could be used on any monitor, as you say it should be an industry standard. absolutely disgusting you should complain.
 

Dorsetmike

Member
My thoughts are that as other monitors worked fine on all my PCs and a laptop that it's the monitor which has the problem.

One thing that I'd like to know though is when in the power up sequence the PC determines the monitors capabilities, as running 2 PCs through a KVM switch (one monitor, keyboard and mouse shared via the switch) the first PC switched on boots up correctly to the required resolution, but the second appears to decide "I ain't got a monitor" and defaults to 800x600, with some monitors this means you have to right click the screen to bring up the display settings window, other monitors just display "input not supported" or similar message, in which case you have to wait until machine A has finished boot before powering up machine B and switching the KVM box to B; the KVM box initially auto selects the first PC to power up.

My usual practice in the mornings is to switch on both PCs and go have breakfast while they boot, it looks now as though I'd be better off switching on A and leaving B off until I get back to the desk after brekkie as this new monitor is one of the "input not supported" variety so I can't do the right click method.

Oh the joys of technology!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 

JHC

Chief assistant to the assistant chief
I thought that the signal to a monitor was analogue but I must have it wrong.
 

Dorsetmike

Member
There is now a choice of analogue or digital, the D type connector (VGA) is analogue, HDMI & DVI are digital. Which connectors you get seems to be a lottery, my new PC has VGA and DVI, the monitor has VGA and HDMI, I believe you can get DVI/HDMI convertor connectors.

The problems I had were with the sync, different resolutions require frame sync at anything from 50Hz up to 75Hz, if you feed it 50Hz when it expects 60Hz then the display breaks up, lower resolutions like 640x480 and 800x 600 use 50Hz, higher resolutions require 60 Hz or more as far as I am aware.

With some PCs they default to low res until they see what monitor they are connected to, if they don't see a monitor then they assume low res until they get kicked, some newer monitors don't accept low resolution at all, that is where the compatibility problem seems to lie.
 

Dorsetmike

Member
One thing I hate about Windoze is the way they try and force My this that and the other on us, I prefer to save things where I want them, not buried on the C:\ drive with everything else. I always partition my drives and save things in folders with names and or dates that mean something to me. So it has always been my habit to delete a lot of the Microsloth garbage.

Not so easy however on more recent versions Vista, 7 and 8, try and delete or change something which Windoze thinks you must have and you get a message that "Trusted Installer" won't let you, they have introduced "Ownership" of files and folders.

There is a way out of this, you need to change the "Ownership", that at first appears to be such an involved process that few people could cope for one file or folder let alone a load of them. However some kind person has found an easy way round it, a registry tweak which adds a "Take Ownership" option to the the drop down menu that appears if you right click on a file or folder. It works in Vista Win7 and Win 8, and changes the ownership to either Administrator or you as "User" depending on who you are logged in as. There is also a tweak to reverse the operation on the registry. So you could do it to the folders you want fixed, then prevent anybody else changing further.


http://www.askvg.com/add-take-ownership-option-in-file-folder-context-menu-in-windows-vista/

Click on the download link partway down the page and then run when download is complete; when you use it on a file or folder it runs a command line sequence which will change the ownership of the file, or if you do it to a folder then it takes a bit longer as it deals with all files in the folder
 
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