Dell Dimension 8400 3.2GHz Pentium 4 w/ HyperThreading & 800MHz front side bus 1GB DDR2 533MHz RAM 160GB Serial ATA 7200RPM Hard Drive 16X DVD+/-RW Drive w/ Dual Layer write ATI Radeon x800SE 128MB PCI Express x16 video card Gigabit Ethernet 56K Faxmodem Windows XP Pro 19" Flat Panel Display
Great price for all that. Only thing I would upgrade the harddrive to a raptor other than that seems like you got a big time steal with that machine. What special was that?
Did you use the 500 off coupon? you were at fatwallet I bet.
I picked one up when the 8400 first came out, not as fully equipped as yours mind you.
If you ordered the Dell branded mouse you may not be happy with it. It's a bit jumpy and the drivers are really poor, you can't reprogram the wheel/middle button.
You'll be able to review 3 times as many movies now!
Nice computer Saki. Just hope you don't have to deal with Tech Support at any time. I had a hell of a time last year when I had to deal with them. Can you say outsourced. It's very difficult when you can't understand the other person on the phone.
Endless problems with Microsoft software. XP solved them though. Then I dumped coffee on the laptop, but the hard drive is intact. So I can still use it with an outboard keypad.
Good excuse to get an iMac though. No problems with Mac!
I was considering getting a RAID configuration after my unfortunate hard drive crash last spring, but I've got so much disk space (over half a terabyte) and backups of critical data now that it would have been unecessarily expensive. Raptors would have been nice, but I really didn't need the speed.
The x800SE card is problematic, but I didn't want to pay a crapload of money for the still-crippled 6800GTO option (and it's incredible power draw), and I didn't want to blow my budget by getting the crappy x300SE and buying a decent PCI express board. It's still going to be like 8x better than my current setup.
I'm going to stick with my current optical mouse...a little bird has told me that a new one may be in my Christmas stocking this year.
I've been pretty lucky with Dell...I've given up on Dell Tech Support though. Whenever I've had a problem, the Dell forums or an internet search have always gotten me to the answer.
I shudder to think what it would be like going back to dial-up.
PCI-E cards are still crazy expensive and half baked from what I hear. I'll wait until the second or third generation to replace my X300SE piece of crap. I don't play many intensive games on it anyway... YET.
good god, i just looked at the dell page and you've got a 350-watt psu-i'm fairly certain you'll stop having issues with the card if you ever upgrade it. even pcp&c/zippy don't make a 350-watter i'd be totally comfortable with, especially if you add more optical stuff. your system is awesome, but fast stuff likes tons of juice on the 12v and dell is notorious for saving money on stuff like that.
well, 5 years ago you would have been right-in this case you're not. p4's and a64's pull voltage for vcore from the 12v, the fastest a64's suck up 120 out of whatever the max is by themselves. say you're trying to run his cpu on a psu with 12amps on the 12volt along with drives, etc. you can't. that's why more and more companies have moves to 2 12volt rails, one for the motherboard and one for storage and cooling. so if he's talking raid with that card and the kind of leakage associated with prescotts-the 12v is line that matters. in general, modern psu's can be rated more accurately by that line than total wattage. of course, you've gotta find out what temp. that spec is--cheapo 550-watt supplies turn into 335 quick and have shitty ripple/transient responses.
It's probably in India. Only their corporate clients get US English speakers on the line. And its not to say that the US call center is any nicer or friendlier than the Indian one.
You and I sure think alike.. Just yesterday I was telling my assistant I think its time I get a new computer. Then I asked if she needed a new one and that I could sell her one of my old ones.
So this time around you chose a Company computer, why that as opposed to building one?
Simple...add up the cost of the components and it's either a wash or cheaper than building your own--without the hassle of puting it together. Everything matches, has a year warranty, and I received it about 60 hours after I ordered it.
Other than having to uninstall a bunch of crappy preloaded software from it, it's working out just fine...
One difference tho; Dell usually takes out all the good options in the BIOS, so you can't overclock -- so, for example with your system, you probably only get 400mhz on your ram..
Re: the double layer write... Not really an issue for me, since I'm really rich and use $9 blanks as coasters and frisbees all the time. j/k Seriously though, it was more important to have a dual format burner that did at least 8x. Even 16x media is expensive and hard to come by. But since I suspect I'll have this machine for 3 years, I'm sure both DL and 16x media will be really cheap toward the end of the machine's life.
Re: overclocking... If I wanted to overclock, I wouldn't have gotten a Dell and wouldn't have bought a crippled video card either. The 8400 is plenty fast for my purposes. In fact, my 8100 it replaces was fine other than the outdated BIOS support (namely no USB boot capability) and the inability to play the very latest generation of games. But that's not bad for a circa-2000 machine.
I'm not sure I follow...the 400mhz memory limitation is only on AMD K7 processors (which can only do 2 transfers per cycle across the bus). The P4 bus can do 4 transfers/cycle. So it should be able to support 533mhz RAM, right? My math may be off, but if I'm getting about 2.8GB/sec, with a dual channel architecture, that means about 5.6GB/sec effective memory out of the theoretical 6.4GB/sec...
Actual ram speed is determined by your system clock. An 800mhz FSB means that your system clock is 200mhz (4 transfers/cycle). DDR2 makes 2 transfers/cycle (and the cycle is based on the same clock as the FSB. i.e. 200mhz) -- 2 * 200mhz = 400mhz. You would need to overclock your bus by 66 mhz to get the maximum out of your ram.
I have a northwood 3.2ghz p4 but only 400 mhz ram (and crappy ram at that). So my ram is maxed out. I am only able to get an extra 10mhz on my system clock before my ram starts giving me data errors. So now my clock is 210mhz, my ram 420mhz, my FSB 840mhz and my system 3.36Ghz.
Now, since you have no intention of overclocking...I'll trade ram with you
Edit -- I didn't specifically answer your question. Yes, your system can support 533Mhz ram. The 533Mhz rating is not the speed the ram runs at in any given system. It is what the manufacturer guarantees your ram is capable of running at before malfunctioning.