Surface 3 - New direction, higher prices and crappy i3

[Iggy]

Maybe it was a Windows 8 thing but the two i3 systems  I tried we're slow as f*ck and unresponsive sonetimes.

Lack of cores will do that.

[Iggy]

Hey Iggy,

In this machine, which is actually an older gaming PC from a few years ago - an i7 2600K, 32 GB RAM, nVidia 590.  My main gaming machine has a 4930K oc'ed a wee bit, 32 GB RAM, and 2 Titan cards.  Original Titan cards, not the new Titan Black.  Both run SSD's, this machine having a 240 GB OCZ for the boot drive and a standard SATA 1 TB drive for media, and the other more powerful machine has a 1 TB Samsung SSD solely.  Those drives were on sale recently for $460 so I had to snap one up, been real happy with it thus far.

The 4930 runs a bit hot for my tastes and I should have water cooled it from the start, but the Zalman cooler I have on it keeps it within range.

Nice cpu, but I don't understand why you are not water cooling.
At 130 watts, those do run hot, AND they are expensive.
Better cooling would increase the lifespan of the processor.
And, since you've spent a lot of money, an extra $100 or so seems like a minor outlay.

Also for less threaded tasks, the 4.8 GHz i5 might give you a run for your money at a fraction of the price.

Personally I would have forgone the SSDs and set up 4 disk RAID arrays (I don't trust storage media).

[Iggy]

Yeah, Raptor access time is great, but even in a RAID array I'm sure an SSD would exceed their transfer rate.
I have a Raptor in my G5 MorphOS machine and have considered an SSD, but since it would be limited to the SATA1 transfer rate it isn't as attractive.

Its been awhile since I worked with video, but I remember how cpu dependent changes in format or resolution could be.
So I can see your argument for using the most powerful processor you can afford.

[Iggy]

@ Duce

I can't imagine pumping that much info through my home network, but then with the latest routers, why not?

Interesting to see Raptors do that well.

I expected a larger margin on an SATA 3 interface with SSDs.

[Iggy]

This reminds me of the old Windows Vista days when it was almost universally hated but had a few defenders. MS solved the Vista problem by killing it and replacing with something better. I never bought or used Vista and I'll never buy or use Win8.

Actually, they just kept polishing it and released the results as Win7 (which seems to be much better received).
I may buy Win8.1 now that I have the Start button back.

[Iggy]

Cant we go back to win95? No more metro junk.

No thank you.
After recently experimenting with a new Win98SE install, I decided I am very grateful for the newer, non-DOS, NT based OS'.
The whole registry concept really sucks, but the OS is much more stable and support of multi-tasking is more robust.

Now if ReactOS ever gets of the ground...

[Iggy]

The "Every other major revision sucks" theory seems valid.

ME sucked.
XP was alright.
Vista sucked mightily.
7 was OK.
8 sucks as well, no surprise!

[Iggy]

There has to be a middle ground here.
I use WinXP and Win7, and I REALLY don't like Win8.
I'm not weird enough to want to keep using DOS based Windows (and thank God I no longer have to).
But if I want a touch/tablet OS, it HAS to be better than what Microsoft is offering.