Not that I mourn its passing, exactly. It was a pretty darn ancient system, my old AMD Athlon XP 1800+ that I bought in 2003. Clocking in at about 1.18 GHz and backed up by 1.25 GB of RAM, it wasn’t exactly the powerhouse of the house. It did have a pretty decent video card, though. But anyhow, the system would appear to have well and truly “snuffed it”, as they say. The power supply is fine and everything is connected, but neither the processor nor the hard drives show any sign of life when the system is powered on.

So I’m thinking it might just be time to upgrade. As such, let’s haul out the old format for a bit and contemplate options. I’m thinking it’d be sweet to hook her up with one of these new “mini” computers that are becoming quite common these days. She doesn’t exactly need the computing horsepower, since she doesn’t use the computer for much more than a bit of music playback, checking her email, and checking various newsfeeds. Once in a while, she’ll watch an episode of House online.

Option #1: Asus Eee Box 1012

Specs:

• nVidia ION graphics chipset
• Intel Atom N330 Dual Core 1.6GHz processor
• 2 GB DDR2 RAM
• 160 GB 5400RPM SATA II hard drive

Price: $429 (Memory Express)

Pros: Asus Eee computers are pretty well-known as far as miniature PCs and netbooks go. Asus itself makes pretty reliable hardware, in my experience, and the Eee Box itself can be fitted almost anywhere, so as to be unobtrusive.

Cons: Price, primarily. Though not the most expensive unit on this list, the Eee Box does cost $80 more than the Acer Aspire Revo, despite having essentially identical specs thereto. We can argue over brands, but since I’ve personally no objection to either Acer or Asus, I don’t exactly see why — if I am to choose between just the two — I should opt for the Asus.

Also, as Petrell pointed out in the comments, there’s no optical drive. I don’t see this as being the biggest obstacle, and I don’t imagine Grace would either…but you never know. It’s worth consideration.

Option #2: Acer Aspire Revo 3610

Specs:

• nVidia ION graphics chipset
• Intel Atom N330 Dual Core 1.6GHz processor
• 2 GB DDR2 RAM
• 160 GB 5400RPM SATA II hard drive

Price: $349 (Memory Express)

Pros: Price, for one; the Revo 3610 is identical to the Eee Box (above) in terms of specifications, yet comes in at a lower price. That’s an important consideration for me these days! Personally, I’ve only ever had good experiences with Acer computers. And the size of the thing…sheesh, it’s tiny! I could hide it almost anywhere near Grace’s monitor, and clean up the cable mess I made when I set up her tower, and she’d have a better computer at the end of it.

I don’t imagine she’d complain.

Also, the Revo boasts one additional USB port. That sounds trivial, and I would generally agree that it is…but at the same time, I think we’ve all been in that situation where we have one more device to connect than we have ports available. Am I right? Nevermind.

Cons: The lack of an optical drive, again, as Petrell pointed out.

Option #3: Dell Inspiron Zino HD

Specs:

• ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics chipset
• AMD Athlon 2650e 1.6GHz processor
• 3 GB DDR2 RAM
• 250 GB 7200RPM SATA II hard drive

Price: $399 (Dell.ca)

Pros: This system offers more memory than either the Revo or the Eee Box, and a larger/faster hard drive as well. The hard drive capacity is a worthwhile consideration, since Grace is always happy to have more space to work with; the extra RAM would certainly improve system performance a little bit.

Cons: For one, the HD 3200 graphics chipset…isn’t really that good. In fact, as a general rule, it’s worse than the ION chipset. For $99 more, I could jump that to the HD 4330 chipset, which is markedly better (heck, Grace could probably run Mass Effect, which I’ve been encouraging her to play lately).

But that would of course boost the price of the unit from something that falls happily between the Revo and the Eee Box to something that far exceeds both units. And considering the fact that this unit boasts what appears to be a single core processor, rather than a dual core, it doesn’t seem to be that great of a deal overall.

Option #4: Mac Mini

Specs:

• nVidia GeForce 9400M graphics chipset
• Intel Core 2 Duo 2.26 GHz processor
• 2 GB DDR3 RAM
• 160 GB 5400RPM hard drive

Price: $649 (Apple.ca)

Pros: Well, it’s a Mac, for starters, which means the beautiful, easy-to-use thing that is OS X. Overall, this is a much higher-performance system than any of the other entries on this list, and yet is quite compact (smaller than the Dell, I think). The processor is a Core 2, rather than a netbook Atom-type chip, and the 9400M graphics are…decent.

Cons: The hard drive is nothing special. And then there’s the price. The Mac Mini is easily the most expensive computer on the list here (not that I’m surprised), and probably the hardest overall to cost-justify. Yes, it’s a beefier system overall, but does Grace need the power? Given her current usage profile, I’m doubtful.

In Closing

My gut feeling is to go with the Revo, both because it’s the cheapest system on the list and because it offers what will probably be the best system overall for Grace’s needs. Still, I’m open to some debate on the matter, so if anyone wants to chime in with a suggestion, please do so.

Actually, it would be somewhat more correct to say that I’m looking for a new computer system in general. My current tower is a Pentium 4 (2.66 GHz, 1 GB RAM, 512 MB Radeon HD3850) and my current laptop is a Powerbook G4 (1 GHz, 1.25 GB RAM, 32 MB nVidia GeForce Go 5200). They’re both old systems (both date to around 2003 or 2004, in fact), and while the Pentium 4 still holds its own for most things, the Powerbook is definitely getting long in the teeth. It still serves well for most things, but I notice that it’s slowing down as the months and software versions roll on.

Actually, the Powerbook is moving at the same speed as always; it’s the applications that are slowing down; later (more modern) software versions tend to be just a wee bit more resource intensive than previous versions, and more developers are beginning to simply drop support for the G4 series of processors in favour of Intel-exclusive applications. The last G4s were released in 2005; it’s already been over three years since Apple switched from PowerPC chips to Intel chips.

The most recent and relevant example of software evolving beyond the capabilities and hardware of the Powerbook is, unfortunately, my favourite piece of software: Adobe Lightroom. Version 3 of Lightroom will run reasonably well on my Pentium 4, apparently…but the Mac version only supports Intel-based Macs.

I suppose I could just get by on the Pentium 4, rather than investing in new hardware. But then, I don’t usually have a lot of time to sit down at home and work on photos. More to the point, in my day-to-day routine and career, I tend to lead a fairly “mobile” life, one that rather lends itself to (and is suited by) the use of a portable computer. There’s also the matter of my plan to return to school in September, to become a teacher. I am reliably informed that having a laptop — and then one that can run Windows, unfortunately — is practically a requirement (in this province, at least).

At the same time, I’d like to find something that can run OS X, Apple’s operating system, as well. Granted, when we’re talking about non-Apple hardware, that requires the use of hackint0sh tools…but that’s a length I’d be willing to go to.

So I have been looking at…possibilities. Which is actually a lot more difficult than I would have expected. The main concerns I have in selecting a new laptop are battery life and LCD quality; I’d like to find something with decent battery life and a screen that offers a decent contrast ratio and good colour. It’s this latter point that’s often problematic, especially when one is looking for a laptop — most laptops tend to have…er…sub-par screens.
(more…)

So I have a conundrum.

Suspecting that the source of my Windows computer’s instability might be the existing video card (a Radeon 9600 XT), I went and picked up a Sapphire Radeon HD 3850 — pretty much the most powerful AGP graphics card in existence today. (ATI has always been my preferred brand.)

Anyhow, I installed the card and its drivers, and proceeded to test out Neverwinter Nights. That’s where the trouble started: NWN crashed, every time. I did some digging, and found a few hints in various places that the issue may have something to do with ATI’s Catalyst software — certain versions of the control center application evidently conflict with NWN, for example.

Things got worse when I tried to switch Catalyst versions (Sapphire ships the card with what I believe is Catalyst 8.4). Reverting to Catalyst 7.11 (apparently a very stable version) was no help: the driver didn’t support the card. Installing the Omega Drivers — which use Catalyst 7.12 — didn’t work, and for the same reason.

Installing the Catalyst 9.4 update/hotfix from Sapphire didn’t improve things any. And to add insult to injury, the Cayalyst drivers that can be downloaded directly from ATI’s website actually don’t support the card in question (it’s a relatively new card from Sapphire: AGP support and 512 MB of DDR3 memory).

Nothing seems to make NWN work. Which is a pain, as I’d hoped to start work on a new idea that would have greatly benefitted from the enhanced performance the HD 3850 promises.

A bit more searching today furnished me with downloads, from Sapphire, of Catalyst 8.7 through 8.9, and I’m hoping one of these will do the trick. Failing that, I plan to try reinstalling NWN, to see if that could somehow be the issue. I’ve already tried the critical rebuild patch for NWN 1.69.

Failing THAT, I’m thinking of maybe trading the card in for an eVGA nVidia GeForce 6200 LE and another 1GB stick of DDR RAM (this doubling what the system is currently equipped with).

nVidia cards apparently play nicer with BioWare games in general, although the 6200 is not as powerful, by a fair bit, as the HD 3850.

In the end, though, raw power is less important to me than that NWN runs, preferably at a frame rate in excess of 30 at a resolution with at least 600 pixels vertically (720 preferred) on a 16:9 monitor.

Thoughts? Should I even waste time on the HD 3850, or should I just swap it for the 6600 and the RAM? Has anyone else had this issue before and resolved it successfully?