I have finished building my brand new computer. At the moment it is running Windows XP. I had to install Windows XP three times because of various complications. Windows managed to install itself on the H drive instead of C causing a multitude of problems when installing drivers. Most installers assume that Windows components are installed on C. Even ATI’s latest Catalyst 8.1 driver caused grief when it started refusing to load (citing a problem with mom.implementation). Eventually all the initial niggles were fixed and I could start installing some software.
The dual display, composed of two Samsung Pebble 20" monitors (SM-2032BW, SM-2032MW), enables fast development and the capability to enhance games such as Supreme Commander — where the other display is used to display a live map. The colours are vivid and noticeably better than my old Acer Travelmate 8006LMi.
The first benchmark I performed was the SuperPi calculation: the program calculates π efficiently and stresses the CPU to provide an accurate measurement of arithmetical performance. Initial benchmarks at stock settings (3.0 GHz) calculated π in 15 seconds.
The first game I installed was Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, an impressive RTS from Relic Entertainment, and I was stunned by the improvements in quality when playing at the higher settings (everything on High, resolution at 1680x1050). I am going to push the game even further by applying tweaks I found online.
Copying data from my external hard drive is stable at 22.5 MiB/s! This is a 10x improvement over my laptop. I am very happy at the moment and hope that the new hardware will facilitate some successful projects.
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