Dude I got a Dell

Yes, I ended up buying a Dell Dimension XPS Gen 4 for my gaming PC. Why would I do that, especially after writing a blog about building your own computer? I think it's best to answer these questions in a mock Q&A session:

So what happened to the custom AMD Athlon 64 system I thought you were going to build?

Quite frankly it was due to the extremely poor availability of the parts I wanted. Since I only upgrade my PC every three or so years I wanted to buy parts that had some longevity built in. This meant getting a motherboard that supported PCI Express video cards, SATA hard drives and DDR-2 RAM. That meant in order to go with an AMD Athlon 64 system I would have to pick the only motherboard chipset that supported PCIe at the time, the NVIDIA nForce 4. It turns out that NVIDIA paper launched another product with the nForce 4 chipset and it wasn't available for purchase until several months later but only using the expensive SLI version. Since available was so tight and demand so high, vendors were charging $330+ for motherboards based on this chipset. I thought that was a ridiculous price to pay considering the AMD Athlon 64 +3500 processor I wanted was only going for about $210 at the time. Another component I wanted was the NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT PCI Express video card, but again extremely limited availability and high demand brought the street price of this card way above what I thought was reasonable. Because of this and the fact that I couldn't wait any longer to play the latest games (Doom 3 and Half-Life 2) I ended up buying from Dell.

But why Dell and not from another OEM manufacture?

Believe me I looked around. I checked out similar configurations from HP, Compaq, Sony, Alienware, Falcon Northwest, BoXX, IBM and various other OEM companies and nobody came close to the Dell pricing and part configuration I was looking for. Dell really is the mass market king as they buy in huge volumes and pass the savings onto the consumer. They were also one of the few OEM's to even offer a version of the video card I was looking for, the Nvidia GeForce 6800 GTO (The performance of the GTO lies in between the standard 6800 and the 6800 GT). I'm well aware that Dell has a reputation of being a mainstream producer of PC's for people that don't know how to build their own systems but having built my last 3 PC's I'm really tired of the hassle. I just wanted a quiet, lean, fast system with a decent looking case.


Front view of the Dell Dimension XPS Gen 4

But aren't you concerned about not being able to overclock the system?

No, not really. I've never been a fan of overclocking. For one reason it immediately voids the warranty of your system. I didn't want to buy a brand new system to get no support on it. It also increases the need for more exotic cooling and thus would increase the sound level of the computer. For me silence is golden and what ever minor speed increase I would get from overclocking wouldn't be worth it for me.

What about upgradability, I heard Dell uses proprietary parts?

Yes Dell does use proprietary cases, motherboards and the power supplies but I did my research and knew this before I bought it so I was willing to accept this risk. I tend to upgrade my entire system anyways so I will probably buy another box during my next upgrade cycle. This doesn't mean I can't upgrade anything as I can add two more hard drives for additional storage and configure them in a RAID 0 or 1 setup. I can replace the graphics card down the road if I need to using the 16x PCI Express slot. I can upgrade the processor to Intel's latest Prescott based CPU. I can add an additional two 5.25" optical drives. I can't imagine myself needing to upgrade to a bigger power supply anytime soon since the XPS comes standard with a 460 Watt model and if I need a new motherboard down the road I can always pick the latest Dell one from eBay.

These are the specs I ended up getting:

Intel Pentium 4 550 (3.4GHz Prescott processor)
Intel 925X chipset
1GB DDR-2 RAM
nVidia GeForce 6800 GTO 256MB video card
160GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive
16X DVD-ROM Drive
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS (D) Sound Card
17" Dell UltraSharp 1704FPT Flat Panel Display

Dell had a free color printer promotion along with a free 17" LCD display which I upgraded to the better UltraSharp model. It offers a 13ms reponse time which is great for games. I also took advantage of a 30% off coupon I found online.


So, how's the performance?

Simple awesome. Bear in mind my previous computer was a Intel Pentium III 1GHz system with a 64MB GeForce 3 video card so jumping to a 3.4GHz P4 with a 256 MB GeForce 6800 GTO was huge jump. I run both Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 at my display's maximum resolution (1280x1024) with all the eye candy turned on and the performance is excellent.

Is it quiet?

Yes compared to my old PC it is very quiet, but not as quiet as my G5 or iMac, and definitely not as quiet as Rob's HP workstation but I'm happy with its lack of noise nonetheless.

Any problems so far?

None that I consider significant although the front bezel door doesn't seem to close very gracefully, it seems to take a hard snap before it closes. Also the case really is just plastic although it appears to be metallic from the pictures. The inside has a bit of clutter especially when I compare it to my PowerMac G5. I've also noticed that Doom 3 experienced some tearing artifacts with fast moving scenes but I discovered that this was due to the limitations of LCD technology and was not a driver issue.

Any upgrades you want to do in the near future?

I'm currently saving for some 5.1 speakers so I can listen to the upcoming Doom 3 expansion pack in all its Digital Surround Sound glory.

One more thing, Rob asked about the multicolored front bezel. Yes it can display any of the colors you see below, but I think it looks cheesy so I decided to just turn it off.


Pretty colors

The Defeat of FireWire?

FireWire feeling the heat from USB 2.0?

With the subtle omission of a bundled FireWire cable (in addition to a previously supplied USB power adapter), Apple's second-generation iPod mini and iPod photo packages are generating growing protests among Mac loyalists.

Apple's argument is that the majority of computer users have a USB 2.0 connection as opposed to having FireWire. So in order to keep costs down (Apple recently dropped the price of the 4GB mini by $50 to $199) and profit margins up, they have to omit the "extras". The irony of this is that Apple helped to develop and promote the FireWire standard and is now taking steps to reduce its importance as the preferred standard for high speed connections. What is urking a lot of Mac users also is that USB 2.0 is a relatively new bus shipping standard on only the most recent of Mac computers. If you have a Mac system that is only a couple of years old, you'll have to pay a $19 "surcharge" to take advantage of high speed transfers and battery charging. You can read additional perspectives at Cnet News here and PlayList Magazine here.

This FireWire issue hits home for me also. Being a long time fan and follower of the iPod, I finally felt it was the right time to jump in the iPod pool with the recent upgrade announcements. With Rika's birthday approaching, the mini would be the perfect gift in her preferred color of green. But since I use a HP workstation with USB 2.0 and no FireWire and Rika uses a Sawtooth PowerMac G4 with FireWire yet no USB 2.0, I felt forced to purchase a $17.50 (edu) FireWire cable. Obviously Apple shouldn't make users purchase such a basic and essential component but what are you going to do?

Well I should receive the iPod mini in about a week or so. I'm curious to know if Rika will use it for music or just for transfering files, or even use it at all. If she doesn't, I'll gladly join the masses and take it to school, work and the gym.

Half-Life 2 completed- Finally!

Freeman striking a pose.

Yesterday I was finally able to complete Valve's awesome Half-Life 2 after restricting myself to 30-minute-a-day time limits. It only took me 11 weeks- no wonder my brother Mark finished both Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 before me. I fudged the time restriction at the end just to finish, but I wasn't disappointed in the least- what a brilliant follow up to the original.

The graphics were sharp and detailed, the framerate was smooth and the improved AI made it even more interesting. There could have been a more challenging ending along with a more satisfying resolution but I'm sure all questions will be answered in Half-Life 3 (I hope). As a side note, I thought it was interesting that other players were experiencing the same type of motion sickness that I was, especially when driving the hovercraft in the Water Hazard level.

In regards to the missing Hydra, PrimaGame's behind the scenes book, Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar has this to say about it. Apparently it was a game design decision to leave it on the cutting room floor.

Now that I'm finished I should have more time to concentrate on learning Valve's 3D level maker, Hammer, as well as perfecting my poly-modeling skills in Maya. And somewhere in between I have to finish my normal map blog and Half-Life 2/Doom 3 technology comparison.

Half Life 2 Completed

I just finally finished Half Life 2! Overall it was one awesome game although I have to admit the ending left a little to be desired. If you haven't completed the game yet you will soon know what I mean. This game had it all, cutting edge graphics, great sound, incredible physics and the best feature of all... excellent level design. I can't wait to play the third chapter of this trilogy. Until then we can have fun with Garry's Mod and making our own Disneyland level using the SDK tools.

The one bug I encountered was a game crash whenever I tried to load my last quick saved game. I didn't know what caused it until I researched the error message on the www.steampowered.com website.

Once I read the FAQ I realized the source of my problem was addressed on point #11. Apparently exiting to Windows while the game is still playing could cause corruption on the game or on the saved games. This happened on my system because the scroll wheel on my mouse was set to go to the "Next window" when pressed. Ariannna used to play with me and she would accidently press the scroll wheel, thus exiting to Windows. Once this happened a few times Half Life 2 would crash everytime I loaded my last saved game. Previous saved games would also crash with the exception of one recent saved game but the problem was that it autosaved at the worst possible time... at a point where I was down to about 10 health. My next best playable saved level was several chapters behind so I wasn't looking forward to going back and redoing 2 weeks worth of gameplay. I eventually ended up playing the level where I had the 10 health. It turns out that there was some goodie filled crates nearby and so I restored my health to the point where I could get by to the next medic station.

The moral of this story is that I highly recommend you don't rely on the Quick Save feature and that you occasionally perform a regular save at least once per level. I have since changed the default mapping on my scroll wheel button to do nothing when pressed.

By the way, I attended both E3 demos Valve put together and nowhere did the final game contain the following screenshot from those presentations. I'm only mentioning this because I thought the Hydra would have been cool.


"Screenshot from early demo..."

HP xw4200: Part II

OK- enough is enough. I started this posting in October of 2004 and now I've decided it's time to finally wrap up my review of the HP xw4200. So- how much faster is my new workstation compared to my previous personal computer?

Thankfully a whole lot faster. That's a pretty generic answer- I know- but I'll get into specifics in a minute. I think it's first important to point out what a workstation actually is though and admit that my HP is a somewhat neutered down version due to cost considerations.

The general definition of a workstation according to webopedia is a"type of computer used for engineering applications (CAD/CAM), desktop publishing, software development, and other types of applications that require a moderate amount of computing power and relatively high quality graphics capabilities."

Fair enough. I would argue that it can be further defined by a high end single or dual configuration processor like the 64-bit AMD Opteron, 32-bit Intel Xeon or the 64-bit IBM PowerPC G5. A professional graphics card like the ATI FireGL, Nvidia Quadro, or the 3Dlabs Wildcat. A 10,000 rpm Serial ATA or SCSI hard drive (with or without a RAID configuration). And high speed DDR2 ECC memory.

Now does everyone need such a high-end machine? Of course not. While I work in apps such as Maya, Photoshop, and Painter, I chose a single 2.8 GHz Pentium IV. Yet all my model and 3D scene files render so much quicker than before. 640x480 test renders take about 3 seconds compared to around 15. So why not 2 Xeons instead to make it even quicker? Well I don't have much animated scenes to render now, and frankly the extra processor would be idle most of the time. Plus, after much searching, I found no white paper from Alias or an independent test to confirm the efficiency and performance of Maya's multi-threaded capabilities.

So what about the graphics card then? (Realtime modeling and shading performance is handled by this most important component.) Well after some additional research, I decided the multiple increase in cost over consumer cards does not justify the few "added" features they support. Plus I can't stand the fact that the pro cards share the same VPU/GPUs as the gaming cards. So since a Nvidia 6800 PCIe based card was unavailable at the time, I decided to to configure my HP with their least expensive offering, the ATI Entry 2D- AKA the ATI Radeon X300 SE. Sure it's only 64 MB and doesn't even require a cooling fan but I played Doom 3 in it. It wasn't pretty, but I played it.

Surprisingly it performs admirably in Maya. Obviously I'm not creating realtime effects with Maya's Fluid Effects, but modeling polygonal characters is certainly quick and snappy. I previously chastised ATI for creating poor OpenGL drivers and for not fixing an annoying bug which didn't allow me to use my 3D viewport in full screen, but this has been remedied in their latest Catalyst 5.1 release. It's difficult to determine whether the CPU or the VPU is responsible, but using Photoshop is like skating on ice now. Large res images are color corrected and manipulated in real time. Wonderful!

3D gaming is my biggest compromise right now until I upgrade the graphics card, but I'll live. Part of the problem is that I purchased such a large LCD that runs at 1920x1200 and there currently isn't a card on the market that can run Doom 3 or Half-Life 2 at that res with all the visual goodies cranked up. Well not at decent frame rates anyways. I give credit to Valve for making my X300 very playable at high resolution with Half-Life 2 and supporting a true 16:10 widescreen aspect ratio. Thanks Gabe!

Well that should be enough for now. Have to finish that normal map post soon!