DeLL Computer Questions

[james.ca]

I was given this box . DELL OPTIPLEX GX 270 .
Socket 478 DELL board Celeron 2.8cpu 512 cache at 533 ram 2x 256 sticks at 2700 .
2PCI slots , 2 PCI slots and a monitor slot, no HD and only takes one drive in the case maybe 2 if I can ram them in !
. This crate any good for recording .
Been a while for me using an INTEL cpu box
Thanks James.ca

[KingDaddyO]

The Celeron's are low cost processors which are now several generations past their prime. That machine will run Win 98 fine, but it will have no security, plus a lot of problems finding compatible software, if you want to run anything that is recent. A better solution would be to load Win 2000, which has excellent security. Regardless, you'll need to upgrade all resource components (hard drive & memory at a minimum, and video if you need higher resolution or graphics speed).

Win XP - you can probably get it to load, but you'll be hating life every step of the way.
Vista - don't even think about it!


If you decide to give it a whack, I wouldn't throw more than a $100 into it - desktops are so inexpensive these days, that unless you really want to experiment with this one (like say with open source, Linux), you'll be much better off spending that money on a low cost, recent model.

[Jidis]

Thorn,

I think you may be thinking of older Celeron stuff (like PII generation?). The 478 is the PentiumIV socket. I just retired a modified Dell Dimension 2400 PIV 2.8 I had been using, but most of my DSP comes from UAD cards. It still did OK on modest native loads though. This was running XPsp2 with XPLite and TweakUI stripping some things down. Not sure what the exact differences are between Celeron and Pentium chips in the PIV era, but I'd guess they'd be close enough.

Take Care

[james.ca]

Many thanks for the replys
I'll most likely gut for the cpu and ram I have simlair in my net box. I ad in another 512 I'll have a gigs worth of it
The cpu I might forward to a friend .
Looking up the cpu it's pre 64 bit and the box is from 04 .
Plus I not really a brand name computer person they can be a pain in the ass to deal with .
James.ca

[Disjointed]

i still run my recording cpu on a p4 2.4ghz, 1g ram.. (although an upgrade is planned soon)

everything works great, XP runs like a charm..goes 24 tracks, 3-4 buss, many efx.. no problem

the only problem youll run into, is newer plugins are massive processor hogs...

for an older system it is better to use older plugs (theyre cheaper anyway!)

ie waves L2 instead of L3 ...

for upgrades, try to get stuff that you can transfer to a new setup in the future (though theres not much that will nowadays)

gl

[Jidis]

Originally Posted by james.ca

Plus I not really a brand name computer person they can be a pain in the ass to deal with .

Well, a girl gave me the one I had after leaving it plugged in with no protection during a storm. The board I swapped in was a standard "mini-ATX" form factor and the Dell didn't give me any trouble with screw holes or power supply, so maybe they've gotten better about some of the proprietary stuff (YMMV, check the exact model). On the other hand, the fried original board was a common, decent Intel that Dell buys, so I'm not sure you gain much by transplanting a CPU from that era (I'd keep the machine in one piece if you can).

Take Care

[james.ca]

I decided to gut it for parts grabbed a very decent cup fan deal the ram and cpu .
I have buddy I pass the cpu onto The case only holds a single drive any - ways !
Plus I'm not a huge fan of brand name computers as they all have add on parts to install the HD's ect and other pieces of gear if you don't have the right size apdapter you SOL and if you try and order parts from the brand name guys they gouge you large . Plus no service contract nil support for the unit as well !
Many thanks for the advice
James.ca

[allencollins]

Celeron is a P4 that didn't pass through metrology testing for a P4. It's fine you can make music with it. Celeron bashing is ignorance.

In fact some Celerons outperform p4's. What happens is if some or all chips in a lot don't meet certain marketing specs they sell them at a lower spec in this case the under celeron label. They are flawed in some way. But flawed in a way that will not affect their functionality but only in a slight performance dip.

Why do you think it's possible to over clock a 2.4 to say 2.66 ? Fact of the matter is, the lot of wafers the 2.66 were diced didn't all meet the 2.66 gig spec. They then sell at the highest average speed of the lot which would be say 2.4 Ghz. So they were really meant to be 2.66 but they average at 2.4 and they sell them as 2.4. Al lthe techies get a whole of the 2.4 overclock it and think their cool.

They can't sell a 2.66 gig cpu that runs at 2.4 as a 2.66. But they can sell a 2.66 as a 2.4. It's not like cpu lot's have 100% yield. Not every chip they make runs at the same exact speed. It all has to do with the gas implant.
The reticle/photo mask of a 2.4 core2 quad is identical to a 2.66 and a 2.8. What;'s the difference? Basically for lack of a better word the tolerences within the circuit allow it to run safely at higher clock cycles.

When they make devices in a cpu they are basically taking the positive electrons from atoms and placing them in the chip in specific places essentially making a micron sized printed circuit. When the atomic particles are accelerated into the silicon it's like an explosion and it takes atleast a million volts of electricity to do this Sometimes as much a 6 million for flash memory. During the impinging the silicon melts due to the heat causing and this creates flaws in the circuit. At the end of the day it all comes down to how many number of flaws are acceptable and how the final product performs with the flaws.

It's tricky business and it is far from perfect. It's hit or miss and with over 2 billion+ transistors placed in a space as small as a someone thumbnail it's bound to not work 100% of the time. That's why they have products like Celeron.

In the old days a flawed 'DX' cpu was sold as an 'SX' but at times the SX outperformed the 'DX'. Same holds true for P4 and celeron.Not sure what they do with flawed CORE2 chips probably sell them at lower speeds. They don't scrap them thats for sure.

Anyway I could record a great cd with a celeron . As long as I have my A/D and some good mics/pres
and a fresh install of Samplitude the last thing that's going to hold me back is the Celeron CPU that everyone loves to hate.....


AC

[KingDaddyO]

No Celeron bashing here. My personal experience with older Dell Optiplex's & Celeron processors has clearly been less positive than others, so my comments are defined from that experience.

I still wouldn't want a Celeron for a desktop machine, but that's just me.

[Jidis]

Without looking it up, I don't know if the newer stuff has changed, but back in the PII days they had some other differences. I was in on that Celeron 300A @450 thing back then and the onboard cache between PIIs and Celerons was different. The Celeron 300A's cache was half the size, but it ran at the full clock speed of the processor or something, where the PII ran at half clock (I think). Bottom line I guess is that they actually ended up being neck and neck on bench tests for a given speed.

On the other hand, I've got a P3 933 and a Celeron 1100 which I still use some, and the Celeron is a POS (not "point of sale" ) . I'm sure the 100/133 bus difference is a big part of it, but the 1100 really does feel like crap (more like a P3 6 or 700). I think both machines are i815 chipset and everything else is pretty closely matched.

[james.ca]

I gutted the box over only one hard drive space in the friggin case !
Plus the other beef only 2 PCI slots also .
If I can find a S478 board with 5 -6 PCI slots I might use the cpu . Don't need a huge cache for recording and tons of speed with cpu .
I bet can safely OC the cpu up to 3.2 ghz and for shure 3. ghz
.
My main reocrding rig is a AMD scoket 462 with an Athlon 2.2 cpu and 2x512 daul rail ram the board has 6 PCI slots and I plan on using all 6 of them I hope to move up to one more card and go to 32 tracks the last slot for an effects card with it's own cpu on th card so no strain from the main cpu .
I really don't think you need more than a 2 gig cpu for recording and maybe 2 gigs of ram .
Another consideration is going to SATA drives and gain more data flow to the drives either as a single drive or as an array also .
This can give a good perfomace boost also . With the new SATAII drives large real time track counts are a can do and also be quite stable as well
James.ca


.

[theremin]

Celerons don't support multiprocessing while pentiums do. I always tell customers it is like a 2 lane highway vs an 8 lane highway. they can both be 70mph but one will move a lot of traffic while the other will have a traffic jam.

celerons work fine if you don't try to do too many things at once. i still prefer pentiums and now the core 2 duo/quads

S!
Jason