Battle

At first Intel didn’t invest in such a product, so the two main companies fought for first place, I’m talking about ATI and nVidia of course, still dominating the graphics card industry today (although ATI was bought by AMD, and recently the brand name was also changed to AMD).

Nvidia Gforce 6xxx video cards were important because they represent the first huge leap in graphics processing performance on the nVidia side. Before these cards Riva, TNT, TNT2, Geforce, Geforce 2, Geforce 3, Geforce 4 and Geforce FX 5xxx cards slowly crawled up the performance scale, but lacked the spark of the Geforce 6xxx family, which challenged the upper limit of AGP4X/8X expansion slots, specially made just for graphics cards at that time.

Video Card

The nVidia Gforce 6800 video card was the best of the 6xxx series. It has such a great performance that some people still use it today, and a few games specify it as the minimum hardware requirement.

On nVidia’s official website Gforce 6800 Ultra, GT, GS and XT video cards are considered to be part of the enthusiast sector, although they have primitive GPU structures, compared even to today’s newest low-end products like Geforce GTX 520. Anyway, here are the general technical specs of Gforce 6800 video cards:

- 256bit memory interfaces

- 512MB DDR2 or DDR3 memory

- 35.2GB/s maximum theoretical memory bandwidth

- 6.4 billion texels/second fill rate

- 1050MHz memory frequency

- requires additional power cable (>40Watt power requirement)

All in all Geforce 6800 video cards are no longer practical, as they aren’t efficient and can be installed only in older computers with AGP slots or early PCI-Express slots. They don’t really offer the necessary compatibility or speed required today by most operating systems, applications and games.

ATA

Look at the next picture, and see how big is the difference between an IDE/PATA port and a much faster SATA port.

Ata 2

As mini-ITX motherboards are becoming more and more popular, such large connectors and wide cables can no longer be used in computers. Imagine the large IDE/ATA connector and cable on a mini-ITX motherboard.

Motherboard

On the latest AMD mini-ITX board they were able to put SATA3 ports, four generations better than the IDE/ATA interface. Physically a single IDE connector takes up as much space as four or five such high-speed SATA3 ports, so there’s no reason to implement these old connectors anymore.

ATA hard drives are no longer manufactured in large numbers. Some companies decided to make SSD (solid state drive) modules for IDE interfaces too, to address customers who don’t want to abandon their laptops or other kind of digital multimedia devices yet, but want storage devices in them, based on the latest technologies.

ATA

There’s also a lucky coincidence (or very intelligent move?) when we compare IDE and SATA laptop hard drives. The newer SATA hard drives are a bit shorter, so some manufacturers recognized the opportunity to build some IDE to SATA adapters for laptops, which can be used to install the largest SATA hard drives in old laptops with IDE/ATA interface.

ATA

This also allows you to install SATA hard drives in optical drive bays in laptops with only IDE interface, or with SATA for the hard drive and IDE for the optical drive. Imagine and old Pentium M 1.8GHz laptop system stuffed with two 1TB 2.5” SATA hard drives. That’s almost 2TB of usable storage space, while an optical drive can still be connected externally through a USB 2.0 port.

Bottom line, ATA laptop hard disk drives (HDD) will soon disappear, as old laptop systems based on outdated technologies are no longer efficient enough to use. Laptops are moving toward ~10Watt total power consumption.

At the beginning of the computer age hard drives were more external than internal, in the sense that they were huge separate units, but stored very little data.

Internal HDD

Modern IBM hard drives were small enough to fit on a table, but still were able to store very little data, just a kilobytes. Hard drives have come a long way since then. The industry is clearly moving towards 2.5” hard drives, because they can spin faster and more efficiently than larger, 3.5” drives. 2.5” internal hard drives were first developed for laptops, because installing classic 3.5” hard drives in portable devices wasn’t a good ides.

SATA

2.5” internal hard drives have reached the performance of 3.5” drives and about half of their capacity. Price has also significantly dropped, but still, a 500GB 2.5” laptop hard drive costs as much as a 1TB 3.5” desktop hard drive, and this fact isn’t likely to change. Although smaller hard drives require less material, they are also harder to make, so fewer finished products make it out of the factory without any faults.

Power consumption is another interesting topic, as 3.5” hard drives have come very close to 2.5” laptop hard drive power consumption. An average 3.5” drive needs about 3-5Watts to spin, read and write, while 2.5” drives consume between 2 and 2.5Watts during the same operations.

Measurements 1

These are measurements made with hard drives from 2009, but these figures are still representative for the 3.5” desktop hard drive sector.

Measurements 2

Still, top manufacturers have improved their products to a decent level. I remember my first Maxtor 250GB 3.5” SATA hard drive, which consumed around 20Watts. Even in good cooling conditions (a 80mm fan directly under it) its temperatures went really high, to 40-45 degrees Celsius. From this point of view today’s hard drives are much more advanced, because with minimal cooling they manage to stay under 30 degrees Celsius (measured by the built-in heat sensor).

Bottom line the trend will definitely be to use 2.5” drives even in desktops. Capacities will soon reach 3, 4, 8, 12 …etc. TerraBytes, even though the industry has stalled around 1TB for quite a while (2-3 years). Recent research showed that magnetic discs aren’t obsolete yet, they have a potential of storing up to 650TB in discs of the same 2.5” physical size.

2TB HDDs (hard disk drives) are slowly becoming the optimal solution for desktops, as they have a very good capacity/price indicator. For example a 2TB Hitachi hard drive spinning at 5400RPM costs only $75 at newegg.com, $65 after a mail-in rebate.

2tb Hdd

This particular hard drive connects to a SATA2 port, capable of transmitting data at speeds up to 6Gbit/s (~750MB/s). In reality this speed limit is only relevant for RAID configurations, when identical hard drives are used in parallel to create one large capacity and high speed storage unit. According to benchmarks made public, one such hard drive offers a minimum of 61.8MB/s (at the beginning of the disk) and a maximum of 143.7MB/s (at the end of the disk) transfer rates. When configured in RAID 0, two drives reach 2 x 143.7MB/s, three can reach 3 x 143.7 … up to the limit of the SATA2 interface, ~750MB/s total.

Power consumption of these slower, 5400RPM hard drives is surprisingly low, even though they use three platters (666GB each). At spinup one drive may require up to 20Watts of power, but after it reached 5400RPM the power requirement doesn’t exceed 4.4Watts, comparable to laptop hard drives, which require 2-2.5Watts.

2tb Hdd

A (theoretically) faster 7200RPM 2TB HDD isn’t much more expensive, just around $87 at newegg.com. The Hitachi Deskstar 7K2000 2TB hard drive requires 7.5 watts and offers a very similar performance, transfer rates between 65MB/s and 124MB/s according to Tomshardware.com. This is a disappointing fact, which should motivate potential buyers to look at benchmarks first, whenever they plan to buy hard drives.

In conclusion, everyone should buy a 2TB HDD who can afford it. Operating systems are getting bigger and you also may want to install more than one, so a lot more space is needed. If you require storage space, one 2TB hard drive is the most efficient solution, but for higher speeds it’s recommended to use more smaller hard drives in RAID mode.

1 Gig Vs 512 Video Card

In this picture you see an older graphics card made for AGP (accelerated graphics port), but the basic structure of video cards didn’t change much since then. Under the processor heatsink there’s the graphics processor, which uses the memory chips around it. The speed at which these memory chips can be accessed give the performance of the video card. In practice if two video cards with identical processors have identical memory bus speeds, but different memory capacities, then they should give exactly the same performance.

Things get more complicated if the 3D application or game requires more graphics memory for higher quality textures. In that case the video card with only 512MB memory will have to borrow additional memory from the system, so the textures have to be loaded from the system memory instead of from the video card’s local memory. It takes longer in all cases. The card with 1 Gig memory will also work a bit slower than in the first case, because much more data has to travel through the same local memory bus, but will work a lot faster than the 512MB video card which has to use system memory, from further away.

1 Gig Vs 512 Video Card

Whenever you’re planning to buy a graphics card, you have to find out how much graphics memory you need. After you know the minimum required memory size, you have to look at the video card memory bus speed, because this has the biggest influence on performance after the graphics processor’s type and frequency.

In conclusion you can’t determine which card is better based on just the size of its memory. Cards with less memory are usually cheaper and faster, but for games and applications which use a lot of high quality textures it’s more appropriate to buy a card with more memory, even if its memory bus speed is a bit lower.

8088 XT computers had one external port for the keyboard and that’s it. The rest of the internal and external devices had to be connected through additional controllers inserted into ISA expansion slots.

Since then more and more controllers were built onto the mainbord, in fact nowadays everything is handled by a 1-3 chips on the mainboard, including external PS2, USB, COM, LPT, VGA, audio, Ethernet, eSATA, FireWire and internal IDE, floppy, SATA, USB (for frontal ports) …etc.

These ports are on the back panel of a 1st generation iCore, LGA1156 motherboard, but even on much older and cheaper motherboard you’ll find most of these ports.

After manufacturers successfully integrated everything on the motherboard, now their new goal is to squeeze every controller into the processor. The motherboard shown above already uses processors with the memory controller and graphics chip inside, but in the future we can expect to find everything inside the processor and the motherboard will only have wires leading from the processor to the ports. Unfortunately the total size of the personal computer will not be reduced by much even if all the slots and ports will be eliminated, because the power stabilizer and power supply still take up a lot of space and there’s no way around that problem. Small form factor computers come with external power supplies, but these are much more unreliable and less powerful, so a high-end desktop computer cannot be powered by a small external power supply.

Now let’s look at a few of the characteristics of currently used computer ports.

The USB (universal serial bus) port is the most flexible of all. Almost all internal and external computer devices come in a USB version too. The only problem with these ports is the limited power it can carry to the device and the transfer rate limit.

USB 2.0 ports are limited theoretically to 480Mbps data transfer rate, but in practice this figure is much smaller. Power is limited to 5V 500mA per port, which is barely enough for a low-power 2.5″ external hard drive.

The USB 3.0 standard brought a significant speed increase (4.8GBPS) to the port, but unfortunately this works only through the 5 additional wires, so USB 2.0 devices won’t be able to work at higher speeds in a USB 3.0 port.

Power has been raised to 900 mA for each USB 3.0 port, and even USB 2.0 devices can benefit from this. For example if you connect a USB 2.0 passive HUB (without an additional power supply) to a USB 3.0 port it will be able to supply power to more devices simultaneously.

SATA ports are mainly used inside the computer, but because of their very high speed, manufacturers have made an external version too. It wasn’t very complicated, as most internal SATA ports already supported the “hot plug” function.

The first version of SATA supported speeds up to 1.5Gbit/s (~187MB/s), while the second revision up twice as much, 3Gbit/s.

SATA3 support is still not added to all motherboard released this year. This may be because most computers won’t need such high speeds, 6Gbit/s. The SATA2 maximum speed is only exceeded by a few very expensive SSD (solid state drive) models and RAID configurations. Everyday desktops and laptops don’t need such high speeds right now or in the foreseeable future. Servers on the other hand can never get fast enough storage devices, but they have their own SAS (serial attached SCSI) interface, incompatible with personal computers.

The VGA port has only a few years left, in 2014 manufacturers will no longer equip their products (motherboards, graphics cards …etc) with analog VGA ports.

DVI will also soon become obsolete, because they are very large and don’t carry audio, just video.

HDMI and DisplayPort are much more appropriate for today’s computers, as they are very small and support both audio and video signals (digital).

PS2 ports are also slowly being replaced by USB, so basically future computers will have a couple of very similarly shaped flat connectors for everything from keyboards and mice, to webcams and monitors.

Some developers are working on wireless transmission of digital and audio signals, but I advise against these solutions, as they tend to add a huge amount of radio waves to the already polluted multimedia homes. It’s much safer to keep signals on well-shielded wires, where they can travel fast and uninterrupted.

Dell, Acer, Apple, HP …etc. computer manufacturers usually resolve warranty issues much quicker than average computer part stores (for separately sold parts). Recently manufacturers have cut down the prices of their computers, so now they are similarly priced to custom built computers. Retail prices may be the same, but there’s one more thing to factor in: time after the warranty period. Unfortunately brand name computers have one or two main components which cannot be replaced by any component sold in computer part shops, you’ll have to buy an original. This is what will cost you at least twice as much as replacing a part in a custom built PC. Basically you’ll pay a double price for a (morally) very old part, while in a custom PC you may choose to replace a defective part with a much faster or otherwise better new&cheap part.

Now let’s see a high-end custom built PC with parts purchased from Newegg.com.

Without thinking too much, any cheap Full ATX computer case will be fine, without a power supply of course. This one from Linkworld costs $17, and we’ll add a power supply later on after we calculate the maximum power consumption of the system.

Right now the hottest processor is the Core i7 2600K, which can be freely overclocked to achieve performances beyond the six-core Core i7 980X. For only $329 it’s quite a bargain, and the motherboard will cost a lot less than an LGA1366 we would be buying for the Core i7-980X.

This cheap motherboard from AsRock will do just fine, with a $89 price tag. The processor comes with its own heatpipe cooler, so we won’t be spending any extra cash for moderate overclocking.

We’ll need two 4GB modules, for 2 x $40.
If the system will be used for video encoding and basic 3D, than we can skip the dedicated graphics card, because the integrated Intel HD 3000 is even faster than high end cards from nVidia or AMD, when it comes to video encoding.

A 2TB hard drive is no longer the largest, so buying at least one isn’t overkill for large video files. It costs $99.

A good cheap Blu-ray burner from LG costs $80.

For all these components any 350Watt real power supply is enough.

This 350Watt power supply with 12cm fan from Diablotek costs $20.

So let’s crunch the numbers: 17 + 329 + 89 + 40 + 40 + 99 + 80 + 20 = $714.

As you can see for only $714 you can get a high-end desktop computer with a lot of RAM (8GB), speed (4GHz+), storage (2TB) and optical disc (blu-ray) compatibility. Check out my article about the Core i7 2600K processor’s speed. If you’re not satisfied with the 3D performance of the integrated solution, you may install an nVidia GTX 460 or AMD Radeon 6850 without changing the power supply. For GTX 580 or Radeon 6950 you’ll need at least a 500Watt power supply.

In the US one All-in-one computer, 24 desktop, one netbook, four notebooks and two display models are available from Emachines.

eMachines EZ series all-in-one computer address customers with very basic computing needs, as they are based on Intel’s Atom processors and 18.5″ display panels, with the lowest resolution available today, 1366 x 768. By default they are sold with Windows XP Home Edition SP3 operating system, which is perfect for the $400 hardware configuration:
-Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz processor
-1GB DDR2
-160GB SATA hard drive
-Intel GMA 950 integrated graphics
-Gigabit Ethernet and Wi-fi B/G network adapters
-Super Multi DVD burner

As you can see it also has a card reader, USB and audio ports on the left side, while on the right there’s the optical drive door. The main advantages of this computer are the compact design and low power consumption (somewhere around 50Watts average).

All of the 24 eMachines desktop computers address the low-end and mainstream segments, as most of these are based on AMD Athlon II, Intel Atom, Intel Celeron and Intel Pentium dual core processors. Nevertheless when equipped with 4GB of memory and a decent graphics card they can be used for gaming and other more demanding applications. The next refresh will most likely boost performance, because Intel will discontinue soon the slow single core Atom processors and current Celerons and Pentium too. Soon only second (and third) generation iCore processors will be available and as a consequence Celeron and Pentium brands will also include only slightly crippled second generation iCore processors. If eMachines will take this step, then performance will most likely double, without increasing the price too much. Sandy Bridge was recently released, so it will take some time for these platforms to become cheaper. Today the cheapest 1st generation iCore motherboard costs around $100, while for a second generation motherboard you have to spend ~$30 more. First generation iCore processors (Pentium Dual core 32nm) start at 130$, while low-end second generation processors aren’t released yet, just some high-end models starting at $200.

The 10″ eMachines netbook is based on Intel’s Atom D450 processor with Intel GMA 3150 integrated graphics.

It’s a very nice low-end laptop, with a decent battery autonomy, but the small screen doesn’t recommend it for prolonged use, as it affects the eyes. Recommended retail price is $279, so even if you’ll connect it to a large screen it’s a very efficient solution for basic computing.

All four eMachines laptops are based on low-end processors and 15.6″ HD (1366 x 768) screens.

They have a very nice, simple design and can handle most home/office tasks. Three are based on Intel’s Celeron 900 2.2GHz processor and Intel GMA 4500 graphics, and one uses AMD’s V series processor and Radeon HD 4250 graphics. The ones based on Intel’s solution have great application performance, while the one with AMD’s platform has a much better 3D performance. Personally I have been using a desktop computer with an unlocked Sempron processor and Radeon HD 4200 graphics for almost two years now. It can handle FullHD movies with any type of compression and games like World of Warcraft and SIMS 3 work fine in minimum detail but high resolution (1600 x 900).

The AMD model is priced at $380 with Windows 7 Home Premium, a bit more expensive than Intel-based models, but these AMD v processors and Radeon HD 4250 GPU’s are much faster and even more efficient.

eMachines LCD monitors aren’t so great. They are basically the same panels that can be found in the manufacturer’s all-in-one computers.

18.5″ monitors are really the minimum requirement for anything you want to do comfortably on a computer today. The 1366 x 768 resolution may not satisfy all your multimedia needs, as most movies are available in FullHD on Blu-ray. You can play them on 1366 x 768 monitors, but this way quality is reduced by ~100%, because 720p means 1Megapixel frames, while 1080p (FullHD) has twice as much pixels, 2Megapixels to be more exact.

The 20″ eMachines LCD monitor is a bit better, but has the same problems.

Its native resolution is 1600 x 900, which may be enough for most applications and games, but FullHD still cannot be played in full quality.

Data recovery is not a standard service, and it’s offered only by specialized companies. Unfortunately taking your computer in for data recovery will void the warranty given by the manufacturer, so the first thing you have to focus on before thinking about fixing a broken computer is you personal data.

Ideally you make daily backups on an external hard drive or network storage, so when your computer breaks down you’ll lose a days work at most. The truth is that hard drive technologies are significantly improved every year, but they still do break down even without any exterior factors. The average life of a hard drive is around 7 years, meaning that some break down after a few days, moths or year, while others become obsolete in perfectly functioning condition. Personally I still have a couple of 1-4GB hard drives from the ’90s which still don’t have any bad sectors. I use them instead of Flash Drives for installing operating systems (like UBUNTU) on computers, because they are much more reliable. Transfer rate is not so great, only 3-5MB/s, while flash drives have already broken the 100MB/s barrier (on USB 3.0 interface).

Theoretically if you have all your data on an external device you may bring the computer to an authorized service where it will be repaired in a couple of days. Some computer manufacturers also offer on-site repair, meaning that a technician will show up at your place in 24 hours after your call and will not leave until your computer is up and running again. I know that most Dell laptops and desktop have this kind of warranty. Very practical for most users, but let’s also look at an amateur solution, done at home by anyone who can use a screwdriver.

If you don’t have a backup of your data, the first thing you do after you realized that your computer has a hardware defect is taking out the hard drive and trying to copy important data onto another computer.

The perfect tool for this is a USB to IDE/SATA adapter, which can connect any laptop/desktop hard drive to any computer with a USB port. As you can see it has two IDE connectors, one is for small laptop hard drives and the other for desktop IDE devices. The SATA pport can be connected to any SATA1/2/3 device, including optical drives too. There’s usually a power supply in the retail package of the USB to IDE/SATA adapter, and it can provide about 30-40Watts of power, supporting 99% of laptop and desktop IDE and SATA drives. Before connecting a hard drive taken out of a supposedly defective computer, make sure you have a good antivirus software on the other computer, just in case.

After you connect the drive and everything seems normal, the operating system detects it, the first thing you do is find the most important files and quickly copy them onto the healthy computer. If the hard drive seems to be in perfect condition you can continue to copy all the other files you may need too. If for some non-hardware reason there aren’t any visible files on the drive, you can use one of the equally efficient recovery tools like OnTrack EasyRecovery.

These programs can scan the entire surface of the hard drive for any recoverable data including deleted or partly damaged (overwritten) files.

At this point you should have all your files copied to a secure place, and you can begin diagnosing the problem of the defective computer.

The simplest way to do that is to keep cheap replacement parts at home, for example a $10 400Watt power supply, a processor cooler for ~$5, a small hard drive for ~$35 and maybe a 1GB memory module for $20.

If the computer fans don’t start up, the first thing you do is replace the power supply. If this helped and the computer powered up, you should insert an OS installation disk into the optical drive and try to install it, but remember that some components may still be damaged, permanently.

At the end of the OS install process you should also install all necessary drivers, and after that use a diagnostic or benchmarking program to test all system components. Most benchmarks stress the components just enough to break them if they have the smallest problem. Logically if one test fails, you should replace that component with a spare, and you’re out of the woods.

The hardest problem to diagnose is any non-fatal mainboard problem, when the computer boots up, but after a while it starts giving errors. I have seen many such cases. Errors caused by a defective USB port, SATA controller, IDE controller, Floppy controller …etc. that doesn’t show at the POST (power on self test). The damaged chips simply overheat, and stop functioning after a while. If your computer has these symptoms and all other components have passed the tests or benchmarks, than you’ll need to search for a compatible mainboard (or return it under warranty of course). If the computer is less than 5 years old you should have no problem finding a much better and also cheaper mainboard, which will serve you for another 1-5 years.

Perhaps I should have started this article by saying that no computer with a hardware problem is fixed in the traditional sense. Today most authorized professionals simply replace the processor, hard drive, optical drive, mainboard … etc. so no actual repair takes place. If the problem is software related, than you may call it a repair, because no physical component gets replaced.

In the Sandy Bridge platform this issue was resolved, all components of the processor are built into the same chip using the same 32nm manufacturing process.

Before going into details about performance and power consumption you may want to watch a short video demonstration about the new architecture’s features.

The following Sandy Bridge processors will become available in the first half of January 2011.

Most of these processors have integrated Intel HD Graphics model 2000 or 3000, which were significantly improved, compared to previous Intel GMA HD graphics processors. First of all the maximum GPU frequency was increased to above 1GHz. This alone is responsible for most of the 2D and 3D performance increase.

World of Warcraft Cataclysm (released recently) is a 3D MMORPG that doesn’t require much GPU power to run smoothly in high detail without post-processing. As you can see the Intel HD Graphics 3000 (not to be confused with Intel GMA X3000) offers almost half of the performance of the AMD Radeon HD 5550, which is a decent mainstream video card, successor of the legendary Radeon HD 4650 (still unbeaten price/performance indicator). The Intel HD Graphics 2000 GPU is much closer to Intel’s previous attempts at integrated graphics, so I would advise against purchasing a Sandy Bridge processor with this (50% slower) GPU.

Quick Sync is a technology kept secret by Intel for the past 5 years. It finally got implemented in these new integrated GPUs. It’s basically a multimedia accelerator, designed for more specific tasks than nVidia’s CUDA technology and AMD’s Stream technology (recently renamed to APP).

This benchmark shows the average performance gain in media converting. Some applications are much quicker with Intel’s Quick Sync, while others just barely faster than nVidia’s and AMD’s high end cards. There’s no way around it, we have to recognize Intel’s superiority in this territory (for now), an integrated solution beating a High-End product is not something you see every day.

These are the Sandy Bridge desktop and laptop processors which will be available worldwide sometime in this month. Tomshardware.com already had the chance to test a couple of them.

PCMark Vantage paints an embarrassing picture for AMD, as it’s High-End six-core processor is outperformed by one of the slowest members of the Sandy Bridge Dual Core (+HT) family.

When it comes to productivity, Quad Core Sandy Bridge processors rule. The latest Phenom II X6 manages to climb up to third place in a few tests, but in general all Sandy Bridge processors perform better. The same goes for media encoding results.

There isn’t much to say, AMD clearly needs to release some very powerful processors soon in the mainstream and high-end sector too.

AMD is beaten in efficiency too, as the Phenom II X6 and even the X4 consume as much as or more than their Intel counterparts, while their performance is clearly worse.

As you can see even in IDLE (with integrated graphics) Intel’s processors need only 31-32 watts, while AMD processors consume 46-58Watts. Peak power consumption is a bit less shameful for AMD.

In this test the first generation Core i3 and i5 processors consume the least, although their performance is significantly worse than the new Core i5-2500K and Core i7-2600K.