One Week with My Windows Machine
As reported last week, I purchased a bunch of parts so I can construct my Windows Vista box. As much as I like the Apple platform, I prefer the hardware flexibility of a PC desktop for certain tasks (games, video transcoding, and other heavy duty chores).
Well right off the bat, the Asus Striker Extreme motherboard didn’t work out very well. Even with plain vanilla bios settings, it kept crashing. My second option was an EVGA 680i motherboard. Fry’s ran out of stock so I had to settle on option three, an EVGA 680i LT. I hate going from first class to economy but I’ll take stability over fancy features.
After I swapped out the motherboard, the rest of the install went smoothly. I tried to overclock my 2.4GHz Q6600 processor to 3GHz but I kept getting blue screens. It is however, stable at 2.4. Other bad news: Windows can’t see the full 3 GB of RAM in my system, only 2,302 MB. I read it’s some kind of limitation with Windows and the way the memory is mapped for devices.
The good news: the Cooler Master Cosmos 1000 is one of the best computer cases I’ve ever worked on. The Power Mac G5 I had was better built but it doesn’t have the features of the Cooler Master. One button optical drive installs and six hard drive days are the highlight for me.
The SLI Nvidia 8800GT setup works great. I didn’t do any formal benchmarking, but from my everyday observations, this machine runs fast. With all settings maxed, my World of Warcraft framerates are usually in the 50-60+ range at 1920×1200. Compare that to my Macbook, which got 15-25 fps with most settings at low. Orange Box games run smoothly and I look forward to eventually getting Call of Duty 4 off of Steam.
Funny thing when it comes to the software architectures of OS X and Windows. This 7200 rpm hard drive (32 MB cache) equipped quad-core still takes longer to boot up when compared to my 5400 rpm Macbook.
Initially, this whole process was frustrating with the motherboard issues. But after that problem was dealt with, I discovered Windows Vista is a decent operating system. I had no problems with device drivers and games in general ran smoothly.
Currently, if you’re interested in SLI gaming, you have to buy a PC. If you also want a good amount of flexibility in your component choices, building your own is a great way to go. The process itself isn’t all that hard and there’s the satisfaction that you speced-out and built the rig yourself. I’m still a happy Mac user. But I’m no longer a Mac gamer.
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Sounds like a nice machine. That RAM issue sounds like a bummer, though. You’d think Vista would be more capable. And it’s too bad it wouldn’t work at 3GHz. But the framerates sound great. And the Cooler Master looks really cool!
You need a copy of a 64-bit operating system (XP or Vista) to be able to use 4+ gigs of ram. Also, gaming on XP is better all ’round. I got that case and a similar build recently, love the Cosmos! Congrats and good build overall. Hope you enjoy it!
I heard there might be driver/compatibility issues with 64-bit Windows. So I’m going to hold off until maybe my next Windows box.
Yeah, XP is currently better for gaming. Hopefully Vista SP1 will help fix this issue.
The Cosmos case is holding up well. I wish I did a better job with wiring. I’m not having any overheating issues so I guess I can’t complain.