My video card, RAM and DVD writers got delivered today.
My Video Card
The card was released on November 25, 2007. It was one of the best reviewed on New Egg. It is probably more power that I really need but I wanted enough headroom for sound waves and video editing without hitting the edge.
The specs
Model: MSI Geforce 8800GT 512M
Interface: PCI Express 2.0 x16
(1st there were PCI slots, then PCI 1.0 slots. Now there are PCI Express 2.0 slots which are quite fast.)
Chipset Manufacturer: NVIDIA
GPU: GeForce 8800 GT
Core clock: 660MHz
Stream Processors: 112
(A technique used to accelerate the processing of many types of video and image computations.)
Memory Clock: 1900MHz
Memory Size: 512MB
Memory Interface: 256-bit
Memory Type: GDDR3
(Graphics Double Data Rate 3 is a graphics card-specific memory technology)
Video cards are so powerful these days that they come with a heat sink and a fan on them.
The RAM
I wanted fast RAM. These were released in February 2008 and I got 4 gigs of them. They are dual channel so they come with two 2 gig chips. Dual channel enables the CPU to use both RAM more effectively reducing the bottlenecks one RAM would create.
The specs
Model: Corsair Dominator
Type: 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM
Capacity: 4GB (2 x 2GB)
Speed DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500)
(That is 1066Mhz which is the fastest the DDR2 chips are today.)
Cas Latency: 5
(The time it takes between a command having been sent to the memory and when it begins to reply to it. It is the time it takes between the processor asking for some data from the memory and it returning it.)
Timing 5-5-5-15
(Each number represents a type of RAM timing.)
(The 1st number is the time it takes between a command having been sent to the memory and when it begins to reply to it. It is the time it takes between the processor asking for some data from the memory and it returning it.)
(The 2nd number is the number of clock cycles performed between activating the Row Access Strobe and the Column Access Strobe. This parameter relates to the time it takes to access stored data.)
(The 3rd number is the amount of time between the 'precharge' command and the 'active' command. The 'precharge' command closes memory that was accessed and the 'active' command signifies that a new read/write cycle can begin.)
(The 4th number is the total time that will elapse between an active state and precharge state. This is the sum of the previous timings.)
Voltage: 2.1V
Heat Spreader: Yes
(It has really cool head spreaders that dissipate the head generated by the RAM.)
The DVD Writer
The DVD writer came OEM. OEM hardware is hardware packaged for computer administrator and builder use. These products are normally plain boxed and often don't come with any instructions or references provided in retail packages. Which is fine since for now I am a builder.
This DVD writer was released in October 2007.
It is one of the fastest writers out there. I ordered 2 of them.
The specs
Model: SAMSUNG DVD Burner
Performance
DVD-ROM Access Time: 130ms
CD-ROM Access Time: 110ms
Cache: 2MB
Write Speed
DVD+R: 20X
DVD+RW: 8X
DVD-R: 20X
DVD-RW: 6X
CD-R: 48X
CD-RW: 32X
DVD+R DL: 16X
DVD-R DL: 12X
DVD-RAM: 12X
Read Speed
DVD-ROM: 16X
CD-ROM: 48X
LightScribe Support: Yes
(The laser burns an image on the top of the CD or DVD instead of using labels.)
Building begins Saturday.
Posted by Eric at July 17, 2008 10:18 PM