While the macbook is nice and all, Apples steady flow of releases has kept the public eye interesting and begging for more. In september we saw the release of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard which consisted of an overall internal redo. The look was geneerally the same, but the reinstallation was seamless and saved you at least 9 gb of space. After that came the new iPod Nano with a camera.

Some say this was a bad move on their part, and that Apple should have put the camera on the iPod Touch first. Being a scale down from the iPhone (which has had a camera since the beginning) this would have been a sensible move. But this seems to have worked out just fine for them.

Finally is the new Mighty Mouse. It has no button whatsoever. Actually, the entire mouse IS the button. It’s the worlds first multi-touch mouse. Ever. Just like the redesigned trackpad you can use up to 4 fingers to make various movements. this might get a little annoying for me, but some people I KNOW will love this.

You may have heard of it, it’s called the Optimus Maximus and costs a little under $1500. The amazing thing about it is that each individual key acts like a screen, and displays whatever you want it to. actually, each key IS  a screen. crazy, right?

that means that you can have it displaying whatever icon, whatever language in whatever color… yeah. The software for the keyboard takes up 20 megs of hd space

yeah. you see those keys?  no you aren’t mistaken, it says 745 megabytes free.

The statistics of our current build:

Processor: AMD Phenom II x2 550 Black Edition (3.1 GHz 6 mb L3 Cache)

Motherboard: MSI 770-c45 AM 3 socket

RAM: Winted AMPO 2048 MB DDR3 1066 MHz

PSU: 460 watt generic psu with 24 pin mobo connector

video card:

Case: Prestigio , a Russian made case that cannot be purchased online (very nice with a blue cathode and leather front door)

Pictures will be uploaded later

anyway, this past week or so, we have recieved all the parts that we need to start building other than the case.

in the end, we really DID decide to stick with the AMD Phenom II x2 550, thanks to Winted for making Ampo ddr3 memory for only 25 bucks.

we chose the MSI 770-c45 motherboard because of its AM3 socket, and a seagate 500 gig hd with 3.0gb/s at 5400 RPM, cause we still wanted to save a little money.

and we are also using roman numerals now.

instead of getting a triple core 2.4 GHz etc. (AMD Phenomx3 8650)

We are getting a QUAD CORE!!! yes FOOUURR CORES!

it’s not like the phenom II x4 940 or Intel i7 or anything, as I have said that we are on a budget of 300 bucks.

We just ran into this on Tigerdirect, comes with a pretty nice mobo with 2 PCI e x16 slots and whatnot, for a mere 180 bucks.

The processor is the AMD Phenom x4 9600, which is more powerful (according to cpubenchmark.net, you can view that, it’s the first link under blogroll) than both the AMD Phenom II x2 550 BE and the AMD Phenom x3 8650. We are very content.

However, people have been complaining that quad core sometimes doesn’t perform as well as dual core for gaming, such as Crysis.

Someone played and said that it seemed slower, because the four cores (in our case, clocked at 2.4 GHz each) had to keep on changing threads while the game was running.

However, the video card they were using wasn’t that good either, so we can easily make up for it by throwing in some 9800s.

Should we get the AMD Phenom x3 8650 (2.3 GHz, 3 core 3.5mb cache (L2+L3)

OR

Should we get the AMD Phenom x3 8750, (2.7 GHz, everything else is the same)

the reason why we are hesitating is because we are trying to build a low budget PC, and the 8750 is 99 bucks while the 8650 is 85. 14 dollar difference, but it can mean a lot when your budget is 300 dollars.

Tigerdirect and Newegg.

So which one is better?

Well, at a glance, we can all see that Newegg usually has most of the cheaper, lower prices, but still, newegg got a lower rating than tigerdirect because  people have complained about parts arriving DOA (dead on arrival) and whatnot. Tigerdirect has relatively better reviews, but usually has the higher prices, but not by much. for example, the AMD Phenom x3 8650 costs 84.99 on tigerdirect and 78.99 on newegg. The difference between prices is usually five some bucks, but that can change depending on what you’re looking at.

We also feel that newegg has somewhat of a better variety on parts than tigerdirect

So here’s what it really is:

Lately after the dual core was first released (3 or some years ago), the quad core was released. AMD wanted to take advantage of this new market and released its AMD Athlon 64 x2, a fast dual core processor thats much cheaper than its intel competitors. This processor became an instant hit for PC builders who didn’t want to spend that much money for a faster processor. However, those that could afford it shot for quad cores, which still had a bit more power. every PC builder wanted a quad core, but most didn’t have the budget for one, so AMD decided to release the AMD Phenom x3, a “triple core”, which is actually a quad core with one deactivated core. the AMD Phenom x3 8750,8650,8640 (those are all different models) outperform athlon 64×2 s and compete with higher end quad cores while still remaining affordable, the exact reason why we want to use that in our pc project.

So, what we have done so far:

-Picked out a NEW processor (no longer the AMD Phenom IIx2 550)

-Picked out RAM

-Saved some cash

So, the new process or is the “triple” core (by the way, it’s not really triple core. everything has to be powers of 2 because it’s 1s and 0s, so i don’t know how it worked out to be triple core… probably an overclocked dual?) AMD Phenom x3 8650, with an AM/2+ slot instead of an AM3, letting us save some cash on the motherboard as well (so we don’t have to spend 50 some extra bucks on a motherboard supporting AM3).

We decided to cut down a little on the budget plan, which is why we’re making all these changes.

Now for a little something on the processor:

The AMD Phenomx3 8650 is clocked at 2.3 GHz, but has 3. it’s also got a smaller L2 and L3 cache, total of around 3.5 megs. The good part is that it’s only a couple down from the AMD Phenom II x2 550 on the benchmark ladders, and we have an AM/2+ slot which will save us some big bucks on the mobo.

But as we waited we had a great time watching Potter Puppet Pals and eating ramen with mountain dew and chips.