New PC time.

I've upgraded my PC to a 'Barebones' system from Novatech. It has an Intel Core i7 2600K processor (eight cores @ 3.40GHz each), ASUS P8P67 Motherboard, 8G of RAM and 128Gb SSD drive by Crucial (Solid State Drive, no moving parts). The OS is now Windows 7 64bit. So it can take full advantage of all the memory. I also have a 1Tb HDD for data. (along with countless others with data that get plugged in as and when).
This machine is incredibly fast. The processor is on of the highest speed processors on the market along with the SSD drive.
In theory the processor can be over-clocked to 5Ghz/core.

OT: New PC

My old PC was getting a bit slow, so I decided to upgrade the other day.
I bought a 'Bundle' from a company called Novatech.

Intel Core 2 Duo E8200, 2048MB 667Mhz DDR2 RAM, Heatsink And Fan, MSI Intel P35 Motherboard.
I also bought a Sapphire Radeon HD 3450 graphics card with 512MB of RAM, not very good for gaming, but it does play HD Video, has dual monitor output, passive cooling (no noisey fan) and is cheap.

I can use some of the bits from my old PC, my SATA II 400Gb & 80Gb HDD, DVD writer and dual monitors etc.

I put it all together at the weekend and after a bit of messing about, managed to get it working OK (well, it is my job ;-) ). I had to slipstream a SP2 version of XP though, don't ask.

It's nice and fast, I can now run things through Registax more than twice as fast. :-) and it's great for handling chunky Canon RAW files. The graphics card also plays HD 1080i as well, so I've been watching some of this:- NASA HD Video.

Here's the benchmark for my old CPU. ... and my new CPU.
My old PC is not actually on the new CPU graph.





Sapphire Radeon HD 3450 graphics card.