MaximumPC 2005 12

MAXIMUM

PC

’s

VERSUS

With a powerful blow from our

Blade of Benchmarks, Maximum PC

cuts through the tough decisions

PC power-users face, like a hot

knife through butter! AMD or Intel?

Revealed! ATI or nVidia? Clocked!

Hitachi or Western Digital? The

truth at last. We back up our

endorsements with the hard num-

bers, so you can spend more time

building and playing than shopping

and praying.

THE DIGITAL

VIDEO CAMERA

BUYERS GUIDE

Whether you’re a professional or

an, ahem, “amateur,” these six

digital video cameras are about

more than just megapixels. We

explore and explain every feature,

and show you what you can get for

some extra cash in a “prosumer”

DV cam.

THE $300 PC

What kind of PC can you build for

300 bucks? You’ll see next month!

COMING

NEXT

MONTH

IN

DECEMBER 2005 MAXIMUMPC 119

IT’S -THE-

HARDWARE-

STUPID!

JANUARY

ISSUE

LETTERS POLICY: MAXIMUM PC invites your tHougHts and coMMents 3end tHeM to

[email protected]. 0lease include your full naMe, town, and telepHone nuMber, and liMit

your letter to  words Letters May be edited for space and clarity $ue to tHe vast aMount of

e-Mail we receive, we cannot personally respond to eacH letter

LETTERS POLICY: MAXIMUM PC invites your tHougHts and coMMents 3end tHeM to

[email protected]. 0lease include your full naMe, town, and telepHone nuMber, and liMit

your letter to  words Letters May be edited for space and clarity $ue to tHe vast aMount of

e-Mail we receive, we cannot personally respond to eacH letter

from 1.2- to 1.3GHz—twice what you’re report-
ing. Is this some kind of mix-up or am I just miss-
ing something?
—Shan B.

EXECUTIVE EDITOR MICHAEL BROWN
RESPONDS: Both specs are correct, technically
speaking; it’s just that we think our specs
are more correct. Videocards based on the
GeForce 7800 GTX use DDR2 memory, so the
GPU is able to transfer data to and from mem-
ory on both the rising and the falling edges
of the memory clock’s cycles. DDR2 memory
that’s clocked at 600MHz, therefore, has an
effective clock speed of 1,200MHz (600x2),
or 1.2GHz. Marketing weenies for videocard
manufacturers like bigger numbers, so they
use the effective clock speed, but we prefer
to report the actual clock speed.

GAMES PEOPLE PLAY
I haven’t played a computer game in 25 years
(really!), but I amuse myself with Adobe Photoshop
on a daily basis. Your editors provide lots of info on
how to build or upgrade a PC for gaming, so how
about delivering more tips on how to build a com-
puter for Photoshop? For example, would a RAM
drive with a few gigs of capacity help improve my
PC’s Photoshop performance?
—Richard Drdul

SENIOR EDITOR GORDON MAH UNG RESPONDS:
Photoshop performance boils down to three
things: RAM, CPU, and hard drive. Because you
work with large files, your first upgrade should be
to pack your PC with as much RAM as the moth-
erboard will take. I’m not completely sold on the
concept of trading valuable system RAM in favor
of a dedicated RAM disk, but users have reported
an improvement to Photoshop performance when
the program uses a RAM disk as its primary
scratch disk. As for the CPU, I recommend AMD’s
Athlon 64 FX-57. Go for the 2.8GHz single-core
proc, because very few Photoshop functions ben-
efit from dual-processor or dual-core setups.
Finally, you’ll want one or more fast drives
with lots of space to use as a scratch disk. Western
Digital’s new 400GB 7,200rpm drive is a good
candidate. But you’re not likely to see a significant
boost in Photoshop performance unless you spring
for something like Cenatek’s Rocket Drive. There
are two models of this hardware-based solid-state
RAM drive: The 2GB model sells for $1,700 and the
4GB model goes for $3,000. These will pretty much
run the PCI bus flat out at 115MB/s.

INQUIRING MINDS

Can the subwoofer from one of these high-end

sound systems damage a hard drive? I think we

need a Maximum PC “In the Lab” report to settle

this issue.

—Ken Shipman

EXECUTIVE EDITOR MICHAEL BROWN

RESPONDS: As much as we enjoy testing

hardware, it’s probably not necessary for

answering this question. A subwoofer poses

two infinitesimally small risks to a hard drive:

If you were to place a hard drive directly on

top of a subwoofer, a thumpin’ sub’s constant

vibration might cause data corruption during a

write operation, but it’s unlikely the drive itself

would be permanently damaged. The magnet

inside the speaker cabinet poses a slightly

higher risk to a hard drive, because most sub-

woofers aren’t shielded. But here again, you’d

have to leave the drive sitting directly on top

of the speaker for a very long time.

MICHAEL DELL IS A GIRLY-MAN!

I enjoyed Claude McIver’s review of the Dell XPS

600 in the November issue, but I have a few ques-

tions that he didn’t answer. First, are any of the

components upgradeable with “normal” aftermar-

ket performance parts? For example, can I drop

in a Seasonic PSU down the road, or switch out

the mobo for a non-Dell part? Second, what’s the

deal with only 1GB of RAM? How am I supposed

to play Battlefield 2 in all its glory? In my opinion,

Dell must ensure aftermarket upgradeability—and

boot the lame P4s—before the company can hope

to hook diehard geeks and gamers.

— Andy Mills

SENIOR EDITOR GORDON MAH UNG RESPONDS:

Dell uses a 650-watt “workstation-class” PSU

in the XPS 600, which runs along the bottom

of the machine and cannot be replaced by an

off-the-shelf part. You might be able to replace

the motherboard with an Athlon 64 board,

but we’d consider such a swap to be more

of a mod than an upgrade—not to mention

a pain in the ass. Battlefield 2 actually looks

the same and plays fine with 1GB of RAM,

although the game does seem to load faster

(and you avoid the nasty stuttering problem

after map loads) with 2GB of RAM. We agree,

however, that Dell’s insistence on using pro-

prietary components is a sticking point for

gear heads like us—and we’ve said that to

the company a number of times.