PowerSpec's Dual-Core x300 is a Nice Machine -- Especially as a 64-bit Workstation
So, earlier today I alluded to an upcoming video series project that I'll be starting shortly. I'll tell you more about it in a future post. But for now, know that in order to simply even create the demo environments, one honking powerful machine was necessary.
Knowing that, I visited the guys over at MicroCenter and took a look at their PowerSpec house brand. Because of the resource needs for this project, I immediately had them point me towards their heftiest platform, the x300.
Having now completed the 64-bit Vista O/S build and the subsequent software installation, I can honestly say...
...that I'm impressed. This machine screams -- especially so with the 64-bit operating system. So fast in fact that sometimes I wonder if its predicting what I want it to do. It wasn't cheap, coming in at over $2,000, but I now have the hardware I need to really set up virtual environments and record podcasts correctly.
One reason why the sound in some of our early podcasts lacked good fidelity was the lackluster sound card I was using in my recording laptop. So for this machine I upgraded the audio card to a Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Professional Edition, which has its own on-board CPU and RAM. We'll see how well this improves the sound in future podcasts.
For this project, I also upgraded the RAM to 4G, which is only half of what the system can hold. The Asus motherboard on this puppy can handle 8G of RAM!
Interestingly enough, the last time I sat down with Mark Minasi a few weeks ago we were talking about his laptop and his desktop at home. He mentioned that even though he gets comments that "the market is just not ready for 64-bit workstations", he's been doing 64-bit at the desktop for a while now. So, I took the plunge.
To be completely honest, the driver and software installations were very smooth. All of my necessary drivers were available in 64-bit, and all had the correct driver signing so Vista would accept them without comment.
So, this is becoming quite the long ramble. But what I hope you'll get out of this is the knowledge that Vista at 64-bit is really ready for prime-time now.
If you're interested in MicroCenter's house brand, check out their web site at:
http://www.powerspec.com
You can see the spec on the machine I got today at:
http://www.powerspec.com/systems/system_specs.phtml?selection=X300
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