If I were putting together a nice system for myself today, I would look at including lots of DDR RAM (twice as fast as the familiar SDRAM); and making sure that the motherboard has Serial-ATA and USB 2.0 support.

In recent years, RAM has become so amazingly inexpensive. Also, processors just keep doubling in speed. When I bought a computer running at 800MHz two years ago, I had a friend ask me, “Why would you possibly need that?”. Within a few months they had 1.3 and 1.4GHz chips on the market. Very soon it was 2GHz. I really think that the speed has outstripped the demand from most applications on the market. To be honest, I think that CPU speed is no longer such an important consideration in the performance of a desktop computer. I am quite content with my 1.4GHz processor. I don't find CPU upgrades all that dramatic, whereas I find that increasing the RAM makes a computer run smoother and act more responsive.

The last great bottleneck in desktop computers is the hard drive. CPU speed and RAM price-drops have continued to follow Moore’s Law. While hard drives have dropped in price, and have grown in capacity, their speeds have remained the same for years. As you may know, hard drives continue to come in two flavors: 5400 r.p.m. and 7200 r.p.m.

My computer 3 years ago had 75MHz CPU, 32MB RAM, and a 7200 r.p.m hard drive.

The CPU of my current computer is 18.6 times faster, I have 16 times more RAM, and together they are stuck reading files off of my hard drive at the exact same speed that the old computer did.

Serial-ATA is the new specification for hard drives. These new hard drives are just now entering the marketplace—it's a safe bet they will be expensive. I would hold off on buying one just now. Perhaps a 20 or 40 gig drive at 7200 r.p.m. would tie me over. But I would make sure that I was investing in a computer that could accommodate a Serial-ATA drive in a year or so from now when they become affordable.

Read more about Serial-ATA technology here.

Serial-ATA hard drives will soon be available at 10,000 r.p.m., and promise to get faster as the technology improves.

In case you didn’t know, USB 2.0 is 40x faster than the previous USB 1.1 specification (what we’ve commonly referred to as just ‘USB’ over the past years). It is also faster than FireWire. In short, it is the fastest way to transfer data into and out of a computer, whether it be from a scanner, a digital camera, dvd burner, etc. It is backwards-compatible with USB 1.1 devices.

Learn more about USB 2.0 here.

If you are on the market for a moderate high-end system, or if you are putting one together for yourself, my advice is to think about Serial ATA and USB 2.0 support, and get a middle-of-the-road processor. Spend the extra cash on super-fast DDR RAM or put it towards a sweet monitor.

07 March 2003  |   permalink