Celestia Forums

Hi All,
My old computer is on it's last legs. My 900 mhz k7 chip fried a while back. I found a replacement (used) 700 mhz but that's having problems too. I may have damaged my system board too.

So I'm going to salvage my ultra 133 maxtor 200 gb and 40 gb drives, 500 watt power supply and DVD dbl density burner, video card, etc. and add them to a Asus A8N-SLI NVIDIA system board with a AMD Athlon 64 3700+ 2.2 ghz processor and 4 ultra 1024 mb pc3200 ddr 400mhz ram chips to give it 4 gb of ram.

Does any computer gurus out there have any other suggestions (system boards and cpu combo's) to accomplish my goals?

My goal for this machine is to work on very large NASA files and 3D models. And of course run Celestia.

cartrite

cartrite wrote:Hi All,
My old computer is on it's last legs. My 900 mhz k7 chip fried a while back. I found a replacement (used) 700 mhz but that's having problems too. I may have damaged my system board too.

So I'm going to salvage my ultra 133 maxtor 200 gb and 40 gb drives, 500 watt power supply and DVD dbl density burner, video card, etc. and add them to a Asus A8N-SLI NVIDIA system board with a AMD Athlon 64 3700+ 2.2 ghz processor and 4 ultra 1024 mb pc3200 ddr 400mhz ram chips to give it 4 gb of ram.

Does any computer gurus out there have any other suggestions (system boards and cpu combo's) to accomplish my goals?

My goal for this machine is to work on very large NASA files and 3D models. And of course run Celestia.


cartrite

Cartrite,

sounds good. But I refrained from taking the 4th 1GB ram chip since I was convincingly informed that this is largely unusable despite formal access of the CPU to 4GB. You pay for 1GB but only can use a fraction...
So I decided to go for 3 GB.

Make sure your old graphics card is up to "standards", since it's the most important "engine" in your planned activities. You might consider investing the money for the 4th GB of RAM into an upgrade of the card. I rather bought a new ultrafast 250 GB SATAII harddisk for 90 Euro ~ $ 110 that solely acts as a huge pixel cache for my monster image manipulation jobs...

Bye Fridger

Hi Fridger,

I seen your post in the textures forum and I got to say the images were very impresive to say the least. I also downloaded the SRTM file that I think you used for your normal map and could not open it. I tried to crop it into smaller tiles with Image Magik (5400x5400) so I could work with them but the file expanded out to about 39 gb.
Thats Big.

Thats good to know about the ram. My video card can use an upgrade because when I bought it. I was bound by the system requirements of my old system. So thats good advice. Thank You.

cartrite

I think you'll need to replace your graphics card, anyhow: SLI uses PCI-express, not AGP. Your old motherboard uses AGP.

With SLI you also have the option of running two identical Nvidia PCIe graphics cards in parallel. It isn't obvious that would gain much for Celestia, though. I've also seen reviews that claim that these days you can get a single card that's both cheaper and faster than two of the less expensive models. Obviously that depends on the models you're comparing, though.

t00fri wrote:Cartrite, sounds good. But I refrained from taking the 4th 1GB ram chip since I was convincingly informed that this is largely unusable despite formal access of the CPU to 4GB. You pay for 1GB but only can use a fraction...So I decided to go for 3 GB.
Bye Fridger

Hello Fridger, I'm just now upgrading my PC, with the Athlon 64 bit FX57, ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard, ASUS EN 7900GTX-512 MB DDR3 Pci-Express graphic card, 4 MB 400-PC3200 DDR, and I'm looking for one of the new 15000 rpm HD (actually VERY expensive).
In the motherboard manual I read:
"If you installed four 1GB memory modules, the system may detect less than 3GB of total memory because of address space allocation for other critical functions. This limitation applies to Windows XP 32-bit version operating system since it does not support PAE (Physical Address Extension) mode."
I have interpreted this as the possibility to have all 4 GB available using a 64 bit OS, like VISTA or XP 64 PRO.
Did I make a mistake in this interpretation?
I'm not a PC expert, but I know you are, so I would like to have your opinion on the matter, without regard of the actual problems to have 64 bit drivers for most of existing softwares, I'm sure that in a short time all soft producers will cross to 64 bit, as they did from 16 to 32, years ago.
Thank you Fridger for your help.
BTW, your new 64k Earth is incredible, hope you'll make it available somewhere in a short time.
Bye

Andrea

cartrite wrote:Hi Fridger,

I seen your post in the textures forum and I got to say the images were very impresive to say the least. I also downloaded the SRTM file that I think you used for your normal map and could not open it. I tried to crop it into smaller tiles with Image Magik (5400x5400) so I could work with them but the file expanded out to about 39 gb.
Thats Big.

cartrite,

handling elevation maps is a very delicate affair. In order not to be swamped with noise (since gradients are formed in case of normal maps) one has to remain at the 16bit level until /almost/ the end. Since resizing the 84k texture before making a normalmap out of it gives bad artifacts (as is well known among experts), you have to pipe the 16 bit 84k gray SRTM texture right into Chris' nm16 normalmap program before doing anything else. The output is a ppm file that is about 11 GB large. Note that you dont' have to unpack the .bin.gz file first. You may do

gzip -dc srtm_ramp2.world.86400x43200.bin.gz|nm16 86400 43200 300.0 0 >out.ppm

Well I can load that 84k ppm file directly into GIMP (!), examine it and then resize it to 64k. GIMP can be configured to handle almost infinite sized textures if you got lots of empty harddisk space. It's a bit tricky to set the numbers though.

Then you can use convert of IM to cut the 64k normalmap into 16k x 8k tiles that GIMP's latest normalmap plugin (for GIMP2.x) can just handle to do the required renormalization (r*r+g*g+b*b=1)! It's most essential after any kind of editing on a normal map NEVER to forget a normalization step. Otherwise the light/shadow stuff will get falsified!

and so on....(next comes the cutting to 1k PNG tiles with subsequent optimization step for polar latitudes using my scrpts 'virtualtex' and 'texopt')


Bye Fridger

ANDREA wrote:

t00fri wrote:Cartrite, sounds good. But I refrained from taking the 4th 1GB ram chip since I was convincingly informed that this is largely unusable despite formal access of the CPU to 4GB. You pay for 1GB but only can use a fraction...So I decided to go for 3 GB.
Bye Fridger

Hello Fridger, I'm just now upgrading my PC, with the Athlon 64 bit FX57, ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard, ASUS EN 7900GTX-512 MB DDR3 Pci-Express graphic card, 4 MB 400-PC3200 DDR, and I'm looking for one of the new 15000 rpm HD (actually VERY expensive).
In the motherboard manual I read:
"If you installed four 1GB memory modules, the system may detect less than 3GB of total memory because of address space allocation for other critical functions. This limitation applies to Windows XP 32-bit version operating system since it does not support PAE (Physical Address Extension) mode."
I have interpreted this as the possibility to have all 4 GB available using a 64 bit OS, like VISTA or XP 64 PRO.
Did I make a mistake in this interpretation?
...

Hi Andrea,

while I agree with the first statement of <=3GB limitation for 32bit systems, I really don't know for sure about 64bit machines in that respect. I personally don't think they are too interesting at the present time (it's too early) since much infra-support is still missing which is annoying. See Christophes congruent recent posts as to 64bit machines.

Bye Fridger

t00fri wrote:

ANDREA wrote:I have interpreted this as the possibility to have all 4 GB available using a 64 bit OS, like VISTA or XP 64 PRO. Did I make a mistake in this interpretation?
...

Hi Andrea, while I agree with the first statement of <=3GB limitation for 32bit systems, I really don't know for sure about 64bit machines in that respect. I personally don't think they are too interesting at the present time (it's too early) since much infra-support is still missing which is annoying. See Christophes congruent recent posts as to 64bit machines.
Bye Fridger

Thank you Fridger, I'll think about it.
Bye

Andrea

Hi Selden,

Currently I haven't done anything yet. I'm still in the process of doing some research into what is what. My old computer was donated to me by my sister who saved it from the trash at her place of employment a few years ago while I was taking an A+ class (PC repair) as part of retraining after my layoff from Lucent Tech. So it had problems from the getgo. At first I tried an agp version of the same card but couldn't get it to work so I went with the pci. The system board I was thinking about getting has both pci and pci express slots available. But I'm probally going to replace it anyhow.
Thanks for your input.

Fridger,

A while back I did a normal map using nm16 on NOAA data but never did this
extra step you suggested. I think my machine (as is) can handle this step as I have the Gimps normalmap plugin. I'm going to try this to see what happens. As for the 84k SRTM file, that will have to wait for the computer upgrade. Thanks Again.

ANDREA,

From your post I seen that you were getting (or got) the A8N32-SLI system board. Isn't that a 32 bit board. I'm not sure if you can run 64 bit software on a 32 bit machine. I believe that 64 bit hardware has twice the registers which the 64 bit software is written for. I would think there would be errors when the software tried to use a register that wasn't there.

Edit: Sorry, I just noticed that the cpu was 64 bit. So did you get these yet? Windows 64XP-pro? One of the problems I will face when I do the upgrade will be replacing Windows XP. I don't think I'll be able to activate my current copy XP on a new system board. I have a copy of XP pro that must be activated in less then 30 days or it will not function. So I was thinking of getting Windows 64XP-pro. I like to run both linux and windows.

Why 64 bit? One of the software packages I want to use is ISIS for the MRO data that will be coming down from Mars soon. They just released a new version that was tested on linux 64 bit software for AMD machines.

cartrite

cartrite wrote:ANDREA, .... I just noticed that the cpu was 64 bit. So did you get these yet? Windows 64XP-pro? One of the problems I will face when I do the upgrade will be replacing Windows XP. I don't think I'll be able to activate my current copy XP on a new system board. I have a copy of XP pro that must be activated in less then 30 days or it will not function. So I was thinking of getting Windows 64XP-pro. I like to run both linux and windows. Why 64 bit? One of the software packages I want to use is ISIS for the MRO data that will be coming down from Mars soon. They just released a new version that was tested on linux 64 bit software for AMD machines. cartrite

Hello cartrite. My actual status is the foillowing one:
I have already the FX 57 Athlon processor, four 1 GB 400 PC-3200 DDR (chosen among the ASUS advised factory-type), and the motherboard (that is created for Athlon 64 bit 939 slot processors).
I'm actually waiting for the graphic card, already ordered but that's taking a lot of time to be shipped (not in stock at the moment of my order).
I obtained straight from Microsoft a 120 day test XP 64bit PRO OS, that you can obtain here:
that I'll install as first OS on my "C" HD, while on my "D" HD I'll retain WIN XP PRO 32 bit, in order to have the possibility to use all 32 bit softwares, waiting for the new drivers.
The reason of my decision to cross to 64 bit has been mainly Celestia, i.e. the absolute need of a lot of RAM (64 bit OS allow truly a LOT), and the need to rise the max dimension of Virtual Memory, locked to 4096 MB with 32 bit OS, rising up to Terabytes with 64 bit OS.
Adding to this the most powerful graphic card I could buy, and later on (actually they cost too much, IMO) a speedy HD, I was hoping to solve all the problems Celestia still gives me with my actual configuration.
Now both Christophe and Fridger make me arise some doubt, but it's too late.
Let's hope the situation be not so bad, but I'm an optimist!.
Bye

Andrea

Hi Andrea,

Thank You for the link to the trial version of XP. I was going to purchase it.
But it would be better to try it first to see if it works out. I believe that your right about things going to 64 bit soon. Not sure how soon tho.

I was looking thru this site called tigerdirect.com which has a lot of PC hardware but I didn't see any HD's with the speed you were looking for. This must be really new.

One of the projects we did while I was attending an A+ certification class was building a virtual PC. I feel like I'm back in that class. This was just a couple of years ago and some of the stuff they have out today wasn't even dreamt up yet.

cartrite

cartrite wrote:Hi Andrea, I was looking thru this site called tigerdirect.com which has a lot of PC hardware but I didn't see any HD's with the speed you were looking for. This must be really new. cartrite

You can search for 10000 or 15000 rpm HD, and you can find e.g. the
Maxtor HD 147.1GB SCSI (ULTRA 320)_ATLAS 10K V_68 PIN WIDE LVD_8MB, or the
Maxtor - HD Atlas 15K II 73 GB SCSI 80 PIN 15K, and so on.
All very expensive, and the max size is 147.1 GB, no more, up today.
Bye

Andrea

ANDREA wrote:

cartrite wrote:Hi Andrea, I was looking thru this site called tigerdirect.com which has a lot of PC hardware but I didn't see any HD's with the speed you were looking for. This must be really new. cartrite

You can search for 10000 or 15000 rpm HD, and you can find e.g. the
Maxtor HD 147.1GB SCSI (ULTRA 320)_ATLAS 10K V_68 PIN WIDE LVD_8MB, or the
Maxtor - HD Atlas 15K II 73 GB SCSI 80 PIN 15K, and so on.
All very expensive, and the max size is 147.1 GB, no more, up today.
Bye

Andrea

I think SCSI has little use meanwhile for graphics work: the reasonably prized sizes are simply far too small, the noise AND price is generally high and the large file read/write speed is comparable to SATA(II), RAID0,.... For relatively little money one may easily do a RAID system that is anyway faster and way cheaper than a single SCSI disk. The main advantage of SCSI are the short access times. But they are mainly useful for server applications (obviously).

With my recently bought Barracuda 250 GB/SATAII for only 90 Euro I am most content. It does a (measured) solid 65MB/sec (drive index) reading, has 8.9 ms access time and is virtually /noiseless/ and stays quite cool under full load! And last not least 3 years full warranty.
SATA harddisks are really convenient to install due to the /thin/ point-to-point cable connections. This way the ventilation remains MUCH more effective since there are no broad IDE cables anymore that tend to block effectively any airflow.

For big-size graphics (texture) work one needs 250-300 GB /free/ working space nowadays, used mostly in form of a fast memory-mapped pixel cache by GIMP, Photoshop, ImageMagick,...!!

Bye Fridger

t00fri wrote:I think SCSI has little use meanwhile for graphics work: the reasonably prized sizes are simply far too small, the noise AND price is generally high and the large file read/write speed is comparable to SATA(II), RAID0,.... For relatively little money one may easily do a RAID system that is anyway faster and way cheaper than a single SCSI disk. The main advantage of SCSI are the short access times. But they are mainly useful for server applications (obviously). With my recently bought Barracuda 250 GB/SATAII for only 90 Euro I am most content. It does a (measured) solid 65MB/sec (drive index) reading, has 8.9 ms access time and is virtually /noiseless/ and stays quite cool under full load! And last not least 3 years full warranty.
SATA harddisks are really convenient to install due to the /thin/ point-to-point cable connections. This way the ventilation remains MUCH more effective since there are no broad IDE cables anymore that tend to block effectively any airflow. For big-size graphics (texture) work one needs 250-300 GB /free/ working space nowadays, used mostly in form of a fast memory-mapped pixel cache by GIMP, Photoshop, ImageMagick,...!!
Bye Fridger

Fridger, this is very interesting, and I'll follow your suggestion.
My thinking was that, being on the move to assemble the most efficient/fast set I could buy with my budget, the 15000 or 10000 rpm HD were a must.
But they have the small size/high prize limitation, and this is the reason why I decided to wait for next cheaper and bigger HD releases.
But now that you confirm me that it is not so necessary, I'll change to a SATA II RAID HD, 250 GB or bigger.
Thanks a lot for suggestion, very appreciated.
Bye

Andrea

Fridger wrote:

For big-size graphics (texture) work one needs 250-300 GB /free/ working space nowadays, used mostly in form of a fast memory-mapped pixel cache by GIMP, Photoshop, ImageMagick,...!!

I agree 200% on this one. I came to that same conclusion a while back about half way thru creating my BMNG textures. But I didn't have the available slots
to add more with my old system. With this new one I just have to remain focused because my eyes
are bigger then my wallet.

cartrite

cartrite wrote:Fridger wrote:
...
I agree 200% on this one.
...
cartrite

Let me just add as an illustration that for simple resizing jobs of my 84k raw textures, ImageMagick used 1-3 pixel-cache files with about 65GB (!!!) total size. Just to give people some concrete impression of what we are talking about when manipulating textures of multi GB sizes. GIMP has a similar system and requires similarly big cache/swap files, called gimpswapxxx.

For such jobs an 80 GB SCSI disk, say, is just a joke .

With less RAM than I have (3GB) [+ 6GB swap] the required caches files would even be larger. It is also important that these large caches are available IN ONE PIECE!

Bye Fridger

Fridger wrote:

Then you can use convert of IM to cut the 64k normalmap into 16k x 8k tiles that GIMP's latest normalmap plugin (for GIMP2.x) can just handle to do the required renormalization (r*r+g*g+b*b=1)! It's most essential after any kind of editing on a normal map NEVER to forget a normalization step. Otherwise the light/shadow stuff will get falsified!

Is this (r*r+g*g+b*b=1) formula processed by using the Normalize only option in the conversion section of the plugin? scale = 1?

The windows version of the plugin has no other means for inputing formulas (options) that I can see.

cartrite

cartrite wrote:....
Is this (r*r+g*g+b*b=1) formula processed by using the Normalize only option in the conversion section of the plugin? scale = 1?

...
cartrite

Correct. Any kind of editing of the normal map like resizing it destroys the /unit/ vector nature. After such operations one thus must normalize once more.
You will often notice a remarkable change in the normalmap's appearance /after/ the normalization step.


Bye Fridger

Thanks Fridger,

I did see a difference.

cartrite

cartrite wrote:Thanks Fridger,

I did see a difference.

cartrite

Another one, particularly important for normalmaps: never sharpen normalmaps in the usual way, since that affects colors (I guess you know that)!

The right way (also for other color conserving sharpenings) is to /decompose/ the RGB texture into HSV and then sharpen the V (=value) texture! Thereafter compose the result back into a RGB.

Bye Fridger