Finally upgrade my old and lagging computer. Now I bought the old computer in 2002 Nov/Dec (cant really remember) and this new one is bought 2007 June. Hence there is a difference of 4 and a half year. Now Moore’s law states that ” the number of transistors on a chip doubles about every two years” (http://www.intel.com/technology/mooreslaw/index.htm) which effectively means that your computer should double in speed every 2 years. Since my is bought new computer is 4.5 years after my old one, it should be roughly slightly more than twice as fast. So it is twice as fast?
| Old | New | Specifications | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Processor | Pentium 4 2.4ghz 512kb L2 cache 533 mhz FSB | Intel Core 2 Duo (2.4ghz) 4mb L2 cache 1066 mhz FSB | Processor and FSB twice as fast and L2 cache is 8 times bigger |
| RAM | 256 DDR 333mhz (I upgraded to 768 after a year or two) | 2048 DDR2 667mhz | RAM 8 times as large and twice as fast |
| Hard disk | 40gb PATA | 160gb RAID 0 (effectively 320gb) SATA 3.0gbits/s | 8 times bigger, SATA is supposed to be much faster than PATA and RAID 0 a bonus on speed |
| Graphics card | GeForce 4 MX420 64mb | GeForce 8600GTS 256mb | 4X the memory but much much better |
| Price | Less than SGD2000 (cant remember) | ~SGD2700 | There is a price difference of about 50%, so direct comparison is not very valid |
This is actually an unfair competition if you consider the price difference, but then who cares about being scientific anyway (actually I do, hence I am writing this qualification here). Nevertheless, the rate of technological improvement always astouds me.
