What rig for college??

[xXdragonbatXX]

Bullshit. You do NOT need a high-performance computer for any undergrad CS or programming class. Dual-core is nice so that you'll be able to find those annoying deadlocks in your multi-threaded code, but the speed is irrelevant.

The course requires me installing a whole bunch of software and with my slow ass HDD I think the 8gb is nice. Why I am dreading fall this year. And I will be installing software for the next 4 years. So the faster the pc runs the better because the more crap you get on a desktop the slower it seems to run.

 

[xXdragonbatXX]

I would actually take a Radeon 7950 and an 128GB SSD over a Radeon 7970. The difference for most games is pretty slight, while the SSD will help greatly with load and boot times.

Honestly when i was doing my build I was glad I found this site because the 7950 is phenomenal.

 

[xXdragonbatXX]

Software is a huge point actually. I wouldn't plan on running office 2003 to save resources. It's really best to have the same version of the software as everyone else, so when you go to give a group presentation, everything shows up instead of being all over the place. Missing fonts, missing equations, crazy formatting, etc.

Don't get 2013 either unless your school requires it. My school requires 2010 and if you turn anything in in either 2003 or 2013 you get a F.

 

[yhelothar]

I'd get a desktop and a tablet pc that you can write with. I rarely see anyone take notes with notebooks, but with tablet pc's and their stylus, they're a great replacement for the ancient paper and pencil.

You can remote desktop to your desktop on your tablet pc and you can thus access that overclocked quadcore power for workstation apps, while you have a small and light package to carry.

 

[ThePolarSky]

...

 

[Torn Mind]

The course requires me installing a whole bunch of software and with my slow ass HDD I think the 8gb is nice. Why I am dreading fall this year. And I will be installing software for the next 4 years. So the faster the pc runs the better because the more crap you get on a desktop the slower it seems to run.

SSD would play a huge difference installation time. I'd say a dual core Celeron is adequate enough for software installation. Any more and the money is better spent on SSDs.

Don't get 2013 either unless your school requires it. My school requires 2010 and if you turn anything in in either 2003 or 2013 you get a F.

Thankfully, my school(UMCP) only upgraded to Windows 7 after I graduated, so they were still running XP and were much lax in the requirements(whatever the professor wants).

 

[mnewsham]

Thankfully, my school(UMCP) only upgraded to Windows 7 after I graduated, so they were still running XP and were much lax in the requirements(whatever the professor wants).

UMCP is still fairly lax, .doc and .docx are fine, I have even seen .ODF files.

 

[frozentundra123456]

That's crazy talk. If it's in a .docx format, how would they even know?

Office 2003 would probably get the job done fine. It can save in .docx and all later versions of Office can open .doc files. There may be some formatting errors in the .docx conversion, but I've never seen them in my use.

I don't advocate using Office 2003 over 2007, unless you have a screen smaller than 1366x768. While the point and clickers love the ribbon bar, it takes up a lot of precious vertical real-estate.



There's change, and then there's progress...

I have a 1080p work laptop and several 1080p desktops. I still hate the ribbon!!!

Anyway, it seems riduculuous to require office 2010 only, but they might actually be able to find out if you are using a different version. My laptop and desktop have different versions of Office, and I do get an error message occasionally that formatting will be lost when I create on one version and try to save in another.

 

[xXdragonbatXX]

Just watch school requirements when getting software and make sure the cache on hdd is high or get a ssd so the boot isn't extremely slow.

 

[mfenn]

The course requires me installing a whole bunch of software and with my slow ass HDD I think the 8gb is nice. Why I am dreading fall this year. And I will be installing software for the next 4 years. So the faster the pc runs the better because the more crap you get on a desktop the slower it seems to run.

Most later CS don't require any specific software. I can see some entry-level classes requiring VS or Eclipse, but once you get beyond the basics you are generally free to do whatever. In fact, most of the heavy CS stuff doesn't require a computer at all.

 

[mfenn]

Just watch school requirements when getting software and make sure the cache on hdd is high or get a ssd so the boot isn't extremely slow.

The cache on a mechanical drive (any mechanical drive) is too small to make a difference. It sounds to me like you have a messy install with a bunch of stuff loading at startup. I love my SSD, but it's not hard to get reasonable boot and login performance with a mechanical HDD.