£4500!? that translates into..31'500 bucks here. thats a S***load to splurge on a comp. you could buy at least 15 desktop comps with VDU monitors at 2.5ghz p4 yadayadayada.

thats my point...so use the money wisely and get the best of the best kit....you can spend upwards of £1000 on a graphics card easily.

This is a tougher challenge than it seems. We're talking about a professional grade graphics workstation, right? One that has dual proc capability, etc. ?

This is not your ordinary hot rod screamer gaming rig setup.

with that much cash you can afford a lil cluster of networked highend PCs or maybe even a smaller mainframe with 4-16 CPUs, maybe more (donno exatly how much those cost).

For max performance on a PC a RAID system is a must (SCSI with expensive highend disks), also several CPUs, loads of RAM, some freaky Graphics cards and so on.

take the developing machine of John Carmack, just in the designer version, then you prolly end up in that price category...

remember the price cap for hardware is really open, you can get everything for hte right cash.

Fjord

---------------------------------
Infinity TC Mod Leading Developer

Thats why its called "the four grand challenge "

We're certainly talking about a high end graphics workstation. I'd imagine you could get one of the best for £4500....but I don't think its as much as you think it is. Remember, 2 x 21"+ flatscreen monitors and a high-end graphics card are going to eat up well over £2000...so I want to know what you'd do with the rest. Remember the end result has to be ONE machine, not several.

@Grom,

For sake of convenience, I worked out the following currency equivalencies for this budget:

£4,500 =

Eur e6,423
US $8,295
Au $10,843
NZ $12,056
C $9,920

To help this effort along, here's a break down of your friend's Mac

G5 Dual 2.5gHz procs
L2 cache is 512K
FSB 1.25gHz.
Supports up to 8 GB RAM PC3200 - DDR 400
AGP 8x Graphics slot x 1
Serial ATA
3 PCI-X slots; 1@64bit 133mHz, 2@64bit 100mHz
1 FireWire 800; 2 FireWire 400; 3 USB 2.0; 2 USB 1.1
2 x 3.5" HDD drive bays; 1 x 5.25" drive bay.
Gigabit ethernet and v92 56k modem
802.11g & b wireless networking; blue toothe optional

I note that the G5 is not SCSI which is a departure for Apple. Also, it is only AGP video enabled. I assume one could have a SCSI controller card added to run SCSI HDDs but the G5 case is limited to two drives.

And OUR prize is?

Im betting i could get a good graphics/Server class system ready, considering i can get a dual 2.6 GHz server tower for 3 Grand Australian

good lord...over $8,000....screw pc! i'll just get a new hard drive and a nice plasma flat screen TV with Bose Surround Sound

Can you go over the what the machine is supposed to be for again Grom, and the machine's requirements? Ie. is it a web design/graphics machine that needs heaps of CPU speed, heaps of RAM, and a great graphics card, or is it merely a computer to run MS Office or something?

@indy - thanks thats a big help

@arania - the thread's supposed to be fun, create the fantasy PC...if you don't want to do it step aside.

@esq/ALL -

Ok here's your brief. The machine is intended to do 2D design of all kinds....be that web design, graphic design or web development. The standard programs you'll be running will be Photoshop/Imageready, Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver, IE, Mozilla, Opera, Fireworks & Freehand. It must be able to open and run at least 5 of these programs at the same time WITHOUT lag. Plus there may be a small element of 3D work so the machine must be more than capable. Animation is key, so the machine will need as much RAM as humanly possible. The computer needs a good keyboard and mouse, nothing wireless and potentially ****y or slow....it also needs a Wacom Tablet of some description. Preferably the machine will have Dualhead capability and run a minimum of 1 x 21"+ flat screen monitor and 1x17"+ monitor. The bigger the better.

Oh yeah, and a good set of speakers to knock out an iTunes collection would be handy too ...and if you can wrap it all up in a sexy looking tower that would be good - its got to compete against macs in a design environment.

@Grom,

We're not required to throw in the software are we?

Tell your friend Apples are a thing of the past. They were cool once but now PC has moved in it's place.

Timster, please, don't spam.

Ive seen you answer in almost every thread, and most of your answers don't amount to the topic at hand, thats considered spamming.

So for the benefit of not being flamed for spamming, please tone down a little, and as many have said before, Ranks are just decoration, they don't amount to nothing, you aren't more or less if you have achieved a high rank then you are with a low rank.

Thank you for your attention, now please get the topic back on track, thank you.

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__________________________________________________________
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Edited by - Locutus on 11/13/2004 2:41:02 PM