Is RAM the moset important thing in a workstation?

I use one of theses shuttles every day for Solidworks and have have nothing
but praise for them.
Zero problems hardware wise.
Athlon 64 bit 3 GHz
2 GB Ram
Quadro card
Very quiet. Can sit the thing right next to you on desktop and hardly hear
the thing.
Even with a big model open in SWX the cooling fan rarely speeds up past a
low hum.

 

Does Matlab gain any advantage?

MS Windows systems are not UNIX systems either,
though I understand that the capability has been there
since at least NT to run such processes on multiple
CPUs *on multiple networked machines*.

IF you are networked and other machines have
free/unused time/clock cycles that might be a better
option at times.

 

I use one of theses shuttles every day for Solidworks and have have nothing

Oh I'm sure the Shuttle units are great little units

But I worry abt not having the extra expansion slots

 

Just curious what you might put in extra expansion slots besides the
graphics card which has its own slot.

And who by worrying can add an extra minute to his life?

 

Just curious what you might put in extra expansion slots besides the

I might put a TV/PVR card in a slot

 

One card, one slot. What else?

 

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=3D+Graphics+Processor+Chip+Set+&btnG=Search

http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery...Emotion+Engine&gwp=8&curtab=2222_1&sbid=lc03a

John

 

RISC vs. CISC again?

 

Ahh I'm so dumb and the other guys are !..
http://stuffo.howstuffworks.com/ps22.htm

John

 

One card, one slot. What else?

Hmm not sure

You may be making your point

I've just never had a PC with so few slots

 

"Bezier surfacing" & "superscalar".
Where's jb when you need him?

 

I have lotsa PCs with lotsa empty slots.

 

RAM is very important up to a certain level. If you're still running your
workstation on 256 or 512Mb this is definitely the weak point. Go to 1 or
2gig and you'll see a lot of difference. If your harddisk is doing a lot of
work (= swapping) then you need more ram.
Dual CPU (or dual core) comes in handy when multitasking or when your
program is multithreaded. For me the multitasking is important so it is also
a definite plus.
I hate to shell out 1000US$ for a decent OpenGL card so I always install a
normal 3D card (like 6800GT) and use this.

Johan

 

Don't you run into the multiwindow slowdown problem with these non Quadro
cards? (no back buffer)