More busyness.

I realize I haven't written anything for a couple days, mostly due to the sheer number of homework assignments that seem to have conspired to be due around now. Right now, I have Modern Physics homework due tomorrow (thankfully completed tonight), Partial Differential Equations homework due on Friday and a 2-page writing assignment in the same class due on Monday (it's a writing intensive course). I also have an Electromagnetism test due on Friday, as well as a currently unknown(!) number of Complex Analysis problems ("at least ten") due the same day. So that is why I haven't written anything recently.

However, before wrapping up tonight, I'd like to mention the results of a test I ran to compare the processor speed of my old and new computer. I found a rather large and detailed scene I'd made in Blender, a 3-D modeling program, and rendered it on both computers. The results? Old computer: ~2:05. New computer: 0:09.75, or a whopping 12.82 times faster. It's interesting that both processors are rated at the same speed, 1.6GHz, the main difference is that my new computer has 4 cores running at that speed compared to one in my old (there are a few other small differences as well). Now, the speed increase is probably not due entirely to the processor, since this computer also has 16 times more RAM and a 1GB video card (my old computer doesn't even have a discrete video card), but the processor is certainly a large part of it. So next time you're considering a new computer, take it from me: quad-core is the way to go. Dual-core, at least.


(I hope to eventually expand this into a sort of series of reviews doing point-by-point comparisons of my new and old computers in various categories. We'll see how far I get.)