Buying a PC advice (processor talk cont'd)

[xenxabar]

I found the benchmarks I was looking at and it was the E6300, not E6800 like I originally thought. That explains the price difference. If they start becoming readily available again I might buy my first Intel chip since the P3-450.

 

[Apollyon]

I found the benchmarks I was looking at and it was the E6300, not E6800 like I originally thought. That explains the price difference. If they start becoming readily available again I might buy my first Intel chip since the P3-450.

Same here, even down to my last Intel proc being the P3-450. The AMD chips have been a better price/performance value for some time now but the Conroe chips are just too good to pass up. AMD may be able to catch up with the K8L chip, but we won't be seeing those until Q1 2007.

 

[xenxabar]

I'm just going to wait a bit and see how the prices change. Both stocks went up on Friday, with AMD going up even more than Intel. If Intel can't keep up with demand for the lower end chips and AMD floods the market a bit, I may continue with the AMD chips at the lower end.

 

[bigred]

Well the waiting game is a 2-sided coin....now I can buy more PC for my money as (for example) 1GB RAM and dual-proc's become more the norm, but then again I haven't had a PC for an extra few months.

At least I can finally see what DOOM III is like (even tho I know I'm setting myself up for a letdown....but let's not sidetrack there....)

 

[xenxabar]

176 days have transpired since you first posted about a new machine. What did you decide to get?

 

[bigred]

I'm thinking I'm thinking; stop rushing me.

 

[Mongrel]

Well the waiting game is a 2-sided coin....now I can buy more PC for my money as (for example) 1GB RAM and dual-proc's become more the norm, but then again I haven't had a PC for an extra few months.

At least I can finally see what DOOM III is like (even tho I know I'm setting myself up for a letdown....but let's not sidetrack there....)

I'm thinking I'm thinking; stop rushing me.

Dear sweet tagliatelle, my favoured offspring of the great FSM. ....

Technology rushes part so fast that at some point you have to stick your foot in it's path to trip it up and say 'You're mine!". Things are always going to get better, faster, smaller and in 2 months time you'll be able to buy a better computer for the same money,

Stop procrastinating.

There's good advice on this thread and at the moment (IMO) a Core 2 Duo coupled with an Nvidia graphics card (and I'm an AMD\ATI fanboy) will give you the best bang for your buck.

BTW - Doom III sucks, badly. Get Half Life 2

 

[DangerousBeliefs]

At least I can finally see what DOOM III is like (even tho I know I'm setting myself up for a letdown....but let's not sidetrack there....)

Be sure to install the duct tape mod, the ambient lighting mod, and the grenades as flares mod. The game is not so bad when you can see all the eye candy.

 

[xenxabar]

Dear sweet tagliatelle, my favoured offspring of the great FSM. ....

Technology rushes part so fast that at some point you have to stick your foot in it's path to trip it up and say 'You're mine!". Things are always going to get better, faster, smaller and in 2 months time you'll be able to buy a better computer for the same money,

Stop procrastinating.

There's good advice on this thread and at the moment (IMO) a Core 2 Duo coupled with an Nvidia graphics card (and I'm an AMD\ATI fanboy) will give you the best bang for your buck.

BTW - Doom III sucks, badly. Get Half Life 2

Hear, hear! (To all points, expect being an ATI fanboy.)

 

[jimlintott]

Hey, I really enjoyed Doom III. I preferred Quake IV and FEAR. Also, Call of Duty 2. We have all the Half Life games here but I haven't played them. According to my boy this makes me insane as he says the Half Life games are the best FPS.

I have the most fun mounting up the wheel and pedal set and playing Flatout for an hour or so. (Better get Flatout 2, eh. )

 

[bigred]

Dear sweet tagliatelle, my favoured offspring of the great FSM. ....

I have no idea wtf you're talking about but somehow I now hope you're female.

Technology rushes part so fast that at some point you have to stick your foot in it's path to trip it up and say 'You're mine!". Things are always going to get better, faster, smaller and in 2 months time you'll be able to buy a better computer for the same money,

Stop procrastinating.

lol preaching to the choir; I know all that but thx. I haven't been waiting due to that, other things have come into play (moving, needing to buy a desk to put it on, being a procastinator in general, etc).

 

[Mongrel]

I have no idea wtf you're talking about but somehow I now hope you're female.

It's a reference to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, my favourite pasta and a substitution for "Dear sweet Jesus" as a cry of exasperation And no. Male gamer geek, I think there's some pics from one of the London meets somewhere.

lol preaching to the choir; I know all that but thx. I haven't been waiting due to that, other things have come into play (moving, needing to buy a desk to put it on, being a procastinator in general, etc).

Fair enough, I thought you were procrastinating for the procrastinations sake and I get enough of that with a few of my friends whenever they ask for upgrade advice

 

[bigred]

Well FWIW I am buying from a store. For reasons I don't feel like typing out I have no interest at all in anything that must be shipped; I want to walk out w/it. Probably going to pick up one at C City or B Buy or the like. Probably mid-range PC, roughly $700 range, all in. For that I can get 1GB RAM and CPU and HD that are more than enough for me for years to come......offhand it looks like a wash between an Intel chip with better clock speed vs AMD Athlon with slower clock speed but far better interface bus...

 

[jimlintott]

It can be fun to have stuff delivered too.

You get to check the tracking number frequently hoping that the status will become "the truck is outside your house". On the day you expect it you get to check for the big brown truck about every twenty minutes. Eventually the doorbell rings and a guy (or girl) hands you the package.

It's at least as much fun as reading this post.

 

[Pennywise]

Here are my tips:

1. Avoid Compaq or any brand with proprietary parts. It costs more than the pc is worth to repair small problems.

2. The warranties they try to sell you at stores like Best Buy are scams. If you don't get a warranty, they are still liable for factory defects or anything that is already wrong when you buy it. Any other problems that might come up before the warranty expires will cost less to repair than you paid for the warranty.

3. 1GB of ram is already not enough for quite a few things. At least purchase a computer than can be upgraded beyond that in the future, if needed.

4. AMD processors consistently outperform similarly priced Intel processors for most things, regardless of the clock speed they claim. The exception would be hardcore multi-tasking, running two very resource-intensive applications simultaneously...like Alt-tabbing out of Fear to check on your video-conversion progress.

5. If you ever intend to try out Linux, you'll want an AMD processor and an NVidia graphics card. Their support for Linux is much better. Linux + ATI graphics cards is a mess you should try to avoid.

 

[bigred]

It can be fun to have stuff delivered too.

You get to check the tracking number frequently hoping that the status will become "the truck is outside your house". On the day you expect it you get to check for the big brown truck about every twenty minutes. Eventually the doorbell rings and a guy (or girl) hands you the package.

It's at least as much fun as reading this post.

OK not as busy at work, I can deal w/splaining why not

1 - The only way I can track the # (easily) is on another PC. I have none, except at work, which brings us to.....

2 - I do not get to check for a big truck every 20 mins because I cannot work from home and damned if I'm wasting a day of vacation (or even a half day) just to wait for a PC to get delivered.

3 - Knowing my luck it would come damaged, wrongly configured, or (rule 8)-ed some other way, meaning I have to go thru the incredibly un-fun process of returning it....waiting again for ANOTHER delivery....etc....

No thx!

 

[bigred]

1. Avoid Compaq or any brand with proprietary parts. It costs more than the pc is worth to repair small problems.

Hmm? Compaq near as I can tell uses pretty std stuff (AMD chips, etc). And I thought all PCs nowdays used standard fitting hardware (HDs, RAM etc). Can you elaborate?

2. The warranties they try to sell you at stores like Best Buy are scams.

Yep long been aware of that, but bears repeating, thx

3. 1GB of ram is already not enough for quite a few things. At least purchase a computer than can be upgraded beyond that in the future, if needed.

I've yet to see one that couldn't be upgraded, but I think 1GB is plenty for my needs for some time to come. I'm no hard-core gamer (in fact getting something even as semi-dated as DOOM III is a big step for me and only requires I think 512MB).

4. AMD processors consistently outperform similarly priced Intel processors for most things, regardless of the clock speed they claim.

ie the buses etc. Yeah I think a few people explained that well in earlier posts FYI (but again this is all good stuff, don't take that wrong).

5. If you ever intend to try out Linux, you'll want an AMD processor and an NVidia graphics card. Their support for Linux is much better. Linux + ATI graphics cards is a mess you should try to avoid.

Probably won't in the near future, but again appreciate the info and will keep in mind.

Thx again all for the replies!

 

[ZiprHead]

I bought a Dell E310 a while back. First off-the-shelf computer I've bought in many years. Configured it online with all the goodies I wanted, extra ram, dvd player and a burner, upgraded monitor, etc. Setting it up, WTF? No parallel port for my HP 4L laser printer. I didn't even think of that when configuring.

Oh well, I know I've got an old pci parallel port card in the basement so not a real big problem. Open the computer and it's got 1, one, ONE! standard pci slot. And it's shared with a pci express slot.

Fair warning, check the small stuff before ordering by mail. If I'd have know about these limitations, I would not have bought that computer.

 

[bigred]

Man that blows. I thought Dell was better than that.....

 

[snooziums]

Man that blows. I thought Dell was better than that.....

I owned a Dell laptop once back in 2003, never again. Darn thing caught fire on me on my lap! And, of course, when I called Dell about it, they asked me if I could run some program for them - after it was all crisped! *sigh*

But I will say to get a decent video card of you plan to do any gaming. I have a Mac Mini with an Intel chipset, and even though I have owned slower-processor Macs (they had ATi video cards in them), they were much better than having a decent processor (1.83 GHz Dual-Core Intel) with poor graphics.