Advice on buying a new pc......

Edge

My parents are buying a new pc soon. I told them go for an athalon but they insist on buying it from this company that only sell Pentiums.
I know pentium 4s are supposed to be slow but I have a choice either a P3 1000mhz or a P4 1300ghz. There is only a £120 price difference so I dont really care about that. Which one is worth going for I heard the P3 is faster but found that a bit hard to believe.

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Libraries Give Us Power
Tom
Irish Association of Rebels

Bard

If t'were me, I'd go for the P4, if only for the fact (?) that you'll be able to upgrade the processor more easily without necessarily having to change any other h/w in your machine, whereas upgrading from a P3 to a later P4 might need a mobo change.

Why were you recommending an Athlon over the Intel chipset?

sutty

It really comes down to the Motherboard in ther computers well, BX motherboards are very good for P3's. If you want an Athlon tell your olds that it will be cheaper than eather of them. Also RAM is a big deal make sure its not some bog standerd stuff from some godforsaken unheard-of company....


Hopw some of it helps i'll post more when i get home from work.

GL

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Ciaran Sutcliffe
aka: sutty
[HIV]sutty
For a good time goto:
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sutty

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Bard:
If t'were me, I'd go for the P4, if only for the fact (?) that you'll be able to upgrade the processor more easily without necessarily having to change any other h/w in your machine, whereas upgrading from a P3 to a later P4 might need a mobo change.

Why were you recommending an Athlon over the Intel chipset?</font>

From what I hear some of the first P4's (1.3mhz-1.5mhz) are the one that will be out dated in a few months, P3's are a tryed and tested TECH that work well go with them over a P4 but if you can, go with the Athlon as pound per MHz its a better by and its also better for number crunching and office apps. Their also ment to be good for Heavy Graphics Rendering

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Ciaran Sutcliffe
aka: sutty
[HIV]sutty
For a good time goto:
http://www.hotinternetvirgins.com

astrofool

The p4 is not going to be upgradable as of november this year, they are bringing out a new .13 micron chip which will use a different socket, power etc. socket changing from 423 pins to 478(i think those numbers are right), the PIII may get an upgrade when tualatin comes out, same prob tho, there will be new boards to go with it.

A PIII 1000 goes faster than a 1.3 in most applications, not all, depends on the graphics card alot, basically the p4 does less per mhz, than any other chip. Some applications are faster on p4, just get a decent chip, but get as good a graphics card as possible, most games are fill rate limited by the graphics card anyway, meaning the processor only makes a small difference.

Unfirtunately Athlon is the way to go right now(socket A will last longer than the p4 one, + a 1.2 athlon is faster than a p4 1.5 at everythig bar q3a), but if u have to stick with intel (a dell i presume(poor you)) the PIII would be my choice, i'd spend the extra 120 on the graphics card or RAM

[This message has been edited by astrofool (edited 28-03-2001).]

WhiteWashMan

the p4 2ghz will be sold in a few months...

Edge

I bought a new graphics card a Hercules 3D Prophet2 MX. It has 32MB Ram and 350 mhz RAMDAC which I'm afraid doent mean much to me.
Sorry I cant go for an Athalon I hear they are cheaper and faster and no it isnt a Dell its a small buisness in Cork. My parents want to buy there because they offer good service.
As I said I dont really care about the £120 so ignoring that i just want to know what i should buy. I doubt I'll be upgrading in the future as I probably wont play games as seriously after this year.

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Libraries Give Us Power
Tom
Irish Association of Rebels

Gerry

yes, what astrofool said. A p3 1000 will not be upgradeable on the board dell give you. A p4 will be upgradeable to 2ghz though, because they are not moving to a new socket until after the 2ghz .18 chip is launched. The new chip is mighty impressive btw, its about half the size of the existing one, and may have 512k l2 cache instead of 256k

Lucifer

i hav a P4 1.3Ghz and i hav had no problems with it, its fast etc.

but i dont know much bout athlon so i dont really know which is better

Lenny

well as for athlon they are faster than p's
and the even better thing is
if you buy a p4 1.3 you're stuck with that mhz
as for the athlon, if you an athlon mother board you can go up to 1.5 with the sockets
so you would be much better off

Kali

1.5Ghz? Since when are AMD releasing 1.5Ghz Thunderbirds?

I can't see Intel increasing the L2 cache even with the extra die available, their l2 cache on the P4 is damn fast as it is and price would soar.

sutty

They Haven't released a 1.5Gz Athlon yet.........thats what the mother boards can support up to (thats to Kali btw) duel atlons sould be out very soon(not to sure hey may be out already) and then the AMD 64bit CPU that can work on a 32BIT platform will be out I think next year (sometime in q2 or 3)

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Ciaran Sutcliffe
aka: sutty
[HIV]sutty
For a good time goto:
http://www.hotinternetvirgins.com

Yossarian

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Kali:
1.5Ghz? Since when are AMD releasing 1.5Ghz Thunderbirds?
</font>

They're not. The 1.5Ghz Athlon will be launch speed of the Palemino core (Athlon C).
Athlon Thunderbirds will all be sub 1.5 Ghz.