Ghz or Mb?

[.Mark]

What is preferable?

I'm thinking of buying a new PC and there are plenty of options out there (I'm probably going the Dell route) what do the experts suggest in terms of spec? It's only going to be for home office type work no real big games or whatever.

For example would a 2.6Ghz with 512Mb RAM perform better than a 3.0Ghz with 128Mb RAM? Personally I wouldn't have thought there was too much difference and I guess RAM can always be added. For the purpose of the question lets assume both processors have the same speed FSB and the RAM is identical too.

[rebelstar]

Go for the memory. You won't notice the difference between 2.6 and 3 GHz.

When you run out of physical memory - and with 128Mb you will very quickly - the operating system (probably windows in your case) will start swapping memory out to disk. This is VERY slow.

Going back to the CPU for a second: when I last looked, 2.8Ghz was only a few quid more than 2.6 and a whole lot less than 3.0 (I chose 2.8 for my own machine).

[_DJ_]

Generally the latest and supposedly greatest processor is sold at a premium. As suggested, get a slightly older one at a reduced cost and get as much RAM as possible (or a better spec graphics card, depending on what the machine will be used for). If you're using XP or Windows 2000 I'd try to get at least half a Gig if memory for good performance.

DJ

[.Mark]

Thanks Chaps, so Memory it is then.

Now then, Pentium4, Celeron, AMD, or their other one (name escapes me)?

[stevieb]

Personally go for P4 for a desktop PC..

Some software does not work to it full potential under AMD XP chips and the Celeroan has less onboard Cache.

Ive got a Celeron Laptop, had a AMD 2400xp desktop but it didnt do well on the video editing side, but its now been updated to a 2.6Ghz P4 and now flies through the video editing

steve

[pdV6]

.Mark said:

Thanks Chaps, so Memory it is then.

But bear in mind that memory is cheap as chips at the moment, so it might work out cheaper to spec the fastest processor you can afford (but as has been mentioned, 1 down from the top of the range will be miles cheaper and perform virtually identically) and buy & fit extra memory yourself (www.crucial.com/uk/)

[Mikej]

Definitely go for th Flat Screen upgrade - not much extra as an upgrade, but loads to buy separately.

Mike.

[voyds9]

Mikej said:

Definitely go for th Flat Screen upgrade - not much extra as an upgrade, but loads to buy separately. Mike.

I'm still on CRT as I do a lot of gaming and I notice a ghost/lag on fast moving games with flat screen.

[event horizon]

TFT screens, urgh, if you do any kind of graphics work or gaming you are far better off with a CRT.

Get the PC with the fastest processor, RAM is cheep, upgrading your processor is not.

I don't know of any software that does not work with AMD chips, some people still get confused with the older AMD chips (k6 processor) and compatibility with solidworks, even then a patch was available.

AMD & INTEL chips work in different ways, for each clock cycle (Hz) the AMD chips will complete 9 operations (or instructions) per cycle, the Intel chips will complete 6 operations per cycle.

What that means is that Intel are trying to confuse you to thinking that processor speed = performance, its not true. The Intel chips would have to run at a 1/3 higher clock speed to do the same amount of work.

[event horizon]

BTW, here is a comparison chart of Intel & AMD chips, you can see that the AMD2600+ with a clock speed of 2077Mhz can do more work than the Intel P4 with a clock speed of 3066Mhz.
:

http://notoriousformula.no-ip.com/cpuvscpu.html

>> Edited by event horizon on Thursday 1st January 17:05