Viewing Thread:
"Buying A New Computer Is A Little Harder Than Expected..."

Recently inspired by how easy and cheap it is to shop online from the States and an article in a PC mag, I've decided that it's too tempting just to get a new PC, with XP for my iTunes and A faster processor for my games. However, many queries arose after just a few minutes of investigation.

1) Win XP Pro

against

Win XP Home

What's the difference? I only skimmed over the specs of a couple of comps, but XP Pro seems to merit another 20 or so dollars. What makes it more pricey and would XP Home be perfectly good for my needs (see top of page)?

2) There's a manufacturer called Acer. Never heard of them myself, but do you guys know anything useful; reliability, etc. My current comp is an Evesham, although I would have prefered a Dell, and found out a treasure chest of problems. Like ME's inefficiency with system resources and how Eveshams over heat...

3) Anyone know the HMCE site better than me and can direct me to the import tax for computers or electricals in general.

Any help would be great!

:)

Obviously I need a PSU.
I don't know where to get an internal modem.

Otherwise, will it support:

Video and sound?
Firewire and USB 2.0?
Internet?

Baring in mind I don't know what I'm doing, I just totalled this up on the buyer of E:

AMD (Newcastle) Athlon 64bit 3400+ 754pin 512kb L2cache Retail Boxed Processor with 3 Year Warranty and Fan Included 058432 157 £122.08

Sony 52x32x52x16 IDE Drive (COMBO) - OEM 058885 43 £21.09

Casecom Kg 188 In Grey And Black With Usb/audio No Psu
063745 896 £10.99

Sapphire Radeon 128MB 9600XT DDR DVI-i TV-Out Lite Retail Box 055188 75 £79.15

Hitachi 13G0251 Deskstar 40GB 7200rpm Serial ATA150 8MB Cache - OEM 081482 936 £27.99

Abit AI7-GURU SKT 478 865PE 800FSB Dual DDR SATA Raid Firewire Sound Retail Box 063165 22 £57.07

Corsair (VS1GBKIT400C3) 1024MB (2 x 512MB Matched Pair), DDR400 / PC3200, non-ECC, Unbuffered, CL3, Lifetime Warranty 054472 141 £85.01

Shipping Band: £5.99
Approx Cart Weight: 9.69Kg
Shipping Surcharge: £1.45
SubTotal: £410.82
VAT: £71.94

Total: £482.76



Any good? Missing something? Suggest I change something? Looks pretty good to me for my budget...

Clazon wrote:
> In that second link, Biggles, (ignorance) are the prices for the chip
> or an average computer containing the chip. $600-700 seems like a bit
> much for one chip!
>
> I fear it's for the worst.

It's because those are top range chips.

Maybe your heatsink isn't seated properly.
Or it's just a Thunderbird.

Anyway, Prescotts burn hotter than the sun, and AMD 64s are shockingly cool.

My friend's 2800+ hits about 34-35 degrees after 3+ hours of Counter Strike Source.


The highest I've seen my XP 2500+ (2.4GHz, baby) is 43.

P4's usually run quite hot, especially the Prescotts, but they're generally considered to be more reliable than the AMD processors. A P4 is probably a good choice for a non-gaming machine.

If you do want a PC for playing games though, considering your tight budget, AMD are the best option. Go for an Athlon 64 though.

In that second link, Biggles, (ignorance) are the prices for the chip or an average computer containing the chip. $600-700 seems like a bit much for one chip!

I fear it's for the worst.

The AMDs look pretty tasty.

************

Also, I misunderstood what someone said about the cache thing.

I have an AMD at the moment and it overheats all the time. So I wouldn't quite trust that it's better than a P4 in that sense.

************

This new BTX motherboard thing looks great. Expensive I guess, but it would be nice to have.

Well, in HL2 it's frame rate, and in the other one, it's the score given by the benchmarks...

What do those numbers mean? "Performance figures" is somewhat vague.

How is it different for Socket 478 Intel CPUs? Being an older chipset, I'd assume it would perform worse...

Wow, the performance of P4 in games is worse than I thought...

The 3.8GHz is beaten by the 2.0GHz Athlon 64 3200+
That is....dire.