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OK peeps, need a bit of help on this one!
Not in a massive rush just yet, 'coz won't be off to uni (hopefully) till next September. However, I'm currently viewing my options with regards to a computer system to take.
Now, I've applied to do computer science, and am an avid gamer, so the machine needs to be something of a brute. My budget will be around £2000, so this shouldn't be a problem. There appears to be two possible options:
1) Get a laptop
2) Buy the parts and build a PC
Now, I've just totted up a few figures, and at this moment in time a P4 3.2 with 1024mb DDR400 RAM, Radeon 9800 XT 256Mb, 160gig SATA HDD, 17inch TFT with all the trimmings will set me back about £1500.
A P4 3.2gig laptop with 1024mb DDR333 RAM, 9600 128mb, 80gig HDD and 17" widescreen will cost me closer to £2000. So, the advantages of building a PC are obvious - get a lot more for a lot less.
However, a few concerns with building a PC:
1)Transferring data to and from home won't be as simple as taking a laptop home.
2)Security. I'm not sure I'd be comfortable leaving the PC at uni when I pop home for weekends or whatever. I could ofcourse bring it home with me, but then that'll mean unplugging it, sticking it in the car etc...
Grr...decisions, decisions! To most, this would probably be a trivial matter and I expect getting a laptop would be the more popular choice. But the prospect of having so much more grunt, which is future-proof also is oh-so tempting...
Any words of wisdom? :)
Not in a massive rush just yet, 'coz won't be off to uni (hopefully) till next September. However, I'm currently viewing my options with regards to a computer system to take.
Now, I've applied to do computer science, and am an avid gamer, so the machine needs to be something of a brute. My budget will be around £2000, so this shouldn't be a problem. There appears to be two possible options:
1) Get a laptop
2) Buy the parts and build a PC
Now, I've just totted up a few figures, and at this moment in time a P4 3.2 with 1024mb DDR400 RAM, Radeon 9800 XT 256Mb, 160gig SATA HDD, 17inch TFT with all the trimmings will set me back about £1500.
A P4 3.2gig laptop with 1024mb DDR333 RAM, 9600 128mb, 80gig HDD and 17" widescreen will cost me closer to £2000. So, the advantages of building a PC are obvious - get a lot more for a lot less.
However, a few concerns with building a PC:
1)Transferring data to and from home won't be as simple as taking a laptop home.
2)Security. I'm not sure I'd be comfortable leaving the PC at uni when I pop home for weekends or whatever. I could ofcourse bring it home with me, but then that'll mean unplugging it, sticking it in the car etc...
Grr...decisions, decisions! To most, this would probably be a trivial matter and I expect getting a laptop would be the more popular choice. But the prospect of having so much more grunt, which is future-proof also is oh-so tempting...
Any words of wisdom? :)
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Thats where I intend to go once I finish college, Nottingham Trent Uni.
And who says you have to live in the meadows Bell? There's always Dunkirk and the area around it :)
Anyway, Uncle Albert, With a budget of £2000 you could (like what most people have mentioned) get a lowish specced laptop and a beastly PC.
Sorted!
And who says you have to live in the meadows Bell? There's always Dunkirk and the area around it :)
Anyway, Uncle Albert, With a budget of £2000 you could (like what most people have mentioned) get a lowish specced laptop and a beastly PC.
Sorted!
Notorious Biggles wrote:
> I did mean the actual P5. But it is quite a while away still. Prescott
> is looking promising but it's not a huge jump in technology.
Oh, OK. Do you know when the P5 is due?
> But the main boon for AMD chips is the dual channel memory
> controllers. So much more bandwidth, and that is more noticable than
> raw MHz.
I would agree, but its a shame that motherboards for the 64 and FX processors have iffy support for it (http://www20.tomshardware.com/ (SPACE) motherboard/20040112/index.html)
> Yeah, the space issue is more of a concern at uni, but some
> accomodation is a bit more spacious than others. It's the trade off
> between cost and space and as I said it is less "desirable"
> so it less likely to get nicked.
I would agree on a CRT being better here as well. One would easyily fit in my brothers uni acomidation, which is smaller than my bedroom.
> I did mean the actual P5. But it is quite a while away still. Prescott
> is looking promising but it's not a huge jump in technology.
Oh, OK. Do you know when the P5 is due?
> But the main boon for AMD chips is the dual channel memory
> controllers. So much more bandwidth, and that is more noticable than
> raw MHz.
I would agree, but its a shame that motherboards for the 64 and FX processors have iffy support for it (http://www20.tomshardware.com/ (SPACE) motherboard/20040112/index.html)
> Yeah, the space issue is more of a concern at uni, but some
> accomodation is a bit more spacious than others. It's the trade off
> between cost and space and as I said it is less "desirable"
> so it less likely to get nicked.
I would agree on a CRT being better here as well. One would easyily fit in my brothers uni acomidation, which is smaller than my bedroom.
I did mean the actual P5. But it is quite a while away still. Prescott is looking promising but it's not a huge jump in technology.
I like Intel chips for running cooler and for still going by actual MHz. I'm not a fan of the PR rating, but for at least a while they were accurate. Certainly 2200 MHz AMD chips outperform 2200 MHz Intels.
Lately the ratings appeared to be a bit more of a stretch. But if you know what you are doing you can overclock them to 2500 MHz with not too much trouble.
But the main boon for AMD chips is the dual channel memory controllers. So much more bandwidth, and that is more noticable than raw MHz.
Yeah, the space issue is more of a concern at uni, but some accomodation is a bit more spacious than others. It's the trade off between cost and space and as I said it is less "desirable" so it less likely to get nicked.
I like Intel chips for running cooler and for still going by actual MHz. I'm not a fan of the PR rating, but for at least a while they were accurate. Certainly 2200 MHz AMD chips outperform 2200 MHz Intels.
Lately the ratings appeared to be a bit more of a stretch. But if you know what you are doing you can overclock them to 2500 MHz with not too much trouble.
But the main boon for AMD chips is the dual channel memory controllers. So much more bandwidth, and that is more noticable than raw MHz.
Yeah, the space issue is more of a concern at uni, but some accomodation is a bit more spacious than others. It's the trade off between cost and space and as I said it is less "desirable" so it less likely to get nicked.
Notorious Biggles wrote:
> you might have noticed my spec had a
> CRT monitor, I think for at uni it might be a better idea as a TFT is
> far easier to nick than a 20 kg CRT. Plus the image quality would be
> just as good.
Yeah but there is an issue of space in uni accommodation.
> you might have noticed my spec had a
> CRT monitor, I think for at uni it might be a better idea as a TFT is
> far easier to nick than a 20 kg CRT. Plus the image quality would be
> just as good.
Yeah but there is an issue of space in uni accommodation.
Oh, and I would personally go a Intel due to there slightly faster chipsets (Intels own rather than SiS etc) and the simple reason that I don't like the P rating system for the AMD's and their lower clock speed (I can see even new ones in the future having to slower clock speeds to run new games as the require clock speed for games is going up perpotionatly faster than the clock speed of AMDs), but as Notorious Biggles says, AMD's have better floating point units on them.
Its your choice.
Its your choice.
Notorious Biggles wrote:
> Only time I would say go with Intel is if you do video work or if the
> P5 is out by the time you build the thing as Intel have a better
> looking future at the moment.
The "Prescott" core which I assume you are talking about when you say P5 (the prescott is actually still called a P4) is out next month in the socket 478 format (same as the current "Northwood" cores) and a couple of months after that you'll get the new version of the prescott with a larger socket number that will have rounded pins (cant rember the number, its somewhere on toms hardware).
> Only time I would say go with Intel is if you do video work or if the
> P5 is out by the time you build the thing as Intel have a better
> looking future at the moment.
The "Prescott" core which I assume you are talking about when you say P5 (the prescott is actually still called a P4) is out next month in the socket 478 format (same as the current "Northwood" cores) and a couple of months after that you'll get the new version of the prescott with a larger socket number that will have rounded pins (cant rember the number, its somewhere on toms hardware).
If you have a budget of £2000 then what I would do is go for a budget laptop at around say £650. Might only be a 2 GHz Celeron, small HDD and little RAM, but it will be plenty powerful enough for word processing and programming on if need be.
With the other £1350 you could build a very high performance PC. I hand built one on Christmas Day that annihilates my old PC performance wise.
I went for an AMD Athlon 3000XP 400 MHz FSB (was a week 29 Barton, which for tech heads out there means it had unlocked multipliers, which meant it overclocked like hell), so lots of performance at a low price.
Abit NF7-S mobo (onboard audio, but very good Nvidia stuff at that)
1 Gig DDR RAM at 400 MHz, 2x 512 Mb chips in dual channel for better memory bandwidth
160 Gb Maxtor SATA HDD
Radeon 9800XT 256 Mb
8 speed DVD burner
19" Samsung CRT monitor
Speakers
Pointless coolermaster things like a Musketeer and a Jet 7 fan
Windows XP Home edition
Floppy
Big silver side panel case
LED case fans
Various cables
£1230 ish inc VAT and delivery
That would let you get both. As you might have noticed my spec had a CRT monitor, I think for at uni it might be a better idea as a TFT is far easier to nick than a 20 kg CRT. Plus the image quality would be just as good.
I went for an AMD chip as they have much better floating point units on them (in other words it crunches FAD much faster) and as it was a 400 MHz FSB version, when coupled with an nForce 2 mobo, it really does fly. It's a modders dream, has everything.
Only time I would say go with Intel is if you do video work or if the P5 is out by the time you build the thing as Intel have a better looking future at the moment.
As for taking data home.. considered hot swappable RAID? Why bother with a 128 Mb pen drive when you could have 128 Gb! Not something I have considered at any great length, but it could work.
With the other £1350 you could build a very high performance PC. I hand built one on Christmas Day that annihilates my old PC performance wise.
I went for an AMD Athlon 3000XP 400 MHz FSB (was a week 29 Barton, which for tech heads out there means it had unlocked multipliers, which meant it overclocked like hell), so lots of performance at a low price.
Abit NF7-S mobo (onboard audio, but very good Nvidia stuff at that)
1 Gig DDR RAM at 400 MHz, 2x 512 Mb chips in dual channel for better memory bandwidth
160 Gb Maxtor SATA HDD
Radeon 9800XT 256 Mb
8 speed DVD burner
19" Samsung CRT monitor
Speakers
Pointless coolermaster things like a Musketeer and a Jet 7 fan
Windows XP Home edition
Floppy
Big silver side panel case
LED case fans
Various cables
£1230 ish inc VAT and delivery
That would let you get both. As you might have noticed my spec had a CRT monitor, I think for at uni it might be a better idea as a TFT is far easier to nick than a 20 kg CRT. Plus the image quality would be just as good.
I went for an AMD chip as they have much better floating point units on them (in other words it crunches FAD much faster) and as it was a 400 MHz FSB version, when coupled with an nForce 2 mobo, it really does fly. It's a modders dream, has everything.
Only time I would say go with Intel is if you do video work or if the P5 is out by the time you build the thing as Intel have a better looking future at the moment.
As for taking data home.. considered hot swappable RAID? Why bother with a 128 Mb pen drive when you could have 128 Gb! Not something I have considered at any great length, but it could work.
Amd Man - £2000 is just a budget I've set for this. No loans or anything involved. I'd like to keep it that way! ;)
taka-Q - I've already written a post a bit further down on the Shuttle case you mention.
Yukikaze - already had an offer from Nottingham, so that's not an issue. No point looking towards the 2nd year and later just yet, as it's simply too early! Had offers from all my choices, but won't be sending reply to Ucas till I've seen Nottingham.
taka-Q - I've already written a post a bit further down on the Shuttle case you mention.
Yukikaze - already had an offer from Nottingham, so that's not an issue. No point looking towards the 2nd year and later just yet, as it's simply too early! Had offers from all my choices, but won't be sending reply to Ucas till I've seen Nottingham.
Nottingham is great but very difficult to get into, though I have heard that most of its reputation comes from the Medical school side of things. The other downside is that at Nottingham you could well end up, at least after the first year, in one of the city's student areas, some of which will rocket your insurance through the roof. I dread to think about the cost of insuring a decent PC in the Meadows area of Nottingham...
I remember when I went to the open day at Nottingham Trent and the area was described as 'colourful' - everyone who was local burst out laughing whilst the rest must have thought we were all mad....
I remember when I went to the open day at Nottingham Trent and the area was described as 'colourful' - everyone who was local burst out laughing whilst the rest must have thought we were all mad....
You could try a barebone PC like a Shuttle. Portable and the Shuttle Spacewalker XPC SB75G2 Aluminium Barebone has all the features that you could ever want and is about the same price as a decent case, motherboard and PSU (which is what you get in a barebone. Heres a URL to the barebone: http://us.shuttle.com/specs2.asp?pro_id=388
Overclockers do it for £222.08 Including VAT if that helps.
S.A.
Overclockers do it for £222.08 Including VAT if that helps.
S.A.
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