[YOHAN]

Monkey, regarding your AMD and Intel troubles... an AMD Athlon64 2.2ghz is equivalent to an Intel 3.4ghz when it comes to speed and processing power. Sounds impossible, ey? It gets better... AMD chips use less power and produce less heat! Gone are the days when AMD ran extremely hot that it fries the motherboard. Not only that, in most games, the AMD 2.2ghz even surpasses the Intel 3.6ghz! Atleast, that's what I have learned from benchmarks from Tom's Hardware and others.

It's becoming common knowledge that AMD is faster and more efficient and cheaper than Intel. And that's the reason why just last month, AMD, for the first time, beat Intel based desktop sales for the whole month! At least, in North America.

So, go for AMD and you won't be sorry.

[Laughing_Monkey]

Cool!

So how comes a 2.2 can outdo a 3.4? (without getting too technical!)

[vmlinuz]

It's a very long time since a 2.8GHz processor did precisely 2.8G things per second - modern processors are exceedingly complex pieces of design and programming and can perform radically differently under different workloads - and respond very differently to things like optimised software.

As a very simple example, I have software here to (re-)encode video files - i.e. DVD to xvid. If I build it as generic x86 software, it runs at X fps - if I build it as Athlon software, it runs maybe 10% faster - and if I build it as Athlon64 software, it runs faster again. This is the same chip, doing the same work, but running much much quicker once I build the software specifically to run on that chip.

Another obvious, more generic example, is things like MMX, SSE and 3dNow!, which are, plain and simple, methods to allow a processor to to the same thing to multiple numbers at the same time - so if, say, you're drawing a 3d image to the screen (game, art, etc.) you can do calculations on small blocks of the image in one go, rather than having to run the calculations individually on every invidividual pixel.

Generally, modern CPUs also have things like multiple execution units and branch prediction - so they can run multiple possible strands of the program at the same time, then discard the un-needed bits.

It gets complex... best to just work on the basis that Intel are good (or were, until recently) at making chips run at high speed, while AMD are better at making chips efficient, so they do the same amount of work as the faster Intel chips, while using significantly less power.

[JohanSWE]

L_M ok got your PM, ill reply here because the Pm word limit.
Forgett the Dell options you found both of them.

Id go with a Celeron D or AMD athlon if i where you, and skip the 64bit cpus for now since there are no good reason to get them right now unless you use linux or unix and such that has native support for 64bit.
Instead get a cheap mainboard and a cup around 2Ghz + thats all you really need to start off with 3D.
If your gonna get a P4 with HT (hyper threading) make sure your applications support it, most dont so it might be money better spent on ram.

Graphic card, well I dont know if your planing to play games also? if you are go for one with DX 9 support, and a smaller amopunt of fast G-ram, instead of plenty slow ass ram.
Fast G-ram is a better buy in 90% of the cases.
6600GT is an excelent card if your gonna do video work also.
While ATI usaly has better 3d preformance using OGL

HDD:
Well id go with 2x 160gb drivers or something. Buying a 40-80gb today isnt worth it, the price per MB is too high.

RAM:
GEIL makes superior ram modules at very good rates, buy a twinpack to use Dual DDR plus they come with heatsinks standard. But prices doesnt wary that much.

And buy a good quallity PSU, atleast 400W and add the extra 100 to get one with a stable power current.
Its worth it.

Anyways ill PM you my msn info so we can chat there instead.

[Laughing_Monkey]

k, im going to turn my ICQ off for a bit cuz i keep getting randoms bugging me. I'll add you to my MSN - or skype if youve got it.

[Laughing_Monkey]

So what your saying is basically that you cant judge a computer by its Clock Speed these days.

Though i'm trying to avoid them at the mo, i prob will end up playing games on it - esp when BLack and White 2 and X3 Reunion come out. I had to ban myself after WoW took up tooooo much of my time, but the habit is strong in this one...

Are there any particularly good or bad suppliers of RAM or HDD's?

[YOHAN]

I personally use Kingston and Corsair RAMs. They both have lifetime warranties. They say Corsair makes the fastest RAMs in the world (according to reviews) but you won't really notice RAM speeds unless your machine is really high-end. Go for Dual-Channel RAMs... so buy the bundled pairs for increased RAM performance... that is, if your motherboard supports dual-channel RAMs.

HDD, I go for Seagate and Maxtor. I think Maxtor has 3 years warranty or something. Don't go for less than 7200rpm (that's the speed of the disc). 10,000rpm is too fast and EXPENSIVE... don't even bother thinking about it.

If you are going to edit video, one tip is to get 2 HDD. put them on separate connections to your motherboard. Put your editing software and windows in one hard drive and your video on the other. This would make things run faster and minimize dropped frames while transfering video.

If you really plan on playing games, don't go for the Celeron... that won't cut it.

[Laughing_Monkey]

darn, but celerons are such good value. Is even a 3.2 with a decent graphics hard not good enough for gaming?

[discobay]

Celerons don't have the number crunching ability that comes with a fpu that "full-fledged" Pentiums do.

[Laughing_Monkey]

so what kinda limitations are we talking about here?

Im only really fused about playing X3 at the mo...