Computer processor and sundry advice

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2004-12-07 06:13pm

My daughter's birthday is in February and I've been planning for some time to buy a new Dell and give her my old one.

Anyway I've been checking out the Dell website and seeing the various options. One of the ones that has me thinking is the processor speed. They run from Pentium 4 (3.4, 3.5, 3.6 Ghrtz) Now the price difference between the lower and the upper processor speed is like $400. Do I REALLY need that higher processor speed or can I get by on the lower one for a good long time (around 3 yrs when I generally get a new PC)

My current PC has a P4 1.7 Ghrtz and I have not had any issues at all. In fact in some ways I really don't need a new PC but now that I have the cash I should spend it before I blow it on drugs and hookers (Kidding) So I generally assume getting the lower end shouldn't be an issue.

Another sticking point is the flat panel monitor. I've been lusting after one of these for years. They have a regular Dell Flatpanel and the Ultrasharp Dell flatpanel. The price difference is about $250. Any idea if it really matters? Generally I've been happy with normal monitors no need to get all fancy.

I guess generally I just need to know what the basic features and numbers I should be looking for in a new PC that will make sure it lasts for a long time. Like I said the one I have now I've had for 3 years and no real signs of it slowing me down or getting outmoded (save for little hiccups like only having 256Meg SDRAM which makes gaming on the latest stuff a little choppy sometimes and no USB 2.0 ports)

Oh yeah and please no "Dell sucks" or "build a cheaper one yourself" I'm quite happy with Dell.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2004-12-07 06:22pm

Don't even bother getting the faster speeds. The difference between 3.2 and 3.6 GHz is paltry. Do get more RAM (at least 512MB -- go for 1GB if your budget allows). Do get a DVD burner. LCD displays are nice but not neccessary.

If you are gaming, do not get integrated (it may be called Intel) video. You will be in pain.

You can always post specs here and have us take a look as well.

Attention peanut gallery: Anyone who says DIY will be shot by Pablo's NKVD. Thank you.

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2004-12-07 06:31pm

Generally what I've looked at is the Gaming Machine because it has all the high end goodies I like. I'm thinking:

P4 (3.4)
1 Gig SDRAM
160 Gig Harddrive. (My current one is 80 and I have little space issues)
The videocard IIRC is a Nvidia 6800
Soundcard is a Soundblaster high end thing that I can't recall the specs for but is the highest soundblaster card you can get.
8 USB 2.0 Ports
Dual Disc drives DVD Drive and Free DVD/CD Burner Drive.

Phongn thanks for the advice on the integrated video. I'll keep a look out for that.

In comparison my current machine is:
P4 (1.7)
256 SDRAM
80 Gig HD
Nvidia 2400 (I think)
Soundblaster Live
2 USB 1.1 Ports (this is KILLING me with all the peripherals available these days not to mention song downloading into my jukebox)
Dual Drives (DVD, CD Burner) (Been lusting at burning some DVD's of late)

I'll check the Dell Website for exact specs later.

Post by **Dalton** » 2004-12-07 06:39pm

If you can get an IEEE1394 port, do.

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2004-12-07 06:55pm

Dalton wrote:If you can get an IEEE1394 port, do.

What exactly does that do?

EDIT: Oh yeah, does anyone have a clue what schedule the Dell special offers are on? I got a sweet one when I purchased my current system - free shipping, free HD upgrade and free memory upgrade. I won't buy it unless a free shipping deal is out there as I find it annoying to wind up paying over $100 in shipping costs for the damned thing and I like actual upgrades to my system I don't like free printers and all that other nonsense. Give me more bang for my buck on memory and the like.

I just want to make sure I get a good deal package. I'm aiming to purhcase the system sometime in January in the hopes that they have some nice after Christmas holiday packages.

Post by **Dalton** » 2004-12-07 07:34pm

Stravo wrote:
Dalton wrote:If you can get an IEEE1394 port, do.
What exactly does that do?

It's commonly called FireWire or iLink or something like that. It's very, very fast, used mostly for A/V applications or for portable MP3 players.

Stravo wrote:EDIT: Oh yeah, does anyone have a clue what schedule the Dell special offers are on? I got a sweet one when I purchased my current system - free shipping, free HD upgrade and free memory upgrade. I won't buy it unless a free shipping deal is out there as I find it annoying to wind up paying over $100 in shipping costs for the damned thing and I like actual upgrades to my system I don't like free printers and all that other nonsense. Give me more bang for my buck on memory and the like.

I just want to make sure I get a good deal package. I'm aiming to purhcase the system sometime in January in the hopes that they have some nice after Christmas holiday packages.

I've been seeing commercials for Dell gift cards, so perhaps they'll have something like that after Christmas when all the recipients begin cashing them in...

White Haven · Post by **White Haven** » 2004-12-07 07:59pm

Okay, I have to ask...why Dell? I know DIY isn't usually an option for questions like this, but there are usually local places that will custom-build a system to your specs, and actually have local service instead of having to ship it off to BFE. Dell's service is, with a few rare exceptions, REALLY bad and fairly slow, so that can bite you later. Even if you get lucky and get good service from them (I hear horror stories from customers far too often to have faith in that), they tend to use nonstandard motherboard switch and LED connectors, usually a custom-made ribbon cable, which means that if your board dies past the warranty, you need a new board /and/ a new case, because the power switch, reset button, power LED, etcetera have incompatible connections. Needless to say, that kind of moneygrubbing gets on my nerves, as it has no technical benefit whatsoever, it's purely a ploy to make people buy replacement parts from them. Their cases on the whole are fairly cheap and chintzy, but that's a minor issue besides the switch-connector one.

On specs, is this being used for gaming? Video editting? Materializing rabid monkies out of the Warp? Definitely go with at least 512MB of RAM for any use at all, 256 gets painful these days, even DDR. Firewire....eh, I'm going to be the odd man out and just blink. Unless you're talking about 1394a (Firewire-800), USB 2.0 is just as fast, and a helluva lot more things use if. If you're into digital video, Firewire is a good thing to get, otherwise...well it's pretty much irrelevant.

Moving on to flat-panels, try to find out who /really/ makes the display. Dell's just slapping their branding on a product, so to really find out the skinny on it you need to track down who makes the thing to begin with. Depending on how Dell does things, that could even vary from monitor to monitor, or it could be the same across the board, I honestly don't know.

Video, as has been said, depends on if you're gaming or not. Also, if you do get a separate video card, ignore flashy 'gee-whiz-bang' RAM counts and model numbers. Pay special attention to 'SE' by the model of an ATI card or 'XT' by the model of an nVidia card (XT for an ATI card is a good thing). Either of those means they're giving you a cut-down version of that model, and trying to get you to buy it by showing you an impressive model number.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2004-12-07 08:49pm

Stravo, you don't really need FireWire. Sure, it's useful, but not for what you're doing.

That machine you posted will be plenty fast.

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2004-12-08 07:25am

Stravo wrote:Generally what I've looked at is the Gaming Machine because it has all the high end goodies I like. I'm thinking:

P4 (3.4)

I would personally go for an Athlon64 processor. Generally cheaper, cooler than the latest p4 batch, and has the NX page flag which under WinXP sp2 will make a difference for completely stopping stackbased buffer overflows from working. It also has 64bit support which once 64bit Windows XP goes gold you can update your licence for free.

Soundcard is a Soundblaster high end thing that I can't recall the specs for but is the highest soundblaster card you can get.

There isnt that much difference between a 'high' end and the midrange stuff beyond price.

White Haven's advice is good solid advice which you should at least consider.

Eleas · Post by **Eleas** » 2004-12-08 10:36am

phongn wrote:Stravo, you don't really need FireWire. Sure, it's useful, but not for what you're doing.

That machine you posted will be plenty fast.

...I dunno. Is it only over here that practically all new machines come with IEEE1394? If you can get it cheap, I see no reason not to have it.

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2004-12-08 11:23am

You can find some places that will DIY for you
Not counting that here is a look at your specs

P4 (3.4)
Should be good for you, infact 3.2+ is good right now
1 Gig SDRAM
Good good, move along
160 Gig Harddrive. (My current one is 80 and I have little space issues)
Hard drive storage these days is cheap, normaly the diffrence between 160 and 200 is around 20$ think about it
The videocard IIRC is a Nvidia 6800
Perfect fit if pricey
Soundcard is a Soundblaster high end thing that I can't recall the specs for but is the highest soundblaster card you can get.
The highest soundblaster(Augiy 2) comes in five versions from OEM to super duper preimun edit, ALL of them are the same card, just diffrent software bundles and in the cases of the Preminum Editions, they come with Diffrent boxes that are either external or breakout that let you hook up all sorts of crazy audio devices
8 USB 2.0 Ports
Since its dell it should have Firewire already built in somewhere
Dual Disc drives DVD Drive and Free DVD/CD Burner Drive.
Two optical drives are useful nowadays not just having a dedicated DVD drive but its useful to copy disk to disk for "backups" and acutal backups/

Should be an excellent game computer, however once you get it, boot it up, look for anything called Dell in the add/remove panel and unistall it, then open up MSNCONFIG and unclick anything that does not look useful in the Startup menu(Or list it here and we can tell you what you need and what should not start)

Doing that vital step first can wring you anywhere from a .5%-6% boost in preformance do to all the equaly useless Dell APS not eating up your memory

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2004-12-08 11:33am

I understand the whole DIY issue, hell my first few comps were DIY but I have been REALLY happy with my Dell, not a single issue, no hiccups, no viruses, no dead HD's, nada. All my DIY systems eventualy had issues, something conked out, something needed fixing, I had compatabilty issues when I tried to upgrade or add something. It has not needed a new Video card as I did with some of my other comps, no new HD when one of mine conked out in a prior comp, any game I've thrown in there has worked. The Dell has been a fucking god send of no issue reliability. I want to reward that reliability AND continue that trend.

Keep in mind also I'm not very techy computer geeky in the sense that its adventurous for me when I add in a new drive or plug in some new RAM. The Dell keeps my opening the case up to a minimum and I appreciate that. I play the occasional game and use it mostly for writing and web surfing.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2004-12-08 12:30pm

Read the fucking OP ~ D

White Haven · Post by **White Haven** » 2004-12-08 10:04pm

I didn't just say Dell sucked. I gave precise, reasoned examples of problems I and my customers at work have had with their Dells. And then I went on in detail about some of the specs. So cool your jets.

Well, if you're doing any gaming at all on it, that supercedes anything else you do, so that's the only real concern, of course. That said, you've got a pretty well-specced setup for it...one thing to check, are you getting the 865/875 or 915/925-chipset board for that, AGP/PCI-X and DDR/DDR2. Those specs could go equally to either board generation, but if you go for the former, you'll limit any future upgrade possibilities pretty heavily. Just something to keep in mind.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2004-12-08 10:11pm

White Haven wrote:I didn't just say Dell sucked. I gave precise, reasoned examples of problems I and my customers at work have had with their Dells. And then I went on in detail about some of the specs. So cool your jets.

I don't believe that Durandal's edit was directed at you.

White Haven · Post by **White Haven** » 2004-12-08 10:15pm

Ah, my mistake, I'm not used to colored whiplash.

Vertigo1 · Post by **Vertigo1** » 2004-12-11 01:37pm

White Haven is right. Dell is really starting to slack off in their quality department. (Seeing as I've worked on several Dell models, I know what I'm talking about.) You could easily do alot better for the money they're trying to steal from you. Definitely don't get the cheapass LCD monitor they'll try to lump on you. When I tell you that they use the cheapest parts possible, its not limited to the internal hardware of the machine. Their LCD monitors (usually very low-end Samsung's or Sony's) ghost like hell so gaming is NOT an option at all. The refresh timing is atleast 30 - 40ms, which is so slow that even simple web surfing will make it ghost like hell. Move your mouse any faster than a slow crawl and you'll loose the pointer. If you can, tell them to leave off the monitor and use that money to beef up the system with more RAM. You can buy a much better one locally, at a much lower price than what Dell would charge you. (and SPECIFY that you want them to use 533MHz DDR, otherwise they'll slap in PC2100 which is 266MHz which will hinder performance greatly.) The video card is definitely more than adequate. Just make sure they use a proper heatsink/fan combo on it. Dell tends to skimp on things like this. Lastly, whatever you do, do not allow anyone or anything to hit the case! Give that thing a good bump and the heatsink for your processor will fall off, possibly damaging anything in the way. Dell has yet to impliment a properly designed heatsink retention method. (They used to bolt the damn things down...)

That being said, how much money are you looking to spend on a rig like this? Some of us could throw up some specs (for the sake of comparison) should you decide not to go Dell and go with a local DIY shop.

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2004-12-11 05:19pm

phongn wrote:
White Haven wrote:I didn't just say Dell sucked. I gave precise, reasoned examples of problems I and my customers at work have had with their Dells. And then I went on in detail about some of the specs. So cool your jets.
I don't believe that Durandal's edit was directed at you.

Wasn't my edit. My edits are signed "Your Friendly Neighborhood Rampant AI."

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2004-12-11 06:56pm

Durandal wrote:Wasn't my edit. My edits are signed "Your Friendly Neighborhood Rampant AI."

Hrm. Rob's?

darthdavid · Post by **darthdavid** » 2004-12-11 08:29pm

If you absolutely must go dell that like others have said the gaming one you posted should be a fine choice so long as you don't let them fuck it up. But let me say this now, dell is one of the wost choices out there. It looks like you're already plunking down a fair bit of cash on this so with that in mind you might as well go for IBM. My father bought a Thinkpad 365 ED in 1997 (it was already a year or two old at that point (I think)). One of my friends now owns it. If it weren't for the external floppy being destroyed by my stupidity(which could be fixed with a new floppy drive), and his dumb ass wiping the os before making sure that the bios allowed for a boot off the cdrom drive and the battery being finnicky about holding a charge (which could be fixed with a new battery if one really desired to)) it would still work perfectly today (as it stands you can only get to the bios, but It could be in complete working order with a new battery, a new floppy drive and a fresh install of windows 95 or 98 (or one of the smaller linux distributions)). That's quality.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2004-12-12 02:11am

Their latest monitors are fine, if you got some coupons (AFAIK in america easy to get ) the 2001FP monitor is the god of current gaming monitors.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2004-12-12 11:45am

darthdavid wrote:That's quality.

IBM desktops are not known for their gaming ability nor their quality.

Glocksman · Post by **Glocksman** » 2004-12-12 01:27pm

Speaking as one who just bought a Dell 2001FP to go with his homebuilt (soon to be an A64 setup) rig and as the owner of a Dell laptop, let me toss in my $0.02.

First off, get the UltraSharp flat panel instead of the regular ones.
My 2001FP is fantastic.

Second, while Dell's tech support leaves a little to be desired unless you speak fluent Hindi, once they do realize you have a hardware problem they are Johnny on the Spot with replacement parts or a mail in for service box.

They replaced the LCD and the power supply in my laptop under warranty once I got through to someone who spoke clear enough English that we could communicate.

Third, if you're going to buy a Dell, check out gotapex.com or bensbargains.net and look for coupon discount codes. Also, sign up and play that Dellf game promotion they have on the Dell Home site. You probably won't win anything, but they do give out plenty of discount codes.

Fourth, if you need a printer, don't buy a Dell. Their printers are rebadged Lexmarks (among the highest ink costs in the industry) that are chipped to only take Dell branded cartridges.

No matter how good a deal they offer on the printer, keep in mind that Dell will be the supply source for ink.

Fifth, you might consider paying a little more and looking around for a good local shop to build you a system. That way you have local support and warranty service instead of some dude in Bombay. Of course you live in NYC, so the guy in Bombay might speak better English.