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Looking to get a new computer. A wee bit strapped for cash. What would you guys suggest? I just need one that will play new games at a moderately decent level, web browsing and pumping out reports.

I bought a Dragon Soyo motherboard and a AMD Duron last year. I was very happy with both price and performance of each. My personal computer is for playing moderate games ( Civ3, UT, etc ) and browsing the web.

Get an AMD, beit Duron or Athlon/AthlonXP, for the price you get a hell of a lot more performance than inhell will ever give you.

Btw, a really kickass inexpensive board is the Epox EP-8K9A2+, it's the board in my new system and so far it's not given a single bit of trouble and runs like a bat out of hell.

A good site to check out for parts: www.gameVE.com

Also, a celeron is a lobotomized P3 or P4 which failed one or more of the tests. Hence they'll give you a lot of grief at some point. The cache is also clipped.

The AMD Duron is actually a production run chip which is designed as a low cost alternative to the Athlon series. About the only differance between the Athlon and Duron is the cache size, the Athlon has 256k and the Duron has 128k. Both are great chips in their own right.

If you're going to go for a budget chip, get a Duron, you'll be happier with it in the long run.

Hyperion wrote: Also, a celeron is a lobotomized P3 or P4 which failed one or more of the tests. Hence they'll give you a lot of grief at some point. The cache is also clipped.

While I agree with the rest of your statements, this one is nothing more then a myth. The Celeron is NOTTT a failed p3 or p4 (thought the "lobotomized pentium" discription does sorta fit). It, like the duron is a purposely designed and built chip.

Sounds like someone didn't read the techsheets on the damn things. Only reason I got the real ones was because of my brother-in-law. (Helps having a family member who's head of IBM's R&D department.)

The other thing about intel, they print off a wafer of chips, then clock'em individually which means a lot of various speeds, wheras AMD prints off a wafer of chips designed for a certain speed, ones that fail get remelted and put into new chips.

One way or another, the celerons suck.

AMD all the way, much better processor from a technical standpoint and a performance one.....

*has terrible flashbacks to Computer Architecture and Design lectures.....then remembers he didnt turn up to any.....*

Yeah, Stay true to AMD, you will not find a better maker of chips for solely games, Needless to say, they run alot faster than Inhell as one person quoted, for most things

Coaan wrote:Yeah, Stay true to AMD, you will not find a better maker of chips for solely games, Needless to say, they run alot faster than Inhell as one person quoted, for most things

Thats mostly due to the differing design within them....inhell...I mean Intel use a more complex instruction set......which is a really bad design for getting code in general to run....

AMD are the way to go. They are cheap and very durable. You need to physically use a blowtortch before the chip even heats up.

AMD are the way to go. They are cheap and very durable. You need to physically use a blowtortch before the chip even heats up.

Umm whaaa?
I can rip the top of a AMD Thunderbird 1.4 Ghtz and watch it melt itself into a pile of goo in under thirty seconds, I should know as I've done it and have the motherboard to prove it(Pile of goo inculded as it inculdes the MB socket as well)

Darth Pounder wrote:AMD are the way to go. They are cheap and very durable. You need to physically use a blowtortch before the chip even heats up.

Or overclock them at an utterly terrible multiplier.....hmm.....

Darth Pounder wrote:AMD are the way to go. They are cheap and very durable. You need to physically use a blowtortch before the chip even heats up.

Good point. I thought my AMD Duron (1 gig) was cooked (it smelled cooked), but when I checked things out, it was my power supply that was shot. The AMD has scorch marks on it, but it still runs like a top...

Intel 8088, all the way. They have them running at a blazing fast 4.77MHz now.

Darth Wong wrote:Intel 8088, all the way. They have them running at a blazing fast 4.77MHz now.

I gotcha beat with my Zilog Z80A microprocessor, running at a screaming 3.58MHz...

Darth Wong wrote:Intel 8088, all the way. They have them running at a blazing fast 4.77MHz now.

I think I still have one of those somewere....

Pentium all the way for me.......

Right now I have a 2.53GHz P4 and I LOVE IT! mmmmmm

Mine has an AMD Athlon 1700+ XP. Runs like a dream. Asus mother board, and an Asus video card with Nvidia chipset. Originally I had a AMD 400 it ran games that were supposed to tax Pentium 500s and 600s. heh what a mule. The rest of the family has AMDs in there's too.

AMD with an ABIT or MSI board.

AMD. Intel chips have surveillance inside.

Trytostaydead wrote:Looking to get a new computer. A wee bit strapped for cash. What would you guys suggest? I just need one that will play new games at a moderately decent level, web browsing and pumping out reports.

Depends. The Celeron and Duron have come a long way since their first inception. They're chips with slightly reduced caches (to reduce costs.) However, the Duron shares the same core with the Athlon, and even with it's 64 kb cache, it screams on performance tests.

The main problem with AMD chips is that they're real sensitive to cooling issues, and the upgrade path doesn't run as far as Pentium systems. But if you're light on cash, then AMD is definitely the way to go.

Actually you can assume that an AMD AthlonXP 2100+ will generally give an inhell p4 2.4-2.5ghz a run for it. That shows superior performance.

Where the MAJOR issue is (and one I've run afoul of before) the cooling, a T-bird 900, non-OC'd will fry in under 5 seconds, I know, I did it when a cooling fan slipped during a test. As long as you can keep a fan on it you're good and will be running rings around a comparable inhell based system, but the second that heatsink/fan comes off, well, time for a new proc if you're lucky, if you're not, time for a new proc AND board.

Btw, I did re-check on the inhell celerons, they are still done the same way as the old ones, normal pentium which failed some sort of minor test, or had minor varience out of tolerance, clip the cache, then slap it in a PGA package and sell.

The Durons are a modified Athlon core with lower cache (128k as versus 256k).

Darth Wong wrote:Intel 8088, all the way. They have them running at a blazing fast 4.77MHz now.

Yes, yes, yes...

My original 2.4 GHz P4 is running at 3.17 (approx.) with a double cooler.

It's way better than AMDs...

Hyperion wrote: Where the MAJOR issue is (and one I've run afoul of before) the cooling, a T-bird 900, non-OC'd will fry in under 5 seconds.

SUMMARY:

Intel: Expensive, but sturdy. You can run a blowtorch next to them,
and they'll merely shut down, and after a cooling off period, come
right back!

AMD: Cheap, but die like flies if the cooling fails.

Shep, you're forgetting the performance difference...

Crayz9000 wrote:Shep, you're forgetting the performance difference...

Performance doesn't matter worth a damn if it dies after being
coughed on. AMD is good for cheap rigs like 2nd computers.....

but for your primary rig, I'd have to go with Intel, despite
the cost/performance difference, because I value reliability
over cost/performance ratio.