Can anyone tell me please, if AMD Athlon processors are so good, why are they only half the price of the comparable Intel johnnies? I need a new base unit to replace my existing steam driven four year old model and have been looking at prices. Has anyone got an AMD CPU in their machine - any probs?

Also, can anyone tell me what sort of video card I need if I'm not a games player and use mainly "business" style progs and the net?

And finally - if I'm on a limited budget should I go for faster processor and less memory or vice versa?

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2001

Answers

To the answers page

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2001

Gulp!
You need a serious cyber-nerd Jacko. Sorry, can't help.

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2001

My understanding of this is that the AMD Athlon processors are good stuff and do the job they are made for, but are what they call 'cut down' versions of the Intel jonnie boys.

Being cut downs, they are cheaper to produce but they 'miss out' bits that a lot of people may not really ever need so they work for your average person, but a fully fledged whizz bang compy user (like Screacher) would know where it is falling down.

They operate a bit like the 'express' versions of application software where they make it cheaper by taking 'bits out'

This is probably wide of the mark, and someone will come in and tell you that I was talking a load of rubbish, but that it basically how it was explained to me when I was 'in the market' for my home PC a couple of years back.

On your last point, faster is better, so long as you are not giving up too much memory, especially if you are using it on line a lot of the time, the slower your machine, the longer the pages load the bigger your phone bill gets!

You never know, you might just get a new on Thursday!

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2001

You might be wondering why the hell I should be allowed to have a new computer when I can't even type me email address properly. Sorry if you've all had undeliverable reply thingies because of that lads.

What was that reference to Thursday all about ITK?

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2001

My PC has an AMD processor. I'm just as in the dark as to what the real differences are, but the box does what I need it to do. Mostly surf the web, write email and letters. The only time it freaks out is when I do things like get online, open up photoshop and web editing software and try to scan a photo. Then it crashes. But that's likely more a memory issue. That PC is about 4yrs old and was near bottom of the line when I bought it.

Not sure if that's any help, but there ya go. :-)

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2001

I too have a AMD processor. I was told that it does exactly the same job as the regular intel pentium, but isn't quite as good with heavy graphics (video games etc) so as I don't use it for too many games, it works like a charm. Never had a problem in two years. I did however jack up the RAM to 128 meg, so thats a consideration depending of course on the cost of RAM where you are.

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2001

What was that reference to Thursday all about ITK? sorry Jacko, is my system telling me lies (it wouldn't be the first time), but do you not have a birthday on Thursday? 21 (again) according to insider knowledge

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2001

How the bl**din' 'ell do you know that?

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2001

Do I need a firewall on this new machine when I get it then? ;-)

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2001

How the bl**din' 'ell do you know that?

there is not much that gets past little old me, why do you think I got the handle In The Know a very wise and shred person, the font of all knowledge.......mind you,

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. when you sign up to an E Circles group that I am also on and put you birthdate on it it usually a pretty good guide especially when they send messages telling me who has an upcoming birthday!

Sneaky eh! 80)

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2001

Blimey - I'd forgotten all about that (just call me Mandelson).

Did I put birth DAY or birth DATE on there - just how much DO you know?

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2001

Ah ha.......thats for me to know and you to find oot!

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2001

Bugger! Whatever you say I shall deny it!

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2001

Ok time for a computer nerd to talk :-)Im afraid im a bit of a game boffin i.e red alert 2, championship manager etc and have a built 3 computers so i know a tiny bit about processors etc.

The early AMD(ie 2 or 3 years ago) was quite a bit behind intel especially in float point stuff which is especially important for graphics etc. Theyve gradually improved to the point when the socket A Thunderbird came out recently which is excellent and only very slighly behind Intel, if at all. Certainly in terms of graphics power for 3d video cards its right up beside the Intel.

The main point is though that an AMD 1ghz is about £170 and the Intel equivalent is about £100 more expensive(its actually reduced in price over the last week considerably as the pentium 4 is coming out) pentium 4 will be very expensive and only have extra power in programmes designed to use its new bits+pieces.

I highly recommend a site called Toms Hardware to help make ur decision- its famous worldwide for great reviews of computer stuff. Id also recommend u build ur own computer as very often the likes of Time/Tiny sell u a computer which is very difficult to upgrade in the future. Toms hardware will tell u how to build one from scratch +takes a couple of hours- dead easy!

Buy parts from either Dabs Direct/Simply computers online. Crucial a direct online seller of memory is selling 256MB for£96 inlcluding VAT. Memory has crashed in price over the last 2 weeks to about half price so buy now while its cheap!

As long as u get 128MB ram, processor is usually by far more important. The Geoforce graphics cards are by far the best for games and i presume this wud be the same for business graphics?? The MX version is being sold for under £100 and is fantastic- if u go to buy.com theyll give u £30 off before end of Feb i think.

Ive been searching the net for reviews to upgrade my pentium 500 and ill be building it with the following best value, very fast parts:-

AMD Athlon 1ghz, motherboard Asus A7V, Geoforce 2 MX.

Seriously, build your own as youll enjoy doing it and itll help u in the future, upgrading very cheaply. It will save u a fortune over the next number of years as things will rapidly change. If u read a good guide to building a computer, its easier than doing a jigsaw....honest!

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2001

Now THAT'S what I call an answer!

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2001

Yes, my nickname will need to be changed :-)

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2001

Nice one Spud :)) actually it's worth pointing out that AMD's are in NO WAY inferior to Intel chips, in fact quite the reverse is true! they can quite easily be overclocked (with the right motherboard) so that they can go a lot faster than Intel chips.....

Also, Intel's new P4 is a pile of shite....some good stuff on it but slower than comparable AMD's in just about every benchmark going, got an old FPU in them as well so they're slower than P3's on the maths stuff (according to Toms).... :))

My advice would be to go for the AMD with one of those nice Asus motherboards that Spud mentioned :))

-- Anonymous, January 29, 2001

Thanks for all of that lads. I think I'll give the home build idea a miss Spud, if you don't mind. You are talking here to someone who has a degree of difficulty with MFI flatpacks! I now know what to tell the nice man who is going to help me with this to buy however.

-- Anonymous, January 29, 2001

So can anyone tell me how to over clock an Intel Celeron 300A?

I have been told they can safely go to 450!!

-- Anonymous, January 29, 2001