CPU info
 

OK, clueless technology question. (You wouldn't know I work in the IT field, would you? But these days I spend more time pushing papers and developing budgets than tinkering with computers. An older friend who's the CIO of a medium-sized state university told me he knew the exact moment when he mentally checked out of keeping track of every single detail of technology advances--during a discussion two of his employees were having about interlaced monitors. I haven't gotten there yet but I'm close. :cool: )

Anyway. I came to the realization today that I've replaced or upgraded damn near every piece of my home computer except the motherboard, processor, and case. (For the record, it's a Gateway originally purchased in Feb. 1998 with a 233MHz MMX , 32MB of RAM, and a 4 GM hard drive--$1500.) I have enough spares that I'm darned close to being able to get the case, mobo, and processor, and make 2 computers.

But I'm wondering about processors. What are the pros and cons of the various lines? How much am I sacrificing with a 2.0GHz Celeron vs. a 1.4GHz Pentium 4? And I have no clue about the AMD products and how they stack up against Intel chips. Enlightment would be welcome.

Oh, my needs are modest. I don't want to underbuy, but really we mostly just do web surfing, email, and light image processing, some of which results you've seen here. Though DVD burning s a tempting prospect as prices come down.....

Short answer:
How much horsepower are you looking at?
Under catagory of "best bang for the buck" is the Barton core Athlon 2500+.
As for Intel stuff, the 2.0Ghz celeron and 1.4Ghz P4 benchmark almost identically.
Long answer:
http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/200...mparison_table

Toms is always a good place to go for hardware questions.

Re: CPU info
 

I have always used AMD processors because of the "bang for the buck" issue. Both chips have their strengths and weaknesses, which the Tom's Hardware review points out.

What exactly do you mean by "DVD burning"? If you mean simply putting a lot of data onto a DVD (such as backing up your hard drive), your CPU won't be much of a factor -- just the write speed of your drive will be. If you mean editing and burning home movies, that will require a good deal bit more CPU power, in which case you'd do well to get a mid-high end chip. If you mean copying movie DVD's, that is almost entirely processor-dependent, because you must decrypt and decompress the entire movie, do some postprocessing, then re-compress and encrypt it when written.

An Athlon 2500+ would probably be an excellent choice for what you describe, and the retail version (with heat sink and fan) is on sale now at newegg. Even a 2600+ isn't that much more, but there's a big $ jump to 2700.

Also, you could be an ideal candidate to switch to Linux. The price of a Windows license would be a really large percentage of any system you could possibly build, but I could legally give you Red Hat 9 install disks for free.

Yeah, I've been toying with that too. Thanks for the Tom's Hardware link, it's just what I need.

AMDs have improved a lot since the days of K5 and K6, to the point that they are arguably better than Intels in many ways. Personally, I think they overtook Intel pretty handily when the Athlon came out, but then they lost their lead about a year later, and Intel is once again the better chip (though not the better deal).

My home machine is an AMD Athlon XP 2000+ with 512mb RAM, and it easily handles everything I throw at it... high-res photo editing and processing, 3D games, compiling code, etc. If you want 90% of the speed at 50% of the cost, I'd recommend you go Athlon.

Thanks for the suggestions. I ended up buying a case/powersupply/mobo package with an Athlon XP 2100+ CPU. The motherboard has a VIA KM266 chipset and includes onboard video, sound, and ethernet. Add on the 256MB RAM, 40GB hard drive, and CD-RW that I have on my existing computer, and I ought to be set pretty well for a while!

Are you sure the RAM is compatible? I ask, 'cause an old Pentium 2 at 233MHz (I seem to recall that was your speed) will run at 66MHz FSB, whereas that Athlon is running at at least 166MHz DDR... besides, the DDR is 184 pin vs whatever the P2 RAM was (I forgot... 162? something like that)

At the very least, the very slow FSB speed of your old RAM (assuming it even fits...) will put a great big hand brake on the performance of the new processor.

Yeah, I should be OK. I've got PC100 memory in my computer now and the motherboard has slots for both SDRAM and DDR. (Not at the same time, though.)

The only thing I'm mildly worried about is moving the hard drive over and whether Winblows (98SE) will be happy in its new home without a complete reinstall, which I'm not eager to do cause I just did it when I upgraded the hard disk last month.

Man, I'd be really leery of just plopping your existing OS install onto a new computer with all that different hardware. It <I>should</I> recognize all the new hardware, and disable the drivers for the old stuff, but I'd still do a fresh install if that's a possibility. Maybe I'm just anal though.

Your older RAM will fit, and you may as well use it for now since you have it, but if you find that your new 'puter isn't performing as you hoped it would that's definitely where you should upgrade first. PC100 SDRAM is pretty ancient by today's standards, and you should be able to get 512 MB of PC2100 for $cheap.

About $70, actually.

Yeah I think I probably just bite the bullet and do a reinstall.

And I will get definitely get some more RAM later.. for now it's just a matter of "get it done" with as few new parts as possible. (partly an academic exercise, partly an exercise in reducing the dollar amount as much as possible for spousal consumption. Though she won't complain after she uses it--they've got shit for computers where she works so she doesn't have a clue what a newer computer will run like. The first time she runs her music notation editing software she'll be in business!)

Wait! Steve, check this out first:

Swapping your board without so much as a reinstall (243kB of images)

Ars is very cool. A reinstall might be in order anyway, but just wanted to give you this option.

Outstanding. My MB is showing signs of running its CPU hotter and hotter for no good reason, so I'm going to put in that same Asus MB that we got for Syc, and an AMD 2600. Also for no good reason.