Chips and Dip

Nov 29 18:32 UTC 2003

My wife has decided that it's time for us to get a new computer; the one 
we're using now is getting a bit pokey, particularly for the things we 
use it for (or, rather, would like to use it for--in addition to the 
ordinary stuff, we do a fair amount of digiphoto stuff, Photoshop, 
PageMaker and other electronic publishing-type programs, and I wouldn't 
mind playing some 21st century games occasionally).  Back when we bought 
our now-six-years-old PC, we had essentially three choices:  the 133Mhz 
Pentium, the 166Mhz Pentium, or the 200Mhz Pentium (we split the 
difference and got the 166).  Now there are Pentiums and Celerons of 
numerous Ghz-ages, and a whole bunch of AMD chips with various 
undecipherable monikers and mysterious clock speeds, not to mention the 
new 64-bit AMD.  How do I compare/choose amongst them all?  Does clock 
speed trump all?  Are AMD chips "just as good" as Intel?  How does, say, 
an AMD Athlon XP 2700+ compare to an Intel Pentium 4 at 2.4GHz (or the 
Pentium to a Celeron @ 2.5Ghz, for that matter)?  As a practical matter, 
will I ever really care that I got the P4 at 2.6Ghz instead of the 
2.8Ghz?  Will the new AMD 64bit chip change the landscape to the extent 
that any 32bit chip I get now will be obselete a whole bunch sooner than 
the old horse I'm riding now, and therefore I should go cheap on the 
chip and and look to get a new PC three years down the road instead of 
six?  Any advice or opinions would be welcome...

response 2 of 18:

Nov 29 19:56 UTC 2003

  Unless you do a lot of gaming, you almost certainly don't need the
  latest and greatest computer.  Nearly anything on the market today
  will be a huge improvement over what you're currently using and will
  be acceptable for your needs.

  > As a practical matter, will I ever really care that I got the
  > P4 at 2.6Ghz instead of the 2.8Ghz? 

  Very unlikely, though you *might* notice a difference between a P4
  system with a 300Mhz front side bus and a 533 Mhz front side bus.

  > How does, say, an AMD Athlon XP 2700+ compare to an Intel Pentium 4
  > at 2.4GHz (or the Pentium to a Celeron @ 2.5Ghz, for that matter)?

  It's even more complicated than that.  Thanks to differing bus and
  RAM speeds, you can't even necessarily expect the same performance
  out of two different 2.4GHz systems.

  > Will the new AMD 64bit chip change the landscape to the extent
  > that any 32bit chip I get now will be obselete a whole bunch sooner
  > than the old horse I'm riding now, and therefore I should go cheap
  > on the chip and and look to get a new PC three years down the road
  > instead of six? 

  I think it's unlikely that the new 64 bit chips are going to be 
  fully embraced for a while but once they become the norm they will
  have an effect on the software that gets sold.  I wouldn't care to
  predict a timetable for when they become dominant in the market,
  however.  But I'm generally in favor of going cheap anyway.

  In my opinion, everyone focuses far too much on processor speed when
  purchasing a computer system.  An astonishingly high percentage of
  the time that processor is idle anyway, waiting for input from you
  or from peripheral devices.  Most of the time *you* spend waiting
  at the computer (unless you are highly atypical) will be waiting for
  programs and data to load from, or save to, disk.  I'm therefore
  usually in favor of saving a little money on the processor and 
  spending it for a faster disk or better disk controller technology.

  In any case when I buy a new computer I tend to prefer to put the
  bulk of the optional money into performance peripherals that I may
  be able to use in the next system -- high quality sound or video
  cards (though video offerings seem to change faster than system CPUs
  these days..), SCSI or SATA disk controllers, big fast drives, high
  quality keyboard and mouse, etc..

response 4 of 18:

Dec 1 16:20 UTC 2003

With enough RAM, you could put stuff on a RAMdisk, improving performance even
further.