Re: [ProgSoc] buying computers

[Colin Yip <bozak@nospam.progsoc.uts.edu.au>]

On Fri, 12 Jan 2001 telford@nospam.progsoc.uts.edu.au wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 12, 2001 at 05:36:43PM +1100, Gabriela Marcionetti wrote:
> > *feeling ignorant* I haven't ever heard of athalon or duron :)

Think of them as the underdogs of the x86 world... =)

> > > Usually, a small shop is better but check everything closely,
> > > trust no one. Don't buy anything that isn't bog standard

Hah! Define bog standard.

> > Which is why I am inclined to go with p3, because i have heard of it, and,
> > more importantly, my parents have heard of it, and they are funding the
> > computer.
> 
> I guess inteL got value out of their advertising campaign then.

Well, look at it this way. AMD seems to be trying the good ol' Commodore
marketing way and relying on word of mouth to sell their products: It's no
surprise that the Average Joe only knows about the PIII via Intel 
advertising and not about the AMD Athlons...
 
> You might notice that just about every progsoc recommendation has
> been something from the AMD range but what do we know?

The AMD Athlon range of CPUs are great for overclocking, but they have a
tendency to be slightly more unstable compared to the Intel PIIIs, not to
mention the fact that installing a heat sink fan on an Athlon can be a 
pain in the arse: The CPU surface is very brittle (made out of glass, to
be exact) and whenever I try to install a heat sink on an Athlon, I cringe
everytime and hope that I don't hear a sickening crunching noise when I
install one.

As for the PIIIs, they may perform less well compared to the Athlons, but
I find them more stable than the Athlons, not to mention that installing
heatsinks on them are easier. If you're not planning to use the computer
for hi-intensive gaming, a P3'll do you just fine.
 
Athlons, in my experience as a hardware hacker, can be a bit of a hassle
to rig up (i.e. installing a peltier cooler heatsink without crunching the
glass surface and/or bending several capacitors out of shape, etc), but
are a dream to run. So if you're fully prepared to learn a bit more about
the hardware than you really need to know, then I would join in with the
others and recommend an Athlon T-Bird for sure...

It's really up to you to decide which CPU to get, but I reckon that the
performance difference between an Athlon and a PIII is virtually
negligible: They're all fast enough to do the job. It all comes down to
how much you are willing to pay for a hich-clock beast... =)

> After all, we don't paint ourselves blue and throw ourselves
> high up against the wall to make splat marks.

And I don't think we lift our kilts and flash our butts at the English
either (well, I hope not anyway. That's just plain disturbing)... =)

> 	- Tel

-- 
Col'n

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