As for your old PC: let me first make a statement - yes it is possible for a PC running Windows to be stable… IF you install a minimal amount of software on it, no Microsoft competitive software, and never upgrade your hardware. One of the great things about PCs is that you have an endless selection of companies pumping out hardware for your machine, making upgrading/installing, in theory, very flexible for the PC. You say you never needed a replacement part for your old PC… have you ever cracked it open? What software do you have running on there? Is this your main computer? Are you saying in the 6-8 years you’ve had it, you’ve never had a BSoD and/or never had to reformat?
Your donut analogy makes more sense if you just say some people like chocolate donuts and some people like glazed. Get whatever donut you like.
As for your old PC: let me first make a statement - yes it is possible for a PC running Windows to be stable… IF you install a minimal amount of software on it, no Microsoft competitive software, and never upgrade your hardware. One of the great things about PCs is that you have an endless selection of companies pumping out hardware for your machine, making upgrading/installing, in theory, very flexible for the PC. You say you never needed a replacement part for your old PC… have you ever cracked it open? What software do you have running on there? Is this your main computer? Are you saying in the 6-8 years you’ve had it, you’ve never had a BSoD and/or never had to reformat?
Your donut analogy makes more sense if you just say some people like chocolate donuts and some people like glazed. Get whatever donut you like.
i own a pretty sick pc, but i’m going to make the switch to mac with my next paycheck. i like the pc running XP, to tell you the truth, i’ve looked into running linux on my computer, but image processing using the gimp, and programming websites for netscape or mozilla only kinda sucks.
since i’ve had XP i have never had any problems with stability…at all. surprising for a microsoft product…
*pc specs: 1.7p4, 1gig rdram, ati 9000 128meg video card, 300gigs of hard drives, 80gig, 100gig, 120gig, booted from the 80gig, 19" ViewSonic A Series monitor, and a 17" pretty crappy dell 17".
–it served me well for 2 years…but to be honest…the design world runs on mac’s…
If you are not worried about the costs, get the more recent Intel P4 variations with faster bus speeds (on the motherboard) and improved cache and technology such as hyperthreading. The older P4s were quite bad and were outperformed easily by Athlon XPs.
For the most part you have AMD giving you the most for your money. I have an AMD in my box now (1.4 GHZ), and it works great. No complaints or problems and plenty of speed.
The newest intel (I believe its still the newest - no wait, the newest is actually those slower processors they released ;)) is the ‘fastest’ processor on the market now and includes HT technology which allows a single processor to behave at times like a double processor because of its ability to handle multi-threading in whatever technical way it does - HT meaning “hyper-threading”. A single HT enabled processor is not as fast as a dual processor system but is faster than a single processor system… and a dual HT system is faster than a dual non HT system. Go to www.tomshardware.com and search for hyper-threading and you should be able to find more on it.
AMDs newest processor ups the L2 cache but some thinks its not enough to compete with the newest intel chips.
…THOUGH, and I dont know where this can be found (probably toms hardware too) matched AMD and Intel processors do bounce back and forth in their performance in certain areas. From what I understand (or remember) I THINK AMD is better for gaming and Intel better for 3D apps… where photoshop falls in there, Im not sure. Though Photoshop is programmed to utilize threads so hyper-threading would undoubtedly come in use.
[edit] heh pretty much what kirupa said but more drawn out[/edit]
so what about the MotherBoard… fastest… is it gagabytes :q:
i’m sorry but now there are several things and a lot of tech. so i need to buy the most right thing and chepeast to
Buy a dual 2.6ghz xeon, a radeon 9700 pro or the new gforce coming out what ever as long as its top of the line its the same ****, get a SCSI drive or a 120gb 8mb buffer HDD. dont go below 19 inches on your monitor(s). .26 is fine. u want a decent sound card for anything multimedia related. run windows XP professional.
as far as MAC or PC bull****, what ever. Same ****. the macs used to be better but what ever made them so great for design int he past is long gone. now that XP is about as reliable as mac OS it makes no difference. Unless you are into video production, then you want a mac just because they have better software. But basically anything you can do with a mac u can so the same with a PC. dont be ignorant, know your way around both platforms. they are just machines, ultimatly its up to you to do ****. the PC or MAC in of itself is a stupid piece of crap who, as we all know, cant read our minds lol. If you’re on a budget stick to a PC. if you got cash to spend, buy a PC and a Mac( if you print or video production).
I personally think Alien ware is a rip off just like every other “premade” CPU. You can buy your own parts and build your own computer for less than half the price and it will be just as good or better.
Alienware is a great company… They build high quality computers and back their stuff up with great warrety’s and everything… And they are always in lead with developement with the latest processor…
AMD vs Intel… Well… Intel has the lead in 3d marketting… And that includes games… But AMD’s price and functionability through the windows environment allows it to show it’s greatness as well… I’d highly suggest that if you have the money… Stick with Intel… But if you don’t have the extra cash… an AMD is still great…
Me personally… I have a Pent 4 1.7 ghz… With Radeon 9700… And I might add… I think photoshop opens in 2 seconds with all the plugins I have…
I think you guys don’t have a clue, what you are talking about.
Intel should be faster than AMD in 3D ? No way…
I was for dinner at someone who works for intel and he also said, that AMD has a better performance…
Mhz is not everything…
