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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: 5dave22 who wrote (102060)	4/4/2000 5:39:00 PM
From: Jim McMannis	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1577007

Well, that ought to do it. The Intel thread is now no. 3. On to Dell. Jim

To: 5dave22 who wrote (102060)	4/4/2000 5:54:00 PM
From: Ali Chen	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1577007

<what is the likelihood that my computer will be stable.> Your likelihood will be ordered in the following way: lowest - Paul Ma (sorry Paul) medium - xxxgeeks.com highest - GTW The so-called "stability" is not about sacrificing the speed (although there might be sub-optimal BIOS settings hidden from you for the reason), but mostly about having variety of parts to achieve the best margins under professional system stressing, plus capability to get software patch to work around some hidden driver problem which could surface only on particular and _new_ hardware configuration, untested before. Paul Ma has presumably none of these capabilities (sorry again, Paul Ma), cc-geeks may have some, but nothing can compare with a big company caring for their image in the marketplace (I may be too optimistic here, but it is how things should be) Take care, - Ali

To: 5dave22 who wrote (102060)	4/4/2000 6:02:00 PM
From: Mani1	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1577007

Dave, I bought mine from a local screwdriver shop since I was rushed to buy one and it is very stable and fast. Luckily I did not get a bad apple. The chance are getting a bad apple is much less with tier one OEM's since they make sure all the components are compatible (through extensive testing) and all the drivers are preinstalled. I strongly recommend buying from HWP, GTW or CPQ. A small premium is worth it IMO. On some benchmarks, clock for clock, Coppermine are faster, on some Athlon is. But, for any given price, Athlon powered computer will give you the best performance. Mani

To: 5dave22 who wrote (102060)	4/4/2000 6:15:00 PM
From: Paul Ma	Respond to of 1577007

Dave you should tell us what you want this computer to do. Are you planning on playing games,intensive CAD, or just a bit of everything? One few good things about custom building is that, 1.all the parts will be high quality, brand names, 2. there is no integrated parts, so upgrading is easy, 3. it is cheaper overall. 4. YOU decide what parts you want in it. There are a few cons as well. One is that there is no overall warrenty, although each part by itself may have a warrenty of 30days to years, depending on whether it's an OEM unit or a retail unit. Another is that it may take a bit more time waiting for all the parts to arrive from various shops online. I had to wait almost a month for all my parts to arrive, because I was being frugal and picked a bunch of crappy companies that advertised low prices but never shipped. Paul

To: 5dave22 who wrote (102060)	4/4/2000 6:38:00 PM
From: that_crazy_doug	Respond to of 1577007

<< Clock for clock, I hear a Dell w/PIII is faster than a Gateway w/Athlon. Is this not the case? >> That might or might not be true, but I'd guess clock for clock the p3 is slightly faster than the athlon, however dollar for dollar, the athlon is a lot faster than the p3.

To: 5dave22 who wrote (102060)	4/4/2000 7:29:00 PM
From: Petz	Respond to of 1577007

dave, re:<Clock for clock, I hear a Dell w/PIII is faster than a Gateway w/Athlon. Is this not the case?> This used to be true, but only above 700 MHz, where the slower Athlon cache speed starts biting. At 700 MHz and below, any Athlon system you buy today will beat a DELL of the same speed. If the Athlon system uses the VIA chipset and 133 MHz SDRAM (PC133) it will beat the DELL all the way to 800 MHz. And just about any Athlon with 256M of SDRAM is cheaper and faster than an equal speed DELL using 128M of RDRAM, especially if you use Windows 2000. Right now, to get a VIA chipset-based Athlon system, or one with Windows 2000, you probably have to buy it from a small company. In a month, I expect everyone will be using the VIA motherboards from Asus, Epox, Abit and others. Petz