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To: Charles R who wrote (21892)	12/7/2000 7:54:21 PM
From: fyodor_	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

Chuck: The reason I say that is because a Pentium should be able to handle a DSL or cable connection (given that even 486s were able to handle 10Mbps Ethernet). I have a 700MHz Athlon (slotA) and a 333MHz AMD K6-2 right next to each other (both 128MB SDRAM) on the same Internet connection (via LAN). There is absolutely no question that the Athlon "renders" pages faster than the K6-2. Without actually having timed it, I would say that for complex (non-Java) pages, the difference can easily be a factor of 2 (with total time on the K6-2 < 5s when bandwidth is not the issue). This is apparent both in Netscape and IE (as well as Opera). -fyo

To: Charles R who wrote (21892)	12/7/2000 9:29:54 PM
From: ptanner	Respond to of 275872

Charles, Re: 233MMX & Cable There was no problem with the throughput just in the display of web pages. Particularly those with tables. Anand's in particular was always quite slow. At first I just attributed this to internet congestion, but as I reported earlier in a comparison with jjayxxxx (also in PDX with cable and a 500+MHz machine) we both went to the same sites and while his displayed basically immediately mine was delayed by at least 5 seconds. Yeah, not a big deal but it put the "wait" in the www squarely at my end. FWIW, former machine had 512k L2 and 64MB of RAM running Win95. Basically ANY new machine could provide visible and appreciated improvements - but is not necessary, just likely desirable. -PT

To: Charles R who wrote (21892)	12/8/2000 10:27:20 AM
From: that_crazy_doug	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

<< Just curious, did your machine have any L2 cache? How much main memory did you have? The reason I say that is because a Pentium should be able to handle a DSL or cable connection (given that even 486s were able to handle 10Mbps Ethernet). >> I updated my Dad's 233mhz (i think it was pentium mmx, but i'm not sure) to a duron 700, and the difference on the internet performance was huge (and he's got a 28.8 modem because his phone lines are bad and he can't use a 56k). He was going on for a half hour how he couldn't believe how much faster it was even though the modem speed didn't increase. He has probably 5-6 things running in the background plus 2-3 ie windows and 3 or 4 messenging services going at all times. In the upgrade, he also upgraded from a 1-2meg video board to a 32 meg geforce 2 mx, and went from 64 to 128 meg of ram, so those 2 things probably helped as well. I admit to being surprised at the level of performance increase he got, but I am much happier with my duron 700 then my p2 400. I guess I'm surprised at the amount of people who say a 266 is good enough for anyone. I can see where you'd get used to it, but if you used an 800 for awhile you sure wouldn't want to go back. Just like a 56k modem isn't bad until you surf on cable/dsl for awhile.