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Pastimes : Dream Machine ( Build your own PC ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Zeuspaul who wrote (662)	5/17/1998 10:13:00 PM
From: LTBH	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14778

Dual Processors and Sw Bugs Couple of observations: dual processors could be nice IF you have SW that will utilize them and a budget to support the buy. Personal opinion based on 35 years in the computer industry: Always wait at least 6 months before purchasing new SW, if you will be installing on a "work" platform. If its to be installed on a test platform and you understand the ins and outs of patches and can afford delays waiting for fixes, then go for it. For example, MS and IE 4.0. They've provided two major patches and it still only functions correctly on 50 to 70% of all Win platforms. And if IE 4.0 doesn't work correctly, it bombs in a big way. As it happens IE 4.0 is also a major portion of Win98. The only thing going for you here is that the IE in Win98 is not the same as for Win95 and therefore it MAY play better in Win98. Although some companies (MS?) never get it completely right, the first six months ensure the major problems are corrected. Of course those determined to pay to be beta testers will gladly purchase anything Gates decides they need. Networm

To: Zeuspaul who wrote (662)	5/18/1998 8:13:00 AM
From: Dave Hanson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14778

Your more than welcome for the input, of course FWIW. :) I agree on the relative _theoretical_ overclocking potential of the Celeron--it's a .25 micron part, like the >300 mhz PIIs, and since it lacks cache chips, cache performance isn't an issue (which can be a problem with highly overclocked PIIs.) Still, I can't imagaine that any _reasonable_ overclocking would come close to compensating for the lack of cache. And IMHO, no one who's at all concerned about reliability would do more than modest overclocking, if that. Also, Celeron is a newer part, which means the fabs producing it may be less likely to have achieved yields that would in practice allow much greater overclocking. Networth's 6 month rule of thumb seems reasonable enough to me on new software. Only other point I'd add is that one should avoid piecemeal upgrades unless one has a substantial reason for doing so--something that's becoming less true as hardware power has zipped ahead of software power in recent years, and 32-bit software platforms have begun to grow stable (esp NT and some non-windows platforms.) I think that dual processors almost never make sense for non-speciality folks. The performance gains are just too modest for the investment and compromises required. Money and tweaking can typically be better spent elsewhere. Regards to you, and thanks for all your good work. You pointed me to the Matrox users' group, among other spots, and this thread is full of helpful resources. Dave