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

To: Street Walker who wrote (1253)	6/9/1998 10:03:00 PM
From: Dave Bissett	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14778

I've been reading this thread and following links to get up to speed for several weeks now and just wanted to pop up to say this is the best thread I've found about anything. Not in the market right now but have bookmarked enough posts and links to create a small book. Great crowd...informed and helpful. Thanks for all the info. Reading still. DB

To: Street Walker who wrote (1253)	6/9/1998 10:12:00 PM
From: Street Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14778

Intel Prices --current prices? home1.swipnet.se Which of these is the current pricing? I get lost in the way they date their updates. UpDate The Pentium II pricess will be adjusted as follows: 400: $722, 350: $519, 333: $412, 300: $305, 266: $198, 233: $161 (will no longer be manufactured). The 266 MHz Celeron price will be cut by roughly 30 % to $106. Pentium MMX will cost $106 and $95 for the 233 and 200 MHz versions. Update Pentium II prices will drop as follows: 400: $586, 350: $425, 333: $320, 300: $210, 266: $159. The PII 266 will be dropped from the product line while the Celeron 300 price will be priced at $159 (the same as the PII 266) and the Celeron 266 will drop to $110. The 400 MHz Xeon processors will drop to $2700 and $1100 for the 2 MB and 512 kB versions, respectively. Some of these prices can expected to be lowered due to price cuts on June 8th. And yes, Totally Awesome includes a Sony CD drive x32, and I think a floppy as well. S.W.

To: Street Walker who wrote (1253)	6/9/1998 10:34:00 PM
From: Dave Hanson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14778

Street Walker Con't-- Socket 7 vs. PII, etc. "I'm not waiting any longer! I'll buy separate cheap cards for now, and when I need PCI slots in the future, I'll look to get their mulimonitor card, depending upon the price." A good move, I think. Else who knows how long you could be holding your system hostage to a hardware release "Real Soon Now" (tm). "The TEC Socket 7 mobo retails for $109 AMD-K6 300 3DNow - retails -3yr warranty = $188 The ASUS P2B = ~$180 PII 300 = ~$450 retail (I don't know the current drop in pricing)" Single best source of pricing data, IMHO, is pricewatch.com . I was using it (updated daily, even hourly) to get my estimates in my previous post for the PII 233 with the Asus P2B board vs. a Socket 7 boards and a AMD K6-2 266 3DNow. (Zeuspaul and I discuss in earlier posts RE your system why we'd pick these chips.) With this comparison, the difference is significantly less--more like $100-$150. With a PII 300, it jumps about $82. As for performance, recall the link I mentioned at tomshardware.com . This gives you a rough sense of the numbers. You can expect the two systems to perform roughly the same in windows 98, with the AMD performing slightly better on one of the newer boards. Keep in mind that a benchmark of less than about 20% will not even be likely to be noticed in your applications. Bottom line, IMHO: The reason to go with AMD is cost (and cooling, if that matters to you. Does to me, but in your system, it shouldn't, unless all your PCI monitor cards were to run hot.) The reason to go with Intet PII is standardization/broad base of users. This can be an advantage, as you discovered with your friends at Totally Awesome: more familiarity means more places to turn for upgrades, and potentially less homework and hassles. "Also, Totally Awesome said they don't deal in AMD. I'll see if don't = won't. I guess they are big Intel dealers." The sense I got when I called after you first mentioned them was that they weren't very interested in building a system for me from components that they didn't stock. Since their standard cases (as well as their other options) are less than ideal, I was skeptical about whether they'd meet my needs. Should they prove willing to accomodate you with your choice of parts and excellent prices, I'd be interested--I'd consider giving them another shot. But then again, there are lots of operations that are willing to assemble something for you, so I'm not going to spend any time trying to persuade someone to build a system they aren't very happy about. I don't see how they can make much profit on the (nonstandard to them) configuration I'd want anyway. The system they quoted you isn't too impressive, IMHO. Careful shopping for the individual parts they mention would run under $1300, and some of the parts are questionable (HDD, case, monitor, graphics card.) Then again, if they'll support you and stand behind what they sell, that's worth a lot. At the end of the day, your time is valuable too. (No doubt, moreso in $ terms than this 29 year old grad student/consultant's is.) It's all too easy to pour hours into second-guessing every configuration decision long after the point of diminishing returns. (I know I am sometimes among the guilty here.) When you arrive at a configuration that seems reasonable, given responsible amounts of information, it becomes rational to pull the trigger. Of course, seeing as how you're a much more practiced stock trader than I, I hardly need to tell you this. :) Again, good luck. Dave