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bbcmicro

Veteran Member
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Apr 2, 2006
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I've been saving for a long while for a new PC. I've only got 350 GBP but it's a start. I want a PC for gaming, not serious hard-core gaming but enough to play most new titles for a while or perhaps Oblivion at medium/high settings.

I want one from a large retailer for the guarantee and availability, and the fact I wont have to touch it with a screwdriver.

My question is whether this ( http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/st...m=null&tm=null&sku=325050&category_oid=-32998 ) is value for money. I suppose this will only be open to UK residents as I think prices differ over here.
 
The price is good. The stuff is good for the money. But STOP! If you want to go "dual core" go AMD. The reason being: On an intel suppose you have 2 programns running on both processors(one program each). The right processor is working it's tail off, and performance is suffering do to that. The left processor is doing nothing. It will remain that way because Intel does not allow "overflow" so one can be overloaded, while the other does nothing.

On an AMD: Same scenario, one is working hard, the other is doing nothing. BUT on AMD, overflow IS enabled, so instead of one overloaded and the other doing nothing, the processor "evens itself out" and allows both processors to be working, so they are both at half capacity.

Long story short, AMD is way more efficient than Intel, and it appers to run faster as well.

--Ryan
 
Yzzerdd said:
Long story short, AMD is way more efficient than Intel, and it appers to run faster as well.
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You are misinformed. There is no "overflow" mechanism as you describe; both processors operate the same way. If there is a problem with multi-core support, it is on the part of the software and/or operating system.

To the original poster: Intel or AMD, you can't really go wrong. The AMD will be a little cheaper. As for cost, Dell has traditionally been the most bang for the buck as well as being high quality. If you want slightly more product (but using cheaper components) you can also try Gateway.
 
I have an Intel Core Duo in my laptop, it runs just fine. Intel or AMD, it doesn't really matter at this point. One thing to remember is the more L2 cache, the better.
 
I would say buy whatever you want, as long is it is not from PC World! :D

Dell's are not bad providing you don't get one with integrated graphics (if gaming is important). Just bought a bunch of the Vostro desktops to replace the ones at work - Core 2 Duo 2.66GHz, 4 gigs of RAM, 350GB hard drive, 256MB graphics and 22" widescreen for around 550 pounds. I guess that's an extra 100 pounds or so to be added on so since we get 10-20% discount over retail.

The main thing I hate about Dell's is the horrid flimsy keyboards. Get yourself a nice Logitech Wireless keyboard and mouse combo (S510 is good) - or even better - a Model M :D

I would also say go Intel rather than AMD. I've personally found the Intel's to be a lot more stable. But that's my personal experience.
 
The Intergrated Graphics chipsets on Dell Laptops actually hold up pretty well. WoW runs w/ maxed out graphics at a VERY decent framerate, granted I'm running a WinNT OS & not emulating it under Wine.
 
Yea, the GMA chips are actually quite good. I used one at a friends house the other day, and was impressed by it's performance, even though it's in the southbridge...
 
Thanks for the tips, guys.

So an Intel Dell seems preferable at the mo. No integrated graphics for me, I'm afraid. I doubt onboard video would cope well with Legacy of Kain: Defiance, Oblivion or PoP Sands of Time. I'm not into WoW, too big and confusing! Fantasy is my favoured genre as you may have guessed. My last decent PC had a PCI GeForce 6200LE, which wasn't bad but still struggled a little with some games. An 8xxx series would be tasty, but a little heavy on the wallet :)

It's getting late (!:05 AM) so I'll look at PC models tomorrow.
 
While I'm no fan of Dell, isn't the high return rate at least partially due to they sell so many computers? I remember Seagate SCSI hard disks were in some circles considered awful in the mid-90's, because they crashed so often compared to other brands. On the other hand, Seagate seemed to sell the largest number of such hard disks, which would account for why ten times as many Seagates crashed as Maxtors, Western Digitals, IBMs and so on.
 
Druid6900 said:
One thing you might want to be aware of is that, in the trade mags, Dell is reputed to have the highest return and repair rate in the industry.
Click to expand...

I've got to go with carlsson on this one. I currently own five Dell computers, including two notebooks, and they all seem to be holding up fine. One of the notebooks is a 2004 vintage, the other one from around 1997 - 1998 time frame, and one of the desktops is also from the late 90's, early 2000's (it's a P-III 733 system).

Btw, the other two Dells are my current desktop system, which I got this past October (2.66 GHz Pentium D), and my new file server, purchased this month (1.6 GHz dual core), which is one of their "Linux" PC's. It came with Ubuntu 7.04 pre-installed. I stuck in a second hard drive (250 GB SATA), then repartitioned the first drive and installed Ubuntu 7.04 server edition. She's been running just fine ever since.
 
carlsson said:
While I'm no fan of Dell, isn't the high return rate at least partially due to they sell so many computers? I remember Seagate SCSI hard disks were in some circles considered awful in the mid-90's, because they crashed so often compared to other brands. On the other hand, Seagate seemed to sell the largest number of such hard disks, which would account for why ten times as many Seagates crashed as Maxtors, Western Digitals, IBMs and so on.
Click to expand...

With their support I've found them to be great. Last week we had a dead motherboard - phoned up 3pm and they sent someone to replace it the next morning.

Personally I wouldn't buy a Dell for myself, I prefer a home-build as you can spec it to exactly what you want :)
 
Perhaps I should have clarified a bit with "as a percentage of units sold"

I know for a fact that there are websites out there that specialize in problems that people have had with Dell.

I don't care one way or the other, actually.
 
All my Dell stuff has been 100% also. I too called Dell around noon about a dead hard drive. Had replacement drive in my hands 10 a.m. next day. This was long ago. My current Dell stuff is about 1 year old now. I use an El-Cheapo E310 as a printer/file server. My E1705 laptop gets sporatic use. I thought "oooo, 17" screen! That would be great. Nope, too big, even for me (6'2" 255lbs). So, I only play with the laptop when I experimenting with SMP stuff or to knock the dust off of it.
 
Thanks for all the input. I got some money from relatives for good exam results so I'm even closer!

I think I might go for a vostro, the price is pretty good, so is the 8500 GeForce graphics card. If I leave out the monitor (I've got a great 16" dell CRT) I can get a PC with a Vostro 400 E6750 Core 2 Duo Processor (2.66GHz, 1333Mhz FSB, 4MB cache), 2GB ram, 2x 160gb HDD, 256MB nVidia GeForce 8600GT Graphics Card, 16x DVD +/- RW Drive and windows business vista for a total of £493.57 inc. VAT and delivery.

Is this a good deal? It's twice as powerful as my last machine (A single core 3.6ghz pentium 4 with 1gb ram and 128mb 6200 GeForce graphics card, windows xp home) for which I paid about £450 2 years ago.

It's a business oriented machine, with a business warranty and a business version of vista...Do I have to own a business to buy one?

Could you please lend me your expertise and some advice?
 
If you're planning on using Vista, you'll REALLY want to look into what services you can kill if your machine has less than 2GB. I've never tried running Vista on a 2GB machine but I'd imagine killing a few services still couldn't hurt...

Also, registry hacks, etc etc...
 
Yes, vista uses most of the physical memory as illustrated in task manager, but that's good. Empty memory is useless memory, and Vista tries to pre emptively fill RAM with whatever data you may need next, making the PC more responsive. It's a more aggressive and efficient way of managing memory that in previous versions of windows. Empty memory is bad memory!

I've used xp on minimal systems, and it runs fine as long as you run a clean, well maintained install. I've never needed registry hacks to improve performance, except maybe a removal of services from the startup list. It's when you have a messy registry, dozens of uneccesary applications and in varying states of uninstallation and lots of general crap floating about from poor spyware/virus/adware and defrag routines when things really slow down.
 
dongfeng said:
Personally I wouldn't buy a Dell for myself, I prefer a home-build as you can spec it to exactly what you want :)
Click to expand...

Home-Build is the way to go IMHO

Plus, on top of that.. building your machine saves you money (usually, unless you get the bare bones basic model that manufactures use to lure people in with and then get them to upgrade)

When building your own machine, you get everything you want and nothing you don't. You can recycle parts from previous machines! I have used the same chassis for going on 7 or 8 years...

The last time I upgraded my machine, it was late 2002 or early 2003 I think, I went all out at the time (p4 3.0 1mb L2 800 FSB, 1GB DDR400, 250gb hdd, audigy 2 ZS plat pro with the 5.25 bay thingy, 256mb ati 9800 pro 8x agp and the best dang motherboard I think I have ever owned.. the IC7-Max3. When I built it, it was top end.. over the years I've had to do a few upgrades such as a GeForce 256MB 7800 GS CO AGP vid card and add another 512 MB of memory. and adding a 160 (2x80) GB RAID 0 array for my OS to load from, the mobo has onboard raid. The moral of this long winded story is that keep upgrading options in mind when you buy your parts AND ... get the best motherboard you can afford.
 
bbcmicro said:
Yes, vista uses most of the physical memory as illustrated in task manager, but that's good. Empty memory is useless memory, and Vista tries to pre emptively fill RAM with whatever data you may need next, making the PC more responsive. It's a more aggressive and efficient way of managing memory that in previous versions of windows. Empty memory is bad memory!
Click to expand...

I actually turn that service off on systems w/ 1GB. It's a good idea if you have alot of memory 1.5-4GB (or more on x64), but it'll really make things sluggish w/ just 1GB.
 
Ah.... Windows Millenium II *cough* I mean Windows Vista... the perfect operating system to turn a perfectly fast machine in to a frustrating & sluggish experience.

Allow or Deny?

;)
 
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