Computer Geeks please

[Adman 0]

The Intel machine has a better graphics card, but neither are gonna be fantastic for games with those cards. Depends what you're gonna play really.

In terms of other media, they're both gonna be near enough the same. If you think you're gonna fill a 320gb hard drive then I suppose again the Intel machine is a better choice there, but to be honest both machines come with a slot for an additional removable drive anyway. It will also let you upgrade the RAM to 8gb versus 4gb on the AMD machine, which will always be handy down the line if you wanna keep things up to date.

Really the only place where the AMD machine comes out on top is in the processor, saying that the Dual Core E6400 is hardly a slow one.

Did just look at the prices though... they work out pretty evenly if you include that into things. I'd say get the AMD machine and use the money you saved for getting a better graphics card, then you're pretty much covered for everything.

[scroll 0]

Build your own. That way you get exactly what you want.

Make sure it has an Athlon processor. My husband's PC with the Athlon processor ROCKS. The speed is incredible. Plus the big fan running to cool the chips sounds MANLY! LOL

I love that manly comment made me laugh out loud as well...

[PlatyPius 5]

Hey everyone...

I decided to post this in the off topic forum because i'm having issues deciding which computer I want to buy. So I am going to ask everyone else's opinion on which they would buy if they had the chance to. I've got it narrowed down to two computers, they are almost identical, just different processors and memory on them. Here are links to them:

This is the cheaper of the two..

HP 320 Gig AMD

This is the more expensive ...

400 Gig Intel Duo

I don't really care about the cost, and I don't mind waiting for them to get the AMD computer back in stock. I just want to know an unbiased opinion on which computer is overall better. Which will run faster, work better with digital media (Games, photos, MP3's etc)

Thanks guys!

For the love of Bob, do NOT buy an HP!!!!!!1111+1=1112

[StarProg 0]

Personally I can't imagine why anyone into digital photography would consider anything other than a Mac Pro (though an iMac is fine if $2500 is too much). Having said that, of the two computers you mention the Intel Duo will give you faster performance and you will certainly be needing all the disk space you can get.

[lovenlife 0]

If this computer is going to be a gaming machine I would go for the Intel core 2 duo. The AMD processors use to smoke Intel on this front, and this is coming from an AMD bigot (although if I were to build a box today it would be the Intel Quad core). That said there is a marginal edge on the performance side of things with the Intel on these 2 processors, your choice. Looking over data available on the various industry benchmarks, the new Intel processors overtake the lead that was held by AMD for so many years. Both are good choices.

I would suggest at looking to “build your own” through someone like ibuypower.com. Things to consider if this is a multimedia and gaming rig. Go with the Intel core 2 duo, at least 2 Gb or memory, a good mother board with Nvidia chip set, and a Nvidia 8800 series graphic card. Something along the lines of this:

Intel E6600 2x 2.4GHz 4mb L2 cache 1066MHz FSB or better (Intel has a Quad proc now QX6700 <drool ;-)>)

Asus P5N32-E SLI nForce 680i SLI Chipset Motherboard

2Gb (min) Corsair XMS2 Xtreme memory or equivalent

1 (2 is better) Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX w/768Mb DDR3 Memory (Direct x10 compliant) Graphic Card(s)

Hard drives; this is one area many people over look and has marginal impact on performance. With most motherboards these days SATA RAID controllers are available and disk devices can be configured in to a stripe (RAID 0 fast) or mirrored pairs (RAID 1 safer). Larger drives hold more, but the seek/access times aren’t as good, and faster 10,000 rpm drives usually have the best performance but cost a lot more. In high end gaming rigs the Western Digital Raptor drives are the way to go, put you pay for it.

A rig with the above components, middle of the road drives (2 x 160 Gb SATA 7200 rpm 8Mb cache configured in a mirror or stripe) with a Viewsonic 20” wide screen LCD monitor will run you about $2500. But one thing to remember as soon as you purchase a new system, a couple of months later it will be outdated and the price of these components become cheaper, just the nature of computing these days, or Moore’s Law.

Edited January 12, 2007 by lovenlife

[midicat 0]

Thanks everyone for your replies. I have a little bit better of an idea now than I did when I went into this. I like that comment about the 20" widescreen comp. My dad just bought the 400 gig HP Intel Duo with a 32" HD widescreen monitor an 5.1 surround system. Quite nice in my opinion.

As far as getting a mac. I don't like them because games do not work as well on them and they are harder to find in mac format. Everything you would use normally is different on a mac from a normal PC, it's way too much of a hastle. Not to mention my dad is a computer technician and if anything screws up on my PC he can fix it, if I had a mac i'd have to take it somewhere to get fixed.