Recommendations on a new PC

Don`t have a load of spare 3 with Christmas coming also have some vouchers that
I can use at Comet (UK electrical store)

These are the 4 that are what I want to spend.

Main use is for Surfing....but will also use for occasional pictures and perhaps some movie editing IE moving DVD`s onto Memory Cards for watching on phone.

Don`t know the Processor for the Fujitsu as yet...but the 1024mb RAM is making me sway towards it.

But any thought`s recommendations from these four would be appreciated

http://www.comet.co.uk/cometbrowse/compare.do?sku=301841&sku=298131&sku=270903&sku=285153&categoryId=567

:thumbsup:

 

The processor is an AMD Athlon XP3000+, less powerful than the others, yet the graphics card is superior.

 

That and the Gateway one look good... I'm guessing since it says 3000+ its an AMD CPU, but I dunno if it would be an XP, 64, or Sempron. Either one would probably be fine. I'd say the next best thing that rivals that Fujitsu is the Gateway with the 640 Pentium, but it has crap video (you'll have trouble with games) and the Fujitsu has a good card (even though they don't tell you what type of Radeon it is).

 

If it has 128kb L2 cache then I'm almost certain it will be a sempron.

The graphics are probably from one of ATI's chipsets - so built in but a heck of a lot better than intel built in graphics.
Basically, the fujitsu is the way to go. The processor is slightly slower than the HP and eMachines, and a lot slower than the gateway, but the RAM will generally make it feel faster than the others, particularly if you are doing a lot at once. One place that the HP beats it however is that it includes MS Word in MS Worksuite, whereas the others just include works (which is shite).

If you can stretch to £500 then the next fujitsu up is worth it (FUJITSU SIEMENS SP A64 3200+) It has a better graphics card, faster processor (may look like only 200Mhz, but it also has 4x as much cache) and bigger hard disk make it worth the extra.

 

I forgot to look at the cache, maybe that would have helped, lol.

For office stuff you could get open office........:icon_bigg

 

For your needs personally I think the best there would be the Gateway 524GB. The Hyper Threaded P4 is the best proc there for video editing.

 

Well the hyperthreading won't make much difference with video editing I'd guess, as its largely single threaded. And the extra RAM in the fujitsu would help most of the other time.

 

Regards the video editing etc.....it would really be for just putting DVD`s onto SD card`s so I can watch on my phone.

Was thinking with the extra RAM that would balance out the lower spec Processor.

Would be nice to have a 7.1 card but then got to buy more speakers to use it properly

Would the 120kb cache really be the end of the world as it`s not often I do more than a few things at once other than surfing, e-mail, as not a PC gamer

Showing my ignorance on PC`s is the cache related to the processor hence the P4`s having more?

 

Cache is basically exceptionally fast memory - faster than RAM therefore used for instructions and data currently being processed. The more the better.

In real terms, the difference between the P4 and AMD in video editing would be a few minutes on a DVD - perhaps 2hr 5m rather than 2hrs. Not really that significant, and for pretty much everything else, the extra ram would be better.

One more thing, just because one processor says it is 2GhZ and another 3GhZ, it doesn't necessarily mean the 3 GhZ processor is faster - there's a lot more to it than that, and generally an AMD will be a heck of a lot faster than an intel if they ran at the "same" speed. So clock speeds aren't everything

 

If you are going to compress video from DVD quality to fit onto an SD card you will need a CPU with at least SSE2 instruction set. All of those P4s have them, but I'm not sure if that AMD Sempron system has it, which I doubt. You can always get the RAM upgraded to 1024mb because the more, the faster it converts it, but the CPU is what's important. I'd recommend the cheap P4 system.

 

The sempron has SSE2. All AMD processors available today do.

 

Ah, but the 128kb cache will be a bottleneck for that type of work, though. But I guess the fujitsu is the best buy, then.

 

Just one final point, the sempron is actually 128kb L1 (fastest cache) AND 128kb L2, which makes it 256kb total, with half of that at very high speed, whereas the intels have more, but running at a lower speed. And I like AMD, thats always a good reason to buy them

 

Well this chart will help you out alan. It is a BIG chart of them testing numerous cpus, in which the sempron and all other intel chips are listed, in converting a DVD file to xvid format.

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20051121/the_mother_of_all_cpu_charts-31.html

Even the lowend p4 in that page, the model 519P4 3.06ghz (northwood/133) out paces the 3000 sempron in the video conversion by more than a minute. Grant it, its different format than what alan might be converting to, but its still the same as far as power requirements go.

Alan, you'd prolly be better off with the 3.2ghz w/ HT because you can be converting the video on one thread, and surf the web - download/view videos without slowing down the conversion. It's a pentium 4 LGA socket 775, pretty up to date compared to those other P4s they have there which are lower-end northwoods.

 

It basically comes down to the gateway or the Fujitsu. I still stand by the fujitsu, but I'll go through the advantages for each machine

Video Editing the gateway wins by a lot
Graphics the Fujitsu wins by a lot
Surfing and photo editing the Fujitsu by a hair, due to the extra RAM

If you were to buy the gateway and put another 512mb RAM in it( it would probably cost about £55 including fitting (the stick would be about £35, so if you can find a mate to do it for you you'd save some cash)), and this would make it the clear winner in everything but graphics. I'd ask about getting them to do this when you buy it, or you could do it at a later stage if you find it slow.

Finally, 7.1 sound will be completely useless unless you intend to play a lot of games. For general computing even 5.1 is overkill, and a decent 2 speaker or 2.1 speaker system will sound a hell of a lot better than a half ass 5.1/7.1 system. Unless you are big into DVD's or games just get a standard stereo speaker setup

 

I may be able to stretch it to the £500 mark

If so I think the Gateway is the best of this next batch...

http://www.comet.co.uk/cometbrowse/compare.do?sku=301833&sku=270911&sku=296600&categoryId=567

 

Nope, definately the fujitsu there.

 

DEFINETLY the Fujitsu because of the Athlon 64.

 

This time I'd go with the fujitxsu xsimne it ixs a regu.lar Ath.lomn 64 amnd mnot a xsempromng. my keyboard ixs fuc,kimng up, xsorry.