So, is this a good price/good PC?

[northwind]

Can't find my other thread

Dell are doing a load of offers just now, I'm close to nabbing one.

P4 640 3200 with 1-year back to base warranty, 1 gig of dual channel 400mhz ram, 19" flatpanel monitor, only a wee (80gb) drive but I can deal with that I'm sure, and an ATI Hypermemory 128mb graphics card that appears to suck, but which I've budgeted to replace (no good upgrade options on the website on this model) Plus wireless keyboard and mouse, which I could care less about, but it's free. £540 all in.

For the exact same price I could get a 2800 Dual Core processor... should I?

The speakers aren't much cop, but that's not a problem

£554 all in. What do you reckon? The wirelses keyboard etc deal ends today, the other discounts (free upgrade on the screen fro 15 to 19, £140 cash off, free shipping end wednesday.

I think I need to phone up and see about free slots, and to see if they can do me a better graphics card (only choices for this are the X300 and X600 Hypermemory)

[TSM]

That size hard drive makes the computer look like it was specd up for a office install.

Seems reasonable.

19" TFTs are now selling for as little as £170. Check to see if its a DVI panel as they are better.

250gb SATA Maxtor drives are abt £70.

Prices from www.scan.co.uk

Sounds good....

Dual Processor is great if you do several heavy things at the same time.... let's say, playing music, browsing a lot, P2P on the background, maybe burning a cd...

If you usually do one thing at a time with the PC, the single core is fine... but we have some dual cores around in the office and the people are quite happy with them. Lotus Notesz, plus visual studio compiling a heavy piece of software, plus browser and zillion things in the tray bar and the computers are still responsive. With single core compiling would mean coffee break...

554 for a 1gig of ram, P4 3200 and a 19' flat screen looks as a goood deal...

BTW.. I have at work Dell GX280, 1Gb Ram, an ATI X300 (128Mb) and Unreal Tournament 2004 goes quite well!!! (Christmas Employee tournament...). Once you upgrade the grpahics card to something like a Nvidia 6800, that should fly!!

[TSM]

Originally Posted by argatxa

Dual Processor is great if you do several heavy things at the same time.... let's say, playing music, browsing a lot, P2P on the background, maybe burning a cd...

Its not a DP system, its a Dual Channel memory, which means that memory is installed in pairs and run faster. DDR400 in that config would equal DDR800 and the bus of P4 is 800.

Woops wrote that then noticed he put Dual Core processor.

[northwind]

Originally Posted by TSM

That size hard drive makes the computer look like it was specd up for a office install.

Seems reasonable.

19" TFTs are now selling for as little as £170. Check to see if its a DVI panel as they are better.

250gb SATA Maxtor drives are abt £70.

Prices from www.scan.co.uk

Yup, it's basically an upspecced home and office machine... But atm they're doing better deals ont hat oen, so it's more exonomic to upgrade the lower one than it is to get the better one Same motherboards and case. Upgradign teh drives are silyl expensive from Dell for some reason.

At the moment we've got 2 10gb drives on the machine i use and that's usually been fine. Though that's 98, I'm sure XP will be 10 times bigger So moving up from the dog kennel, even a cramped bedsit will seem like a mansion

The monitor's an analogue one... But it's a free upgrade from the 15" one, tio get the DVI Ultrasharp would be another £150 which tbh, I'm not spending. If I decide I want better, my brother'll take this one off me and I'll upgrade in a few months But again, I've been happy enough with my antique 17" Dell goldfishbowl, so I doubt i'll be disappointed.

[northwind]

So, quick kneejerk call, 3200 P4 or 2800 D? I crave the big numbers

Mr Northwind

Knowing that you like to mess with the hardware, be aware that Dells are not machines that have a good upgradeability... (is the spelling right?)

Even with the Tower factor, you can only plug an extra HD, the Power supply is not going to admit too many excesses plugging in stuff...

2800 Dual...... all the software is being upgraded to dual core.... on the long run Dual core is the future...

Originally Posted by argatxa

2800 Dual...... all the software is being upgraded to dual core.... on the long run Dual core is the future...

Seconded. 1 x 3200 or 2 x 2800? I know which I'd take.

[northwind]

Originally Posted by argatxa

Mr Northwind

Knowing that you like to mess with the hardware, be aware that Dells are not machines that have a good upgradeability... (is the spelling right?)

Even with the Tower factor, you can only plug an extra HD, the Power supply is not going to admit too many excesses plugging in stuff...

I don't much like messing with PCs, to be honest... This one will be fairly stable, I think. It's got another 2 ram slots, which should be sufficient I think. I'm not overly converned about drives for the moment either, it comes with a DVD/CDRW combo and like I say, 80gb is huge compared to what I'm used to. Though I appreciate the thought.

So with the Dual Core... I suppose my 2 real concerns are which is better for games right now (since that's all I need the power for, really) and which will be better for games in, say, a year. This isn't solely a gaming machine, but nothing else I'll use it for will be all that demanding.