andyr

Currently have an HP Pavilion with 45Gb hd, 64mb ram, non-working USB ports (quite possibly resolved if I do a rebuild from the recovery disks which I haven't got round to yet).
Also only a 15" screen and crappy hp inkjet printer. Want something speedier, better able to do some work on photos (so want to u/g the printer and get a scanner too) and get a bigger/better screen.

Probably not worth putting better bits in the existing machine ?

Spec I'm looking to go to is 2.6Ghz+ 512mb ram, 80Gb hd, 17" flat or TFT screen.
Spent yesterday looking at a few places - PC World, Dixons, The Computer Shop and then went on-line and also looked around.
Few things caught my eye :

Computer Bargains doing a HP PAvilion A230N AMD Athlon 2800 for
£569 :
http://www.computerbargains.co.uk/sh...75e6382da84f15

PC World Packard Bell 2.5 w/17" screen for £499 :
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/sto...uct&sku=855020

Dixons doing similar : Intel Celeron 2.6 w/17" screen for £499
http://www.dixons.co.uk/martprd/stor...0&tm=undefined

Ebay shop Buckley Computing doing a Athlon 3200 without Windows for £449 :
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...category=51144

Dell have an Intel 4 2.8 w/17"panel screen for £699

Do any of the chip manufacturers (AMD/Intel primarily) have a performance advantage so that a quoted speed (ie 2.6gz) will run faster than the same 2.6 of another manufacturer ?
Anything else that can help identify the best machine ?

For around £600 there are a lot of seemingly similar machines out there confusing me !

what would scooby do

I'd avoid the packard bell junk - go for Dell.

With regards to cpu speeds and chipsets - you really have to look at benchmarks - but I'd avoid the celerons.

I suggest you set your budget and get the best spec for your money.

AMD v's Intel - personal preference is the only difference + if you wish to overclock in the future..

lightning101

Build it yourself - get latest ASUS m/boards with P4 and overclock - remember to shell out for decent quality cooled ram.

Mine is P4 2.8 o/clocked to 3.6Ghz on ASUS p4p800 with corsair ram with 800mhz bus speed. With Radeon 9600XT 256mb ram G/card -250gb hard drive Super ATA. Ram is 4x 512 dual channel giving 2gig of ram.

Runs 3D studio 6, photoshop 8 like a dream.

with 19" iiyama monitor - all for £759 inc vat and del.

andyr

Did you source your components from a single place or various ? Can you advise recommended places in case I go that route ?

lightning101

from www.ebuyer.com

rough guide -

iiyama 19" monitor - £99

Case with 300w supply and see through side panels etc - £9.99

if your interested i will make list up to your budget with all the best deals I can find from this site as I buy stuff for my work constantly from them and know the site well.

andyr

Cheers for that - I'll take a look and see how things add up.