pslewis

Hi all, I am sat at a 3 year old P2 333Mhz computer and want to upgrade.

Looking around I have located a deal that looks great, but I have a few questions:-

A) What is the Pentium equivalent to an AMD 1600XP?

B) How does DDR RAM differ from SDRAM, (which is best?)

C) 64Mb F3 200 Titanium graphics card any good?

D) Lotus Smartesuite, can it import MS Office stuff? is it as good?

Thanks in anticipation of the help you IT bods can give!

Oh, yes, final question:-

E) What is a P2 333Mhz 64MbSDRAM CD/RW computer worth these days? with a 15inch monitor?

Cheers all

Pete

DazV

I know the answers to all those questions, but as you INSULTED my gold wheels in the past you can just pi$$ right off!

DazV

Seriously though, here's your answers

A) What is the Pentium equivalent to an AMD 1600XP?
Celeron 500k Hz

B) How does DDR RAM differ from SDRAM, (which is best?)
SDRAM is faster and has a higher bandwidth, DDR was really intended for MMX computers.

C) 64Mb F3 200 Titanium graphics card any good?
You'd be better off with the newer model, NVidia Riva128

D) Lotus Smartesuite, can it import MS Office stuff? is it as good?
Yes, its known to be actually better than Office, but its a well kept secret.

E) What is a P2 333Mhz 64MbSDRAM CD/RW computer worth these days? with a 15inch monitor?
£300 ?

carl

I can answer (E) -- f**k all. May as well give it away. Honestly

Mr Footlong

iTrader: (7)

Daz, you fuppin' comedian!!!!! ROTFLMAO



Coolest!


Nick

pslewis

Hey, Daz - you wouldnt be pulling my plonker would you??

Your answer to A) equals a Pentium 500k?? hmmmm - I reckon it equals about 1.4Ghz, but I AM guessing!

I am sure that the Gold Wheels have gone to your head and turned you into a REAL woman instead of the usual pseudo one!!

Thanks for you efforts anyway - keep taking the Testosterone pills!

Pete

KF

As you insulted me in the past, the following may, or may not be totally wrong
a) they are numbered to illustrate some parity. i.e. AMD 1600 is meant to roughly equal 1.6Ghz pentium4 although the benchmarks would suggest AMD are being a bit modest look here .
b) DDR is double rate, meaning that transitions happen on the rising and falling clock pulse. If you have a motherboard that supports it (the one recommended in the above link does), it is better than vanilla SDRAM.
c) Yup "The GeForce3 Ti 200 is by far the best buy and is clearly a better value than the Radeon 7500" - Anandtec
d) possibly
e) probably about £100
KF.

EDIT : Clearly a novice with web syntax

[Edited by KF - 11/29/2001 8:56:10 PM]

Mr Footlong

iTrader: (7)

A) What is the Pentium equivalent to an AMD 1600XP?

It it supposed to be equivalent in performace to a Pentium IV 1.6
It actually performs more strongly in many specific apps, but it is pretty damn close in general all round use.

B) How does DDR RAM differ from SDRAM, (which is best?)

DDR RAM is best, standing for Double Data Rate, it basically transfers information twice in a cycle, at it's peak and it's trough of a cycle. SDR only transfers once in a cycle. This does not give you double the performance as you would think, but can increase Memory I/O performance by 50% or so, depending on config.

C) 64Mb F3 200 Titanium graphics card any good?

Really depends on what you want to do with it. A strong performer in it's price bracket, but still a bit pricey in general, considering that it is supposed to be the 'Budget' Geforce3. If you can get hold of one of these considerably cheaper than a Standard GF3, then do it. The Core clock of the 200 runs at 175Mhz, as opposed to 200Mhz on the Standard. The Ram performance is 400Mhz(2x200), as opposed to 460(2x230) on the Standard card.
In the real world, in default res of 1024x768x32bit, there is between 5-12% performance difference from app to app The gap in general increases a bit as you up the res.
The main strength difference between the high-end GF2 cards and the GF3 family is the increased performance in 32-bit. This kills the performance of the previous generation a tad. 32-bit isn't all that anyway, so your choice really.


D) Lotus Smartesuite, can it import MS Office stuff? is it as good?

No idea, can't remember the last person I came across using that. Why don't you phone a freind, you winkle!

Cheers,


Nick.

Edited to say that I started typing this before KF posted, so any similariries are purely coincidental!

[Edited by Mr Footlong - 11/29/2001 9:14:26 PM]

pslewis

KF - I have insulted you? well.....you wouldnt want to be the odd one out would you??

Your answers looked pretty much 'on the button'!!

I asked the question about that graphics card because thats the one the computer I fancy comes shipped with - I just wanted to know if it was any good - its obviously not the best, but I would assume its better than my current 4Mb 'on board' shared set-up?

Pete

KF

Not an insult really - more of a slur, I think it was probably me that started it
There isn't much I can think that any new PC wouldn't be able to do comfortably - other than rip DVD's
KF.

Kevin Greeley

Strangely enough, I've just received the following bits to make up a system:

Athlon 1600XP (1.4 Ghz) - around £100 - good price/performance.
Abit KG7 - supposed to be the biz - also around £100.
512k DDR ram - about £65.
ASUS Geforce3 Ti200 Deluxe - about £175.

I won't be building it until next week.

Kevin
(Prices are ex VAT).

AndyMan

Well Nick and KF seem to have done the biz above so you don't really need much more info. AMD's do perform a lot better with games at the moment that Intel attempts.

Lotus Smartesuite is a sure fire way to get yourself into trouble if your sharing with MS Office. I've had some major hassles with it in the past (mainly due to MS's product and their ability to make even their previous office variants incompatible with each others documents).

pslewis

Kevin I have been quoted £660 for the whole system minus a monitor

Would seem like good value then?

Pete

System:- 80G HD, 256DDRAM, Gf3 200 Titanium Graphics, 1600XP, DVD ROM, RWriter, Tower, keyboard, mouse, speakers, MS XP



[Edited by pslewis - 11/30/2001 9:18:07 AM]

Scott J Davies

Pete

Your old pooter Mars Bar and a Packet of crisps.

Being a Nuclear Weapons Bloke shouldn't you have already developed your own ground breaking product??

Haven't posted for ages so sorry if my insults aren't up to scratch!!!

SJD

Beemer_Deano

Pete,

I wouldn't consign your old box to the crapper just yet - there's loads of places flogging that sort of spec PC for up to £150 (as long as it's got a modem). People want 'em for internet use, particularly old folks, but I hope we won't see you on Watchdog for conning some old dear out of her savings for it!

All the best,

Dean