PC Upgrade

[RAGHU75]

PC Gurus,
Need your comments on an upgrade Iam planning (In India).

Currently iam on a P3-1.2Ghz, 128mb Ram with win98 and a 20GB harddisk
Decided to go for an upgrade.
I have upgraded tiwce earlier, but with intel.

My requirements are quite simple,
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1. High speed browsing
2. Download and watch movies
3. Connecting to Office network occasionaly through VPN
4. Editing Spreadsheet and big Documents
5. Absolutely no gaming, hence not very much concerned abt display card performance.


Iam looking for a
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1. Value for money upgrade
2. MOBO protected for atleast 1.5 to 2 years against obsolesence

Please comments on the following.
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Q.1 Do i upgrade to Intel based system or change over to AMD
Q.2 Which upgrade will be future protected.

Q.3 Currently I have a configuration in mind
Mobo : MSI - RS480M2-IL (integrated VGA, S-ATA Raid, PCI-E 16X)
Proc: AMD Athlon 64 - 3000 - 939 socket
RAM : 256 x 2 , DDR
HDD : Seagate 80 GB SATA
OS : Win XP

Is this upgrade good enough for my requirements ?


Thanks in advance.

 

[mlc]

AMD and Intel are fairly close.. most favor AMD for gaming and overclocking.. and give Intel the slight edge for video editing.. etc.. In your case for downloading movies either should work fine... Browsing speed and VPN connectivity are going to be more a function of the ISP provider you use...

upgrading to any current model should be good for at least a couple of years.....socket 939 will be fine ..

If you plan on doing alot of movie downloading, etc.. I would opt for 1GB of memory.. or at least start with a single 500mb stick (rather than 2 x256) now.. and you can add another if needed later...

 

[SilverTrine]

Right now the board which will have the longest lifespan is the AMD Athlon 64 based Socket 939 boards.
I'd wait a month or so to buy a board so that it'll be dual-processor compatible out of the box.(dont have to worry about a BIOS upgrade).

 

[Bona Fide]

Intel is the way to go for you, friend. If the majority of your work consists of Office-type applications and video/audio apps, Intel is definitely the better processor. The only problem is that no motherboard is protected from obsolescence for very long. If you go top-of-the-line right now, you should be okay for 2 years or so.

Pentium D 820 + any LGA775 motherboard. Dual-core will help you a lot.

Pentium D 820 2.8ghz
Pentium D 830 3.0ghz
Intel LGA775 (Socket T) motherboard