YAIVAT-which will feel faster?

[spazo]

The dilenma is that I'm about to finally buy a new pc. This next pc will be the first one that I've built and I'm really looking forward to it. However, I stumbled upon a very nice Dell Outlet deal thats is very tempting.

The Dell I'm looking at costs ~$560 and here are the specs:
3.2ghz Prescott
512 Mb DDR2
80gis
X300SE vid card

On the other hand, for about $100 more, I can get a Winchester equipped pc that I will most definately overclock and I also get a total of 1gig of ram with that extra $100. In either case, I have an X800XL on order from the recent ATI deal which I got for ~$220 so I'm set on the video card 😀

I don't need a pc now, maybe one in about 6-8 months but having a new doesn't hurt either 😉...I'm gonna take it off to college so thats why I have some time. The other choice is to wait and grab deals whenever they pop up so I can get an uber cheap pc(hopefully) 🙂

 

[otispunkmeyer]

what will your main use be for this machine?

if its gaming then i suggest spending the extra $100 on the AMD system, and then drop in that X800XL. Make sure though that the AMD system is PCI express. that X800XL is a PCIe part IIRC

 

[spazo]

I guess the main usages will be:
1.Gaming
2.Encoding(I'm a huge Noob at this right now but I definately want to lear)
3.school work 🙂

If I do go the AMD route, I'll definately wait for more nforce4 motherboards to come out and hopefull they'll be ~$100 when I actually build it.

 

[mwmorph]

what speeds are the memory? if they are different go for the faster one. also, make sure the AMd can actually handle pcie and not just agp.

 

[dguy6789]

More ram makes more of a difference in smoothness than a different cpu. But in games and general windows use, amd64s are smoother. A P4 will become the smoother should you be doing many things at once.