[H-GEN] New Machine

Frank Brand fbrand at uq.net.au
Mon Dec 6 02:44:33 EST 1999


[ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and ]
[ Unix-related topics.  Please observe the list's charter.          ]

On Tue, 07 Dec 1999, Murray Spork wrote:
> [ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and ]
> [ Unix-related topics.  Please observe the list's charter.          ]
> 
> 
> From: Mark Suter ...
> 
> > > Why not buy a 733MHz Intel Pentium III from Dell?  Who cares
> > > if you have to ship it from the US?  All you care about is
> > > being on the bleeding edge :-)
> 
> Can you do that? Order direct from the US?

You can but for a whole computer...mmmm....might be a risky; warranty claims are
a bugger. Also you would be stung for duty.

> I had been reading that the Athlons are significantly faster than the
> Pentiums -- you guys seem to be suggesting otherwise? I thought Pentium III's
> were very overpriced when compared to the bang/buck you can get from a Celeron
> or the Athlon?

Well, you would really need to try it out, I do not know anyone who has used an
Athlon and I am working off the reported results (up to 30% faster is the claim
but that is only for CPU time and CPU time is only a small fraction of the
total computer time for many tasks...thats why I say video speed, hdd speed,
memory speed etc are often more important in many of the things we do). But you
really need to be doing something pretty CPU intensive to notice. Eg Word
processing is as fast on a low end pentium as it would be on an Athlon or P733.
Maybe some kernel compiles or several big database searches might be indicative
but if a compile took 4 minutes on an Athlon and 4 minutes 24 seconds on a
Celeron 500 (thats a 10% difference but it is only 24 seconds) is that
significant? You pays your money and only you can say. I think that bang for
buck its hard to beat say a Celeron 433 or 466 at present. 

--
Frank Brand
E-mail: fbrand at uq.net.au
Home Page: http://www.uq.net.au/~zzfbrand

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