Intel, AMD, Celeron..Does it really matter ?

I am starting to look around for a new computer to buy, something I
havent had to do in about 7 years.

Lots of ads out there of course,

Does the chip really matter anymore or are there some big differences
between the Intel and the Celeron and the AMD I should be thinking
about when looking at all the ads and the prices.

Thank You

 

What applications do you plan on using?

If nothing heavy duty Sempron is your best value.

 

What applications do you plan on using?

Nothing I would consider heavy at all, mainly a lot of internet
research, web page design, databases and spreadsheets.

I cant think of anything heavy duty really, I dont even know what is
considered heavy by todays standards.

Craig

 

Craig

Creating / moding / editing Video is 'heavy', as are top end games with
their need for heaps of graphics power and CPU grunt.

Best advice is to do your research, find the 'sweet spot' of price /
performance that meets 'your' expections. I would've thought web design
would need better than onboard graphics for example

Celeron & Sempron are the 'budget' versions of the Pentium and Athlon CPU's
ie smaller internal Cache's.

Don't be to miserable with RAM

Cheers
Paul.

 

In that case just buy a $299 dell including monitor at
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/compare.aspx/desktops?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

You should upgrade the memory to 512MB though.

 

Deceitful practice on the part of Dell, shipping is over $100 on a $300
PC. It costs nowhere near that much to actually ship it. And don't
worry, they use every possible means to get you upgrade nearly
everything before buying their loss leader.

 

I checked with Craigs list and found a 2.3 gig dell for 250.00. No
delivery charge. Picked it up and works like a charm.

 

From what I've seen so far most computers have the 3ghz speed and
either 512 mb or 1 gb of RAM.

I guess I would rather have the larger RAM, obviously. So I need to
compare the prices for what Im getting.
Thats pretty much why I was wondering if the different chips really
mattered much anymore.
It used to be said that Celeron or AMD wouldnt run all programs etc,
I have never run into that before.

I thought about Dell, but I dont like the fact that their warranty is
now only 90 days, where HP still has the 1 year warranty.

Craig

 

I'd be cautious about buying a box from Dell, HP, or the other BIG
names. Many come with an OEM OS that can't be transferred to another
box, plus you don't get the full OS disk just a recovery disk that may
or may not work. Also, some HP models and some of the others, I don't
know about Dell, are somewhat upgrade proof in that you must buy any
upgrade hardware from the OEM. Check into a local builder, they can
build what you want sometimes for the same or even less money. Plus, if
something goes wrong, they are local and you don't have to ship it
across the country. Don't expect the 25 hour "at your site" service to
be worth much. In my experience, they will try very hard to weasel out
of it.

 

That's what the specs on the side of the box etc are usually for.

One AMD thing IIRC many years ago was the newer just out faster K6-2/500
had a problem with Win 95 , and an IOS device error, there was another
CPU that had the same problem.

Some special CAD applications may be tuned for a specific CPU, and I
have seen many years ago Intel had some Intel CPU compiled video
processing software, there wasn't an AMD version oddly enough.

That's grim.

Me

 

Just a quick suggestion:

MSI KT6V-LSR SocketA KT600 Chipset 1AGP8x/5PCI/3DDR W/Sound Lan SATA USB 2.0
ATA-133 $60

Sempron 2600 or Athlon 2600 (+$20) $85

Seagate Barracuda 160GB HD 7200rpm 8MB SATA $95 (5 yr warranty)

DVD DL RW $50 (will read/write CD's and DVD's)

512MB PC3200 DDR ram $50

Case/PS/Optical mouse/KB $50

ATI Radeon 9250 128MB DDR $40

Total $430