Robert
Fri May 09 15:15:59 PDT 2008
Paul wrote:
> To a first order approximation, a computer's performance depends on
>
> Core_clock * IPC
>
> For a Core 2 processor, this would be 2.2GHz * 1.5 = 3.3GHz P4.
> The machine will have roughly the same speed as a 3.3GHz P4,
> which is enough for ordinary tasks.
You can't really measure processor speed this way.
See:
http://rhymeswithgeek.com/blogs/someone_else/archive/2006/07/13/CPU-FAQ.aspx
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core2-duo-knocks-athlon-64,1282-12.html
Multicore processing isn't about combining the power of two processor cores
or more to do one thing really fast, but more about doing two things at
once. And core by core, the Core Duo / Core2Duo processor design is a lot
more efficient than the pentium 4 design, a case of working smarter not
harder.
> The FSB is a secondary concern. If it was FSB800 or FSB1333,
> I doubt you could tell the difference.
>
> The FSB on my current computer is FSB800 (and your friend's
> comment has made me cry :-) )
Yeah, that didn't seem helpful of the friend. It might not be the fastest
setup money can buy, but it's plenty fast enough for business type use and
any home use that doesn't involve hard-core gaming.
> I don't know the UK prices at all, so cannot say whether
> £349.00 is a "deal" or not.
About $700 USD. It's not a bad price going on local market conditions.
> I notice another computer on Tesco uses 1.86GHz core and
> FSB1066. And that would be slower than the 2.2GHz core
> machine, even though that machine is FSB800. The core is
> what counts.
>
> And if I were you, I'd visit the Dell UK site, and compare
> what Tesco is offering, to what you can customize on the
> Dell site. For example, for £100 more, you can get a quad
> core Q6600. Or for £80 extra, the E8300 dual core at 2.83GHz.
> So price around a bit, and see if you're getting a good deal
> or not. (Quad core is mainly useful, if you do a lot of
> DVD shrinking or movie rendering etc. Stuff that is slow
> and grinds on your existing machine. With four cores, the
> machine stays perky, while stuff runs in the background.
> For web surfing or email, the dual core is better, runs
> cooler and is powerful enough most of the time.)
I heartily agree with this bit. Dell do some keenly priced machines, but
some people are just weirded out by buying things like that mail order.
> You can always add memory to the machine yourself, if the
> machine on the Dell site doesn't have enough memory.
> Memory is about $25 per gigabyte, so it doesn't cost much to
> do an upgrade yourself.
I'd definately second this part too. A lot of the big box shifters soak
users on memory upgrades. Dell, Apple, all of them get beat hollow by places
like crucial.com on the price of extra memory.