Another new system thread...

I am building a new system for a friend at work. She wants something simple and cheap just to use for business and general web browsing. The computer she has now is very old, either a P3 or an early P4, so anything would be an improvement.

So I was thinking of going with an AMD processor. But since I have always used Intel I don't know much about AMD and would like to get some other opinions. Here is what I have selected.

Processor : AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ Brisbane 2.1GHz
Motherboard : MSI K9VGM-V AM2 VIA K8M890 Micro ATX
Memory : Kingston 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800
HDD : Western Digital Caviar SE WD400JD 40GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache Serial ATA150

The one thing I am not sure about is the memory. I always have a hard time with that, making sure the voltage is compatable with the mobo.

Frankly, I think a P3 or an early P4 is absolutely enough for business and general web browsing, as long as you don't try to use Vista.

I agree, but her old one is (about) 8 years old and she wants something a little faster. She just does not want to spend a lot of money on stuff she will never use so I figured a custom build would work better.

I managed to put one together for about $300 or so converted to US dollars. It's in no way a gaming machine, but it sure will work fine with web browsing, so custom is definitely the way to go.
You can save even more if you don't purchase mouse/keyboard, case and such. And especially no new monitor.

UPDATE:
I managed to gather these parts. I think they're compatible.
Case (w/ power supply): Linkworld 313G-C26 Black/ Silver Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 430W Power Supply - OEM - $23
Memory: Team Elite 512MB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Desktop Memory Model TEDD512M667HC5 - Retail - $11
Motherboard (w/ audio, video & LAN): ECS P4M900T-M V1.0 LGA 775 VIA P4M900 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - $30
Processor: Intel Celeron 420 Conroe-L 1.6GHz LGA 775 35W Single-Core Processor Model BX80557420 - Retail - $44
Total: $108 excluding shipping.

I can probably be cheaper, but newegg (which I looked at), only carried so old parts, so I couldn't find any cheaper.
The AMD path is a little more expensive, as well due to the high price of DDR(1) and AMD motherboards.

Any system you put Vista on will suck because Vista sucks.

I would go with the cost effective solution and I think an AMD 64 x2 is a bit overboard for this particular situation.

I don't have much experience with the Celeron processors. Is there any difference in those and the Pentiums?

For one thing, less cache. Budget processor. Works fine for web browsing. Should be avoided for gaming.

Vista is manageable for the average user... however if you want to be able to tweak, it's a mess. Honestly, I've seen many, many people use Vista and those that don't know much about computers have had little problems with it or are just too uninformed to identify the problems in front of them. The thing that will kill your Vista experience is the fact that your motherboard is carrying an integrated VIA chip. I do believe there are some on-board solutions that will allow you to run Vista's Aero theme without crushing performance, however, VIA, I'm sure hasn't made one, yet. NVidia and ATI has made some pretty decent on-board graphics. Intel made the X3100, but you won't find that on an AMD motherboard. ^_^

One other thing worth mentioning. I know you're trying to go as cheap as possible here, but I never see the point in going for a 40GB HDD when you can get an 80GB for $3 more or a 120GB for $5 more. Considering the large footprint that Vista's installation leaves on a hard drive, I'd say getting something larger can definitely show a performance boost after a few months of use.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Elysia

For one thing, less cache. Budget processor. Works fine for web browsing. Should be avoided for gaming.

---

Well it won't cut it for Crysis or COD 4, but my own Celeron (Which is quite a bit older than the one you mentioned, and clocked 600 mHz over stock speed), will actually pull Battlefield 2: SF, NFS Most Wanted and Quake 4 in 1024x768, that is with an X1600 and 1,5GB RAM, and considering what i paid for it (Equivalent of 40$), you actually get quite amazing value...

But if you are not a poor student like myself, Celeron is the last choice for anything other than Paper Work and stuff like that. For that particular purpose though, i'm almost completely certain it's the cheapest and best by far...

And if there had been a cheaper processor (and cheaper DDR RAM and AMD motherboards!), I'd have chosen to list a better processor instead of that celeron scrap that costs a fortune.

What fortune? This is a great entry level processor, especially if you throw the BSEL mod on it. Granted, it serves as no comparison to the Brisbane listed above, but as some said, that processor is a bit much for a basic office PC and I always felt Intel offers better options as far as motherboards go.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Elysia

And if there had been a cheaper processor (and cheaper DDR RAM and AMD motherboards!), I'd have chosen to list a better processor instead of that celeron scrap that costs a fortune.

---

So basically what you are saying is that if AMD CPUs were cheaper, could use DDR2 RAM and had cheaper mobos that would be the better choice? Your point being? Why are you bashing Intel for something they are actually doing better and cheaper than AMD?

Too expensive. You could find a processor for lower money. Any processor today will suffice for web browsing.
IMO AMD offers are always better. Cheaper prices. And until Conroe, better performance.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Neo1

So basically what you are saying is that if AMD CPUs were cheaper, could use DDR2 RAM and had cheaper mobos that would be the better choice? Your point being? Why are you bashing Intel for something they are actually doing better and cheaper than AMD?

---

Actually, it's just newegg who has a poor sortiment of old products. Plus I'm an AMD fan, so I'd go for AMD any time over Intel had it been cheaper. But unfortunately, it's not the same case on newegg.
But even so, and Athlon would beat the crap out of any Intel Pentium processor making it ideal for a low-budget computer.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Elysia

Too expensive. You could find a processor for lower money. Any processor today will suffice for web browsing.
IMO AMD offers are always better. Cheaper prices. And until Conroe, better performance.

---

That's ridiculous. Maybe you're just very young, but the success of AMD's Athlon processors is based only on the fact that Intel's NetBurst architecture was a failure that led to overpriced, mediocre microprocessors. Intel has been doing it much longer and for a long time was the only option because nobody had the capacity to challenge them. As it stands, every attempt by AMD to get back in the game has been unsuccessful, however, I blame this not on AMD's design but the fact that they wasted all of their funds on the ridiculous purchase of ATI. Now they've fallen behind in both respects.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SlyMaelstrom

That's ridiculous. Maybe you're just very young, but the success of AMD's Athlon processors is based only on the fact that Intel's NetBurst architecture was a failure that led to overpriced, mediocre microprocessors.

---

Indeed. But whether the architecture was good or bad, AMD's offerings at the time was better, simply put. And they were cheaper to boot.
Call it Intel's mistake, but that tells me that AMD does design good processors.

Quote:

---

As it stands, every attempt by AMD to get back in the game has been unsuccessful, however, I blame this not on AMD's design

---

As I know, Intel has a lot of work cut out to get back in the game themselves. From Pentium 4 to Pentium D to all kinds of crap before Core 2 Duo came out.

Quote:

---

but the fact that they wasted all of their funds on the ridiculous purchase of ATI. Now they've fallen behind in both respects.

---

I would not call it ridiculous. It was a smart move IMO. I see forward to the day when the processor supports GPU instructions as well as CPU instructions. That day we'll see a 100x performance improvement in demanding tasks such as video encoding and raw number crunching.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Elysia

Actually, it's just newegg who has a poor sortiment of old products. Plus I'm an AMD fan, so I'd go for AMD any time over Intel had it been cheaper. But unfortunately, it's not the same case on newegg.
But even so, and Athlon would beat the crap out of any Intel Pentium processor making it ideal for a low-budget computer.

---

Newegg's sortiment isn't poor. Would this be the kind of AMD CPU you are looking for?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103197

Just requires an AM2 mobo, but afaik it will run with DDR2 so basically it will be a bit cheaper and a bit slower than the system you suggested earlier with the Conroe-L...

Quote:

---

processor today will suffice for web browsing.
IMO AMD offers are always better. Cheaper prices. And until Conroe, better performance.

---

Nono, not until Conroe.. Just after the P4 was released and until Conroe, which is only a couple of years, that was the time where AMD was the wiser choice for normal consumers. But that wasn't really due to superior design by AMD was it? It was mainly because Intel decided to go for long pipes and high clock-speeds, rather than good clock-for-clock performance, which turned out to be the wrong way to go..

Quote:

---

Call it Intel's mistake, but that tells me that AMD does design good processors.

---

So those 2 years that AMD was way ahead of Intel, means more to you than the 15 years Intel was (and is) ahead of everyone else?

Don't bash Intel just because you choose to disregard facts and buy a slower processor than what Intel could offer for the same price...

I'm an AMD fanboy myself since their processors are cheaper and about equal in performance pricewise to an Intel in the same price range.

Intel got cocky and thought no one could touch them. Perhaps AMD did the same but their pricing has not shown that yet. I think Intel and AMD offer the best for the consumer - that is competition. Competition keeps both companies in check and keeps them trying to outdo one another. To say one or the other is completely dead or behind is a bit of an overstatement. As long as they continue to compete I'll get better processors from AMD. One could make legit arguments for and against both. Arguing about it is like arguing about if you like apples or oranges. If you like apples, then eat apples. It just so happens I prefer oranges.

Vista is unmanageable for anyone. It's core architecture suffers from some huge performance issues and it's overall security design is completely flawed. The UAC is a nightmare and yet turning it off exposes your PC to security issues since the UAC is integrated with IE. Aero is nice but not the performance hog everyone makes it to be - it's actually nothing more than GDI+ could not already do. Vista fonts have that nasty anti-aliased fuzzy look to them and I never found a way to turn it off. As well Vista's file copying is completely broken out of the box mostly due to the inept indexing service hog. Windows Defender is completely useless and a huge resource hog and a few of us at work looked at it and still cannot figure out what the Defender is doing. Just using Windows Explorer in Vista consumes 60 mb of memory and if you have more than 3 apps running at the same time you will see lock ups. This has to be something in the threading kernel that is amiss and it has been reported a lot. Unzipping files takes forever, games run 10% to 20% slower than their XP counterparts, NVidia drivers 100% completely suck for Vista and cause blue screens at random, and most other drivers for Vista suck equally as bad. There is no DirectSound or DirectMusic vendor extension hardware level support so say goodbye to EAX 3.0 if you own a Creative card. Now you have to buy ALchemy just to get your sound card to do what it already did inside of XP. Vista is most likely the new ME. I look for XP to be supported far into the future until the next Windows version is released. Vista is terrible. Try to find an article on the internet that doesn't say the same.

Vista as it is in it's current state is worthless. Stay with XP until the next Windows comes out. Microsoft is still makiing money off Vista though, because former XP owners that upgraded and owned an upgrade XP are now going out to by XP Professional. So MS sales of XP are up and Vista is down. I read one report that said about 2% of sales right now are for Vista and that nearly 80% of all who went to Vista have 'upgraded' back to XP.
:D :D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Neo1

Newegg's sortiment isn't poor. Would this be the kind of AMD CPU you are looking for?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103197

Just requires an AM2 mobo, but afaik it will run with DDR2 so basically it will be a bit cheaper and a bit slower than the system you suggested earlier with the Conroe-L...

---

Nono. I was looking for the pure gold old Athlon. The non-64 one. The performance king of the time. Beating the crap out of all Intel processors.
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to exist. And the cheapest DDR is also very expensive on newegg. And the cheapest AMD motherboard is actually more expensive than the cheapest Intel one.
So I stick with that newegg's sortiment is poor. Good thing I don't have to buy anything from there since I don't live in US.

Quote:

---

Nono, not until Conroe.. Just after the P4 was released and until Conroe, which is only a couple of years, that was the time where AMD was the wiser choice for normal consumers. But that wasn't really due to superior design by AMD was it? It was mainly because Intel decided to go for long pipes and high clock-speeds, rather than good clock-for-clock performance, which turned out to be the wrong way to go..

---

From Athlon to Athlon64, AMD beat the crap out of Intel's Pentium. It matters little if it was due to good design by AMD or poor design by Intel, AMD had the performance crown back then, and that's not going to change. Therefore, at the time, AMD was better. That's just it.

Quote:

---

So those 2 years that AMD was way ahead of Intel, means more to you than the 15 years Intel was (and is) ahead of everyone else?

---

Not bashing Intel. Simply thinking AMD is more performance for the money. And who knows what might have happened if AMD hadn't come along. Maybe we'd still be using power-hungry Pentium 5? Competition is a good thing!

Quote:

---

Don't bash Intel just because you choose to disregard facts and buy a slower processor than what Intel could offer for the same price...

---

Don't be ridiculous. I bought the original Athlon because it beat the crap out of Intel's offerings. I bought the Athlon64 X2 because it beat the crap out Intel (again, at the time I got it). And until date, I have no newer processor. The Athlon64 is serving me fine.
On a side note, my laptop has a Core 2 Duo because it is simply the best for the portable market. AMD never really had any good offerings in the laptop market.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Elysia

And who knows what might have happened if AMD hadn't come along.

---

AMD was around ever since IBM and Intel made the deal for the original PC. IBM's company policy didn't allow relying on a single supplier for any component, so they convinced Intel to license the chip design to another company, AMD. It wasn't until the Pentium, however, that AMD really did their own thing with the K5.

Indeed, but the point was that they grew to a big company in their glory days of the Athlon. Which is a good thing since it created the competition we have today.

And competition is best for us...the consumer.

So AMD and Intel can keep hating one another just as long as they both churn out regular updates to their CPUs.

In the end we the consumer's reap the benefit.

Now if we could just get some competition for Microsoft. :D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bubba

Now if we could just get some competition for Microsoft. :D

---

Apple...

*chuckle*

Honestly, I just think Microsoft needs a good ol' fashion rioting... let's all bust into their Seattle offices and burn stuff up. Make 'em know that we mean business and we want a good operating system.

Bad enough Microsoft has as much of the market as they do now. Now they have moved into the automotive market as well. ie, Ford's new Sync system (i think that is what it is called)

I have MS on my computer, isn't that enough?

Nope. They're aiming to take over the world! :D
Then they'll construct all sorts of dangerous machines like the 360, where they re-route resources to building the damn machines fast enough but take away money from safety, testing and precautions (which is exactly what they did with the 360 since they rushed it; it's confirmed)!
Then the entire world will start dying and Microsoft won't care a thing :p

By the way, did anyone watch The Matrix recently? In the scene where the Sentinals are ripping through the ship, there is a MS Logo on their legs!

... Seriously.


... No seriously, I swear.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SlyMaelstrom

By the way, did anyone watch The Matrix recently? In the scene where the Sentinals are ripping through the ship, there is a MS Logo on their legs!

... Seriously.


... No seriously, I swear.

---

Well if MS made them, then they wouldn't be all that scary would they? They'd just be fat, slow and bloated..