New Computer = a few questions

[Rune Hunter]

I just got a new computer and now that I have a good computer I have some questions...

1. Is an Athlon 2800+ (2.08GHz) good? And is it equal to a celron 2.8GHZ (not 2.08)?

2. We now have a 100gig hard drive, how big shoudl our vitual memory be? And anything else that shoudl be changed, and also were (I forgot).

3. By the turn on button there are 2 lights. One is a lightbulb by it that represents on or standby, ect. but what does the light with a, looks like, a cup by it. I think it has to do with reading from the hard drive cuase when I ever I hear the hard drive (or whatever) making sounds the light flashes on.

Thank you!

[iain]

>>1. Is an Athlon 2800+ (2.08GHz) good? And is it equal to a celron 2.8GHZ (not 2.08)?

well 2.8 is is greater than 2.08 so is technically capable of completing more operations per second - but you need to take into account on-board cache aswell. (Im not taking part in a Celeron vs AMD debate ) There is benchmarking data available on the net for these chips.


>>2 howw big shoud our vitual memory be
Sounds like your'e using Windows, let the operating system manage it


>>3 but what does the light with a, looks like, a cup by it
Hard drive activity light, when your computer is writing or reading a file you will see this light flickering.

[Waldo2k2]

>>Is an Athlon 2800+ (2.08GHz) good? And is it equal to a celron 2.8GHZ (not 2.08)?

and athlon 2800+ will smoke a celeron any day...a p4 running 2.8ghz would be a closer match. Rest assured it's better than a celeron (you'd want to compare a celeron to a duron or sempron, athlon xp's are much more advanced).

[Jez]

and athlon 2800+ will smoke a celeron any day...a p4 running 2.8ghz would be a closer match. Rest assured it's better than a celeron (you'd want to compare a celeron to a duron or sempron, athlon xp's are much more advanced).

Totally agree - almost - Sempron is basically a rebadged XP.
From what I hear the Celeron compares very poorly to anything AMD produce, especially considering the price difference. I'm not anti - intel, but I wouldn't buy one at the moment.

for a good site (quite technical in places) on hardware check out www.anandtech.com

[Rune Hunter]

Thanks alot people! You really are helping me feel good about our new ocmputer!