Help, before my wife leaves me

tkalvey wrote on 6/3/2006, 9:45 AM
I've started getting a bit more business than usual and I am thinking about upgrading my ccomputer. Right now I have a toshiba 2.8P4 w/HT.

I have my eye on the below Dell. I promised myself that I would never buy another dell, but the price seems better than what I could even build one ($740 delivered) and buy a monitor. The first thing I would do is format the hard drive and replace the OS with XP Pro. I also have an external harddrive that will make up for the small one I selected.

Does anyone know if it will be a signifcant performance boost for me?



Module Description Show Details
Processor Pentium® D Processor 820 with Dual Core Technology (2.80GHz, 800FSB)
Operating System Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition
Memory 1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz (2x512M)
Keyboard Dell USB Keyboard
Monitor 17 inch Ultrasharp™ 1707FP Digital Flat Panel
Graphics Card 128MB PCI Express™ x16 (DVI/VGA/TV-out) ATI Radeon X300 SE HyperMemory
Internal Hard Drives 80GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/ 8MB cache
Floppy Drive and Media Reader No Floppy Drive Included
Mouse Dell® 2-button USB mouse
Network Card Integrated Intel® PRO 10/100 Ethernet
Modem No Modem Requested
Document Management Adobe® Acrobat® Reader 6.0
Optical Drive Single Drive: 16X CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) w/double layer write capability
Sound Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio
Speakers No speakers (Speakers are required to hear audio from your system)
Productivity Software Pre-Installed No Productivity Suite - Corel WordPerfect® word processor only
Security Software Pre-Installed No Security Subscription
Digital Music Musicmatch by Yahoo! Music - Basic music software
Digital Photography Corel Photo Album™ 6 Starter Edition - Organize and Edit your photos
Dell Service & Support Plans 1 Year On-site Economy Plan
Onsite System Setup No Onsite System Setup
Internet Access Service 6 Months of America Online Membership Included
Mail- In Rebate None
Miscellaneous Dimension 5150
Financial Software No Financial Software Selected - Includes Limited QuickBooks Trial
Optional Ports IEEE 1394 Adapter
Operating System Re-Installation CD PC Restore recovery system by Symantec
Purchase Intent Purchase is not intended for resale.

Comments

Ben1000 wrote on 6/3/2006, 10:10 AM
I'm not sure I can be of any help on the computer, but if you're wife needs an upgrade, I can give you my address :-) [/joking]

Best,

Benjamin

----------------------------------------------------------
http://www.neo-fight.tv [The "Techno-Debate" Video Podcast]
tkalvey wrote on 6/3/2006, 10:15 AM
Not looking to upgrade the wife.

I'm on my second and have realized this is as good as it gets.
jrazz wrote on 6/3/2006, 10:30 AM
I don't know that dell sells AMD, but I would go with AMD Dual Core 64 bit processors. Also, take a look around on tigerdirect.com as they always have refurbs or open boxed items that you can get cheap(er) than most other places. Looks good though and I am sure it would be a performance boost.

j razz
FrigidNDEditing wrote on 6/3/2006, 10:32 AM
Pentium D's don't give the performance increase that AMD's procs do, I would also suggest that you look into the core duo if you can find some, those have a better performance than the Pentium D's as well. I think there are some new procs coming out in a month or 2, so that may be why it's cheap. Anyway - that's my bit of input.

Dave
GlennChan wrote on 6/3/2006, 11:21 AM
Here are results from the old rendertest.veg

It shows that the Pentium D is twice as fast as the equivalent non-dual core processor.

The main caveat is that the results may not extrapolated to real world performance... the rendertest.veg results I've compiled are only for the fastest times. With dual core systems, you may have to turn off the video preview window to get the fastest time (and this doesn't always happen with real world projects).

It's pretty safe to say that a Pentium D will be between 0-100% faster.



39s - AMD X2 4600+
SOURCE: JohnnyRoy @ http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=423138&Replies=4

*39s/74s - AMD X2 4400+ (Toledo core, 2X2.2ghz, 2X1MB cache, no dual channel memory, Vegas 6.0b)
SOURCE: philfort@ http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=399447&Replies=26

*40s/76s - AMD X2 4400+ (Toledo core, 2X2.2ghz, 2X1MB cache, no dual channel memory, Vegas 6.0b)
SOURCE: TheRhino@ http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=396239&Replies=61

45s - Pentium D 3.0ghz
SOURCE: GMElliot @ http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=423138&Replies=8

*75s - P4 3.6ghz overclocked from 3.0 Pentium. A new 5xx-series 3.6ghz should be as fast or slightly slower.
SOURCE: Stormcrow@ http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=396239&Replies=57

78s- AMD64 3700+ (san diego core??? [2.2ghz, 1MB cache], vegas 6, dual channel RAM)
SOURCE: Charley Gallgher@ http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=45178&page=2&pp=15

*78s- P4 3.2 overclocked to 3.8ghz (Northwood core???, 800FSB [it's overclocked, so the FSB is actually higher])
SOURCE: jamcas@ http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=256422

79s- AMD64 3400+ (unknown core, Vegas 6)
SOURCE: Charley Gallagher@ http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=45178&page=2&pp=15

89s- 3.0E Pentium Prescott (865 chipset, dual channel RAM, Vegas 5)
SOURCE: Glenn Chan@ http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=396239&Replies=57

90s - 2.8ghz Pentium (Prescott)
SOURCE: TalawaMan@ http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?Forum=4&MessageID=262716

90s - Opteron 246 2.0ghz X 2 (dual channel memory, old 2004 core, *VEGAS 5*)
SOURCE: rohde@ http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=256422
*Please keep in mind Vegas6 has optimizations for dual processors, while Vegas 5 does not.

93s - AMD64 3200+ (2004, so probably old core)
SOURCE: PH125@ http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=256422
99s is Sid Phillip's report in the same thread.

95s - AMD64 3000+ (2.00ghz, 512kb cache, single channel, socket 754, 2004 core)
SOURCE: ibliss@ http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=256422

114s - Pentium-M 1.7ghz laptop
SOURCE: The_Jeff@ http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?Forum=4&MessageID=262716

128s - Sempron 2400+ 1.4ghz (Palmero core, S754, 256KB cache)
SOURCE: Glenn Chan
tkalvey wrote on 6/3/2006, 7:25 PM
bump
jrazz wrote on 6/3/2006, 8:23 PM
bump

Is not any of the information given thus far helpful? If not, why not explain what you are looking for that hasn't been provided thus far in answering your post instead of just bumping?

j razz
busterkeaton wrote on 6/3/2006, 10:49 PM
Dell has only just started selling AMD chips, but only in their workstations.

If you want a prebuilt box with AMD for cheap, HP has them, but the good AMD dual cores, it's probably more than the price you have though.
Coursedesign wrote on 6/4/2006, 11:06 AM
Dell has only just started selling AMD chips, but only in their workstations.

Article said only their servers, not even workstations yet.

I think they were weighing the "incentives" they were getting from Intel against their customers going elsewhere for lack of AMD machines.
vitalforce wrote on 6/4/2006, 12:54 PM
I upgraded my wife first.

I bought her a new laptop with a 1.8 AMD proc., which is nearly as fast as my 2.53 Dell P4 w/o HT; once she's hooked on computing (nearly there now) I'll go for whatever's the newest technology after Labor Day.

But you may say what's to keep her from taking off with the laptop? Only I know how the wireless router works. Muhuhuhahahaaa....
birdcat wrote on 6/5/2006, 4:58 AM
> I upgraded my wife first

I upgraded my wife too - this one's much prettier and has a far better disposition!
dand9959 wrote on 6/5/2006, 8:06 AM
Maybe it was an accidental bump. I'm doing that all the time with the posts in my house.