Intel CPUs - confused...

[chet]

hey guys

am going to put together a shuttle system quite soon, and have decided on the Intel architecture... but when I look at price-guides, I am really really confused with all the options.

I know I should be going for the best processor available, but the P3.6 is just waay too expensive. I reckon a 3.2 (or maybe 3.4) will suffice.

So oould someone please explain what's out there and what all the terms mean? (oh, and I'm still not 100% what a frontside bus (FSB) is either).

cheers

[garinator]

just a question, what are you planning to do with it? or have you just succumbed to marketing?

[aidanjt]

3.2Ghz is more than enough for most things, 800Mhz (200x4) is the FSB on prescotts (the P4's with the 1MB Cache).

However garinator is correct, you need to think what you will use this machine for before you go ahead and order, P4 Prescotts only really lead the edge when dealing with media encoding, if your playing games then an Athlon 64 would be a better choice, if its only playing media, and running desktop apps, then an Athlon XP is more than enough.

[chet]

haha no I was actually going to buy an AMD, but someone recommended Intel for what I want it for.

I don't play any games, and want to do music and video editing as well as the usual stuff (web surfing, word processing, etc).

[BlueMagician]

...I don't play any games, and want to do music and video editing as well as the usual stuff (web surfing, word processing, etc)...

Hexus.AppleJuice

S.

[aidanjt]

Well if your video editing then yes, go for a P4 Prescott 3.2Ghz is good nuff, no point splashing out on a 3.6Ghz to shave off 15Mins encoding a dvd.

[chet]

lol @ apple... I will go apple one day (not just yet though).

What'd be wrong with an AMD for video editing?

[Rave]

Nothing wrong exactly, it's just that P4s do it a bit better than equivalently priced A64s. That's about the only thing they do better though.

How desperate are you for this system? Windows XP 64 bit edition looks set to finally launch in April, and at that point Intel will probably enable EM64T from the top to the bottom of the P4 range. Video editing is one of the few areas where you could see a speed boost from 64bit. If you do need to buy now, I personally would be quite tempted to put the system together around a S775 Celeron like the 330J (less than £60 from ebuyer). That'll most likely overclock to over 3GHz (possibly well over) and it'll perform well for what you want to do becase AFAIK cache size doesn't make a huge difference to media encoding work. Then in April you can drop in a 64bit P4 to have a bang up to date system.

Rich :¬)

[Timmy!!!]

Nothing wrong exactly, it's just that P4s do it a bit better than equivalently priced A64s. That's about the only thing they do better though.

How desperate are you for this system? Windows XP 64 bit edition looks set to finally launch in April, and at that point Intel will probably enable EM64T from the top to the bottom of the P4 range. Video editing is one of the few areas where you could see a speed boost from 64bit. If you do need to buy now, I personally would be quite tempted to put the system together around a S775 Celeron like the 330J (less than £60 from ebuyer). That'll most likely overclock to over 3GHz (possibly well over) and it'll perform well for what you want to do becase AFAIK cache size doesn't make a huge difference to media encoding work. Then in April you can drop in a 64bit P4 to have a bang up to date system.

Rich :¬)

To have a 64 bit machine dont you have to have a 64 bit capable motherboard? If you do then this wont work.