Medion PC v Acer PC - Which one

[amjedm]

Hello all, some advice please

Acer T180 DC - http://www.comet.co.uk/cometbrowse/p...=specification - £299 (ebuyer have put price up to £349)
Athlon X2 3800+ (2GHz)
1GB Ram
160GB HD
DVD RW
XP Media Centre upgrade to Vista available
Card Reader

Medion - http://www.medion.de/md8820/uk/flash.html - £399
Pentium D915 (2.8GHz)
1GB Ram
250GB HD
7300SE 128MB GPU
TV Tuner (includes remote control)
Vista Home Premium
Ultra Quiet

Which one?

Ta.

[scrandman]

Depends what you're planning on doing with it really. Browsing, gaming, DVD-compiling, etc, etc?

[kalniel]

Unless you need a graphics card, the acer wins by miles.

[amjedm]

Depends what you're planning on doing with it really. Browsing, gaming, DVD-compiling, etc, etc?

Web surfing more than anything else I believe (it's for a friend).

[MadduckUK]

the acer then. the dual-coreyness smooths windows out fantastically

also, it wont be a Pentium4 in a frock

[sawyen]

3800+ X2 FTW...

pentium D are products destined for the bins..

I suppose when the need comes, there's always the opportunity to upgrade the graphics card on the Acer..

Besides, the 7300SE is pretty much integrated quality AFAIK.. 640x480 Quake anyone?

[scrandman]

The reason I asked was gaming primarily. On-board GFX really underperforms anything on the market - even a 7300SE will outperform it by a significant margin.

The 6100 / 6150 is just below par performance wise from an FX5200 (which was possibly the worst video card ever made).

As gaming is not a priority, then the AMD system wins hands down by a significant margin. You can always spend the £100 difference on a better GFX card in future if the need arises.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Both computers will be fine for normal usage.The Pentium D is slower than the Athlon X2 but again for normal use this is a moot point!! I used the D805 which runs at 2.66ghz as a stop gap processor(until I got a Core2) and it was fine for normal things and even a bit of gaming!! I only upgraded since I like to do a bit of video encoding and the Core2 is much faster and cooler.

The Medion computer not only has 90GB more storage space but a graphics card and a tv tuner too.The tv tuner is a hybrid analogue/digital one too! The Acer needs to sacrifice some memory for the integrated video also!

The main issue with Acer computer is that the Pentium D does run hotter than a X2 processer.Also the Acer has XP which is much less taxing on computer resources that the much newer Vista.However the Medion does have sufficient power to run Vista reasonably well.

I would go for the Acer if you need the cheapest system possible.However if you do not want to mess around with your computer the Medion maybe the better longtime bet as it is a well rounded system.

Medion computers also tend to come with extra software that other PCs do not have as standard too! Hence most of the Medion computers need very little setting up as they already have basic software included.

The Medion has the following additional software included:
Microsoft® Works 8.5
Power DVD 7
PowerDirector 5.0 SE
PowerProducer 3
Medi@Show 3SE
Nero Burning ROM 7 Essentials
Nero Recode 2 Essentials
Nero Express 7 Essentials
Nero Vision 4 Essentials

Here are detailed specs from a German site:

http://gathering.tweakers.net/forum/...ssages/1196773

The Medion does have a DVD rewriter too! It also has a card reader on the front panel.

[sawyen]

Both computers will be fine for normal usage.The Pentium D is slower than the Athlon X2 but again for normal use this is a moot point!! I used the D805 which runs at 2.66ghz as a stop gap processor(until I got a Core2) and it was fine for normal things and even a bit of gaming!! I only upgraded since I like to do a bit of video encoding and the Core2 is much faster and cooler.

The Medion computer not only has 90GB more storage space but a graphics card and a tv tuner too.The tv tuner is a hybrid analogue/digital one too! The Acer needs to sacrifice some memory for the integrated video also!

The main issue with Acer computer is that the Pentium D does run hotter than a X2 processer.Also the Acer has XP which is much less taxing on computer resources that the much newer Vista.However the Medion does have sufficient power to run Vista reasonably well.

I would go for the Acer if you need the cheapest system possible.However if you do not want to mess around with your computer the Medion maybe the better longtime bet as it is a well rounded system.

Medion computers also tend to come with extra software that other PCs do not have as standard too! Hence most of the Medion computers need very little setting up as they already have basic software included.

The Medion has the following additional software included:
Microsoft® Works 8.5
Power DVD 7
PowerDirector 5.0 SE
PowerProducer 3
Medi@Show 3SE
Nero Burning ROM 7 Essentials
Nero Recode 2 Essentials
Nero Express 7 Essentials
Nero Vision 4 Essentials

Here are detailed specs from a German site:

http://gathering.tweakers.net/forum/...ssages/1196773

The Medion does have a DVD rewriter too! It also has a card reader on the front panel.

Hmn.. having seeing the specs again, perhaps it MIGHT be worth it..

Again, if the thing comes with a 965 chipset, I'd jump for it.. C2D future proofing FTW..

[scrandman]

Hmn.. having seeing the specs again, perhaps it MIGHT be worth it..

Again, if the thing comes with a 965 chipset, I'd jump for it.. C2D future proofing FTW..

Word of caution though - Medion use proprietary boards, so you're at their mercy if this requires a BIOS update. Having said that, I owned a couple of Medion PCs a few years back (Pentium 133 & Pentium 3) - never had any real issues with them.

[Lee`]

I've had 2 Medion PCs are they were fine, very quiet and done the job, even though the last one I bought I only used for 2 months and I'm now trying to sell it.