new computer

I need a new computer, but I only have $500 to spend on it. Building one myself is not an option, so I came here to ask you--what are the best deals out there right now? (and yes, I did I did look on my own before posting...)

You can't really get a good computer for $500 without building it yourself.

I guess you don't have any geek friends, so I'd say save up until you hit $800ish. You'll pay about 1/3 more for your system than its worth if you go with a dell or gateway and it will piss you off regularly, but at least you won't get ripped off by a local asshole store.

>>1

Do try to get somebody to build it for you. You'll save buckets of money and get the computer you want, not some overpriced (and sometimes annoying) branded computer, or some overpriced (and sometimes crappy) local store stuff.

It's a lot easier to hook yourself up with the technically and financially superior AMD chips if you build it yourself, too.

Silly Intel.  Clock frequency is for *marketing*.

>>4
AMD was into the tard targetting as much as Intel with their numbers. I wouldn't be so much of a fanboy.

That said, I got AMD's, and I'll be getting some more. I simply find their products faster/cheaper, so I stick to them.

My understanding:

Intel's marketing department (which is not to be often denigrated, by the way.  Very few companies brand as well as Intel has over the last decade.) dictated that bigger numbers are better, and this was an undue influence on the architectural decisions made for Intel chips.  Numbers were associated with GHz, so Intel basically strode to crank their clock speed and pipeline length.

AMD was bright enough to separate the technical from the marketing via the "1900+" and "2100+" marketing.  Those numbers have no technical basis in the chip's architecture, other than some claims that an Athlon 1900+ was comparably performant to the Intel 1.9GHz chip.  This allowed the AMD engineers (including a few of the true whiz-bang Alpha guys) to take a different direction with their architecture.

Now at the time, it was really anybody's guess as to who had the better approach.  Now, though, we've hit the big ol' wall and we're retooling ourselves for multi-core chips.

And, unfortunately for Intel, multi-core caught them with their pants down (as evidenced by their recent offerings).  The AMD multicore chips have gone through the entire design process, from the ground up, as multi-core processors.  Intel needed something out the door, resulting in their first gen multicore procs basically being a couple single-core procs glued together on the die.

Now, I expect Intel's nextgen multicore chips to be vastly superior to this generation, but AMD's technical superiority over Intel in its choice markets seems pretty apparent to me.

Not to mention Intel losing to AMD in the race to push the 64-bit processor out the door.  That made me giggle like a schoolgirl.

I didn't really intend to come off as a fanboy, my bad.  It's just a lot of fun to see the smaller guy sticking it to the bigger guy on all fronts the way AMD has been the last few years.  Intel needed the competitive wake up call, and us knowledgeable consumers who know enough to shop for a processor all win.

It'll be interesting to see if the common consumer will win from the competition too, after AMD's anti-trust lawsuit against Intel pans out.

>>6 correction

"...but AMD's *current* technical superiority over Intel..."  The pendulum will probably swing back at some point.

Intels still rock AMDs in the overclock department. There are quite a few piece of shit intels that, for some reason, just overclock like motherfuckers. Remember the 1.2 celeron? And the 2.4 northwood?

Quad-pumping is good for a lot. I will give it up to AMD, though, they just bench better at stock speeds. But sometimes you just can't afford an AMD.