Buying a PC - just need little bits of advice

[potatopete]

Hi folks,


I am about to buy a desktop PC unit, but am unsure which out of several options is going to be the best for me.

1st option - HP Pavilion with AMD Athlon XP 2800 2.08Ghz, 1GB RAM and ATI Radeon 9200 128MB graphics.

2nd option - Compaq DX6100MT Pentium 4 HT, 2.8 Ghz, 512MB RAM, on-board graphics.

3rd option - Compaq DX2000 MT Pentium 4 HT, 2.8Ghz, 1GB Ram, on-board graphics.

All these units are 2nd hand, all refurbished, all running XP Pro.

Will the Pavilion be noticably slower then the other 2, being 2.08 compared to 2.8?

Will the ATI Radeon graphics make a big difference?

I'm thinking the P4 HT processor will be the better processor. I am right?

And I'm also thinking the 512MB Ram in the DX6100 is inferior to the other 2...

So, by process of elimination, I am heading to the 3rd option, the Compaq DX2000. But will I miss having the ATI Radeon ??

I will be using this PC mainly for browsing, photo editing, and mainly streaming from sites such as BBC iPlayer, ITV player and YouTube, as well as record keeping and some business accounts work.

Any advice or suggestions very much welcomed. (Sorry for the lengthy post!)

Pete.

[Bound]

Go with the first one, I had that graphics card in my Dell about 5 years ago.. It's not good but it's stronger than integrated graphics which are useless. You might miss the 0.72 ghz but the card will make up for it. It suprises me they called it the "AMD Athlon XP 2800" then rate the processor at 2.08 rather than 2.8 .

[Simop]

Think I had that AMD processor a while back... from memory, the AMD's process threads 'relatively' more quickly than the equivalent pentium processor.

There are a stupid amount of things to compare if you get into it (I never have been). I'm imagining, these units aren;t too expensive? SO id go for the one with the most ram and a decent graphics card

[pvts]

correct, a computer is only as powerful as its weakest part, a powerful processor is useless on its own.

Originally Posted by Simo

Think I had that AMD processor a while back... from memory, the AMD's process threads 'relatively' more quickly than the equivalent pentium processor.

There are a stupid amount of things to compare if you get into it (I never have been). I'm imagining, these units aren;t too expensive? SO id go for the one with the most ram and a decent graphics card

[ReCoNoR]

From the sounds of it, you have no need for a Graphics Card really, 512MB is pretty balls and my opinions of AMD arent that high either, id take option 3 definately.

[enthrone]

They're all pretty terrible.

go for option 1 or 3 which ever you prefer.

Onboard gfx is completely fine for what you want, you havent listed what size harddrive any of them have, so which ever has the largest between 1 and 3 go for that.

guess these are some £50 bargains ?? ;p

[chinkostu]

Originally Posted by enthrone

They're all pretty terrible.

go for option 1 or 3 which ever you prefer.

Onboard gfx is completely fine for what you want, you havent listed what size harddrive any of them have, so which ever has the largest between 1 and 3 go for that.

guess these are some £50 bargains ?? ;p

hard drive size means nothing tbh

thats like me saying here, have this 12 year old pc with a terabyte of hard drive space in it as it must be good

also, let us know what you can about the pc's. obselete ram is pennies these days (im still running ddr lol) and hard drives are cheap, so theres plenty of scope to improve a pretty mediocre one

[ChAdS]

Mate, there not the best... you can get a dell inspiron laptop for £300 which is far better than that desktop pc!

[baker556]

First option is the better one, the graphics card will take the load from the cpu.

[Gary-VTR]

Originally Posted by potatopete

I will be using this PC mainly for browsing, photo editing, and mainly streaming from sites such as BBC iPlayer, ITV player and YouTube, as well as record keeping and some business accounts work.

^ You'll need at least 2GB RAM to run Photoshop comfortably. More than that if you're working with large files.

[devilsadvocate]

Originally Posted by Gary-VTR

^ You'll need at least 2GB RAM to run Photoshop comfortably. More than that if you're working with large files.

Agreed, RAM is more important for Photoshop than a decent graphics card

In all honesty, they are all single core chips so the difference between them will be minimal, probably not even noticeable

Get any of them as long as they have 2GB of RAM you should be fine

[DannyVTS]

Out of interest what is the cost of these 3 computers?

Are they all from the same seller?

[Brenz]

Honestly I wouldn't buy any of them. They are too old and too slow.

XP is close to having all support dropped by Microsoft and some new software has already dropped support for XP. It wont be long until you will only find XP in closed systems like ATM's, Tills, etc and in the occasional school with a small budget.

If you want to save some money by buying refurbished try Elf. I bought my last PC from them and it is great and was really cheap.

[gaz4399]

i have my old tower to get rid of if your interested mate, cost me 800 quid about 4 years ago just for the tower. It has;

2gb ram
AMD 64x2 dual core 4200+ 2.20ghz
dedicated 256 graphics
windows vista premium


also has office professional 2007 installed which is worth a fair bit

this will be much better suited for your needs tbh. I can also throw in a mouse and keyboard

pm me if interesed, i dont want a lot at all btw

garry

edit: ive just taken this on the pc if it helps

[potatopete]

Thanks for all the rerplies, folks.
I've now gone for the 3rd option, by the way they're all from the same ebay seller, and all were being sold for £45 with free postage.

It's only going to be used, like I said, for basic stuff. My laptop, which was reasonably expensive and high spec, decided to pack up last week, but it is 5 years old so pretty much getting to the end of its useful life. So this PC just needs to be a cheap replacement while I save up a bit more cash and by a decent spec laptop.

As long as the PC can cope with basic internet surfing and streaming, that'll do me for a few months. Like Simo said, there's so many variables you can look at, but for £45 all I want is some reliability and for it to do basic tasks.

Thanks again for all the help, guys. Once I get it, which will be middle of next week, I'll let you know how it is.