whooops. I just sent a reply to 'Spike66's query on new machines to a
completely differnet list by accident. Total brainfart.
here's what I meant to post here....
> Some of you hardware jockeys please give me a
> clue. I have two machines at home running GIMPS 24-7.
> One is a P4-2Ghz. The other is a 5 yr old 350 Mhz
> PII, which is in need of a tech refresh. Clearly
> there is more to computer performance than clock
> speed, but for GIMPS I suppose clock speed is
> everything. Is it? My other machine already has
> a DVD writer, networked etc, so I need not rebuy
> that. What should I buy? I have no hard spending
> limit, but I am looking for value and suppose that
> a thousand dollar machine would be more than
> adequate. Does AMD vs Intel matter? Does bus
> speed matter?
The P4's significantly outperform currently available AMD processors in
Mersenne due to SSE2 instructions. AMD CPUs are faster at some things at
the same clock speeds, however, P4's are available at much higher clock
speeds which more than compensates. Also, the Intel motherboard chipsets
tend to have better implementations of PCI, AGP, with higher IO throughput
and better compatibility.
my current preferred machine on a balanced cost/performance basis is as
follows...
P4-2.53Ghz (533Mhz bus, retail version w/ Intel heatsink)
Asus or Intel brand motherboard based on i845pe chipset
with onboard LAN and Sound
512MB-1GB of 333Mhz DDR ram (aka PC2700)
NVIDIA Geforce4 Ti4200
Seagate Baracuda ATA IV or V, 80 or 120GB.
Toshiba 16X DVD-ROM
TDK 48X CD-RW
dropped into a nice solid 'aluminum' chassis such as an Antec or Lian Li
with temperature controlled 80mm 'whisper' fans, and a quality 300W or so
power supply. My current computer is way too noisy, I want to rectify that.
note, I haven't actually BOUGHT this machine yet, but I'm getting closer.
Also, Intel CPU prices are dropping again as they just made a wholesale
price adjustment, so its quite possible the cost/performance point is about
to move up another notch to 2.66Ghz.
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