To buy or to wait?

[AgEnT0140]

i am getting very anxious about buying a new computer, i need one for my A+ comp repair class. My question is, should i wait till a 3.06 and dual channel DDR come out, or get a 2.8 and pc3500 right now... will there be a big preformace increase? I am looking at 1gb of pc3500 XMS and a 2.8ghz p4. Would it be worth it to wait a few weeks?

Thanks,
Kevin

[BaldHeadedDork]

You're talking about two different components, so let's look at them seperately.

I wouldn't expect more than the slightest performance boost between the 2.8 and 3.06. That's less than a five percent increase in clock speed, which won't translate to anything more than the smallest increase in benchmark results. Don't expect to see any improvement in application performance.

The potential for Dual DDR is much better. As a rough rule of thumb, you can expect a memory performance between RDRAM 800 and 1066. That will be a fairly substantial boost for memory performance. But this is going to be a brand new technology, and you shouldn't expect Dual DDR to reach its potential in the initial release of motherboards.

If it were my choice, I'd build on a 845E or PE board now (probably with a 2.4 or 2.26GHz proc instead of the 2.8, too) with the gig of XMS3500. When the bugs are worked out of the Dual DDR boards, I'd move the proc and memory to the new platform.


BHD

[AgEnT0140]

so can i keep my XMS and use it with the dual ddr motherboard? if thats the case, then i will just get the 2.8 and ram right now. I allready have a motherboard for it, so thats all i would need to upgrade come dual DDR time, right?

[krag]

Originally posted by AgEnT0140
i am getting very anxious about buying a new computer, i need one for my A+ comp repair class. My question is, should i wait till a 3.06 and dual channel DDR come out, or get a 2.8 and pc3500 right now... will there be a big preformace increase? I am looking at 1gb of pc3500 XMS and a 2.8ghz p4. Would it be worth it to wait a few weeks?

Thanks,
Kevin

Which A+ school are you taking? On-line, study at home or at a school. I tried an on-line school called "Tompkins Learning Direct" but I dropped it because the lesson material was really old, all of te parts in the manuals and lessons were ancient, everything was way obsolete. The fastest CPU that they had was a Pentium 2 300. Sucked!!!!!!

[AgEnT0140]

Originally posted by krag


Which A+ school are you taking? On-line, study at home or at a school. I tried an on-line school called "Tompkins Learning Direct" but I dropped it because the lesson material was really old, all of te parts in the manuals and lessons were ancient, everything was way obsolete. The fastest CPU that they had was a Pentium 2 300. Sucked!!!!!!

i am taking it through my school district, its free :)

[BaldHeadedDork]

Originally posted by AgEnT0140
so can i keep my XMS and use it with the dual ddr motherboard? if thats the case, then i will just get the 2.8 and ram right now. I allready have a motherboard for it, so thats all i would need to upgrade come dual DDR time, right?


Bingo. :D

But I gotta say this one last time: The bang-for-the-buck in P4's drops like a stone beyond the 2.26B and 2.4A processors. There is no shortage of guys getting 3.1-3.2GHz with these procs on air cooling. Which is also the best scores for the 2.8's that cost twice as much.


BHD

[AgEnT0140]

Originally posted by BaldHeadedDork



Bingo. :D

But I gotta say this one last time: The bang-for-the-buck in P4's drops like a stone beyond the 2.26B and 2.4A processors. There is no shortage of guys getting 3.1-3.2GHz with these procs on air cooling. Which is also the best scores for the 2.8's that cost twice as much.


BHD

yea, thats what i thought about my 1.6a.. i couldnt get it to be stable at 2ghz. i'll go with teh 2.8, since i am positive i can get it to 2.8 :)

[Hawk]

Hyperthreading will be availible with the 3.06 and there will be a good gain there due to the addressing of the cache miss issues.
my 2 cents

[wildbilly2k]

hey im taking an A+ class at my school too and it costs me 50$ ooh well still pretty cheap. Where do you get all the money to buy these parts anyways?

[AgEnT0140]

Originally posted by hawk646
Hyperthreading will be availible with the 3.06 and there will be a good gain there due to the addressing of the cache miss issues.
my 2 cents

my mom, she doesnt usually buy me stuff, but she deicded to help me our since its for school. :D

[dragontale]

buy now