What's best?

[Altima]

My Dad wants a computer for his machining he does, so he brought home a 400 MHz computer for Novell & a 550MHz for his CAD and 3D programs. His brithday is comin up so I thought that I would get and set him up a dual processor system. I just wanted to know what would be a good dual processor system for doing not too heavy 3D CADing? Would two 550MHz Intels be good? (I got 512MB SDRAM)

 

[funnyperson1]

probably a couple Athlon MPs would be cheaper

 

[diehrd]

For Cad AMD does do extreamly well.

But if you have 1, 550 Intell I would look to see if you can get another 550 and a dual board for them.

 

[Altima]

Thanks, ill look to see if i can get a couple of Athalon MPs for cheap, but if i find another 550 + mobo for a lot cheaper, ill get that instead.

 

[donny_paycheck]

Hey, welcome to the forums!

What I would do is look seriously at a pair of Athlons. First of all they will perform much better than a pair of 550mhz PIIIs. This has been pointed out and is obvious, but secondly it might be cheaper in the long run. A dual PIII slot 1 board and another PIII 550 CPU could cost as much as a pair of MPs and a dual socket A motherboard. Even if you saved some money with the PIIIs it would not be much and definitely not enough to justify the lackluster performance of the Pentium 3s in comparison to the new Athlons. Consider both options obviously, but think hard about going AMD for cheap performance. Then again, if your pops needs OEM-ish stability from his system for business, it might be better to go with the PIIIs because their more established technology may ultimately prove to be more stable.

 

[Altima]

damn guy. You gave me a good push mroe to the other side! Thanks, Im looking into that