Question: How to buy a computer? There are so many different packages with different prices, how do I know which performs better?

Answer: To answer your first question "How to buy a computer?" the simple answer is " with lots of money." I think a more suitable question should be " how to buy a good computer with suitable amount of money?" Actually your 2 questions are related and can be answered together.

There are package deals by many large companies, like Dell, Compaq, Hp, and Sony. Most of them include printer, softwares etc. Actually they are quite good because they are inclusive and you get everything. It is not suitable for those if they just want to upgrade or already have one computer. The 2 major computer magazine: PCWorld and PC Magazine both evaluate these packages and you can find them in the magazines or in their web site: pcworld.com or pcmag.com.

The trouble with their evaluation is that the magazine take many things into consideration, including service, bundled softwares, reliability, support, and performance. You have to read the evaluation with a grain of salt.

I personally do not buy these packages. Instead I go to the local small dealers and select my components or at least modify their packages. A lot of people will doubt the reliability of these small independent dealers. For me, they are equally good or reliable. Actually, all components are manufactured by a few manufacturers only. The different dealers select different components and put them together in different packages. So they are all the same. I have no problem going to small dealers. But this is an individual choice.

Coming back to the question of evaluating the performance of the computer, this is decided by 5 components : the CPU, the mother board and chip set, the memory, the video card and the hard drive. Let us discuss them one by one.

Before the discussion, this is a disclaimer. I am not an engineer and not an expert in computer. The following is my personal opinion which did not come from actual experience. So believe it at your own risk. Many of the informations can be obtained from several web sites. They are :

Tomshardwares.com
Extremetech.com
Anandtech.com

All of them evaluate hardwares and computer accessories. They can be technical at times. You can go to these web sites and read their articles for details. Let us get back to our discussion.

(1) The CPU

    Everyone knows or hears about the CPU and everyone knows that only Intel and AMD produce the CPUs. Each produces 2 series. For Intel, it is Celeron and Pentium 4. For AMD, it is Duron and XP.

    Celeron and Duron are at the low end of the performance spectrum. They are not suitable for CPU intensive work like graphic or video editing. It is good enough for general home owner not doing any particular projects. The trouble is that the components that come with these processors are usually of lower quality. You do not put high performance tires in a car with low horse power. Of course they are cheaper. I do not recommend them unless money is a factor.

    Pentium and AMP XP are comparable. Most writings and evaluations consider XP to be better than the corresponding Pentium 4. This is true in the mid range CPU speed. For the higher CPU speeds Pentium 4 is still better.

    Personally I am biased, just biased without reason, against AMD. So I will stick with Pentium.

    AMD ˇV There are 3 series or cores of CPU production : the Thunderbird, Thoroughbred and the Barton. The last one, Barton, is the latest. AMD names their CPU with a code number which is not the actual CPU speed, but the "speed equivalent". However, the gap between the code number and the actual CPU gets wider and wider. For the latest flagship CPU, 3200XP, some web sites thinks that it should be more likely 2900. So be careful. I think the most cost effective way is to take the Thoroughbred core and select the mid-range ones, i.e. 2400XP.

    For Pentium 4, there are 4 groups of CPUs : (1) 1.7 to 2.4 G with a front bus speed of 400 . (2) 2.40 G to 2.66 G with a front bus of 533. Notice that there are 2 different 2.4 G CPUs with different FBS (3) 2.8 G and 3.06 G with Hyperthreading and bus 533 (4) 2.4 G up to 3.0 G with Hyperthreading and bus 800, and dual channel DDR 400 support

    For me, if the front bus speed is the same, you will see no difference in the performance. So I think that you should use the 1.8G CPU as the first choice. If you want a faster one, you should jump and take the 2.40 G with 500 front bus. There is no sense in choosing the 2.0 G instead of the 1.8G, or the 2.6 G instead of the 2.4 G with the same front bus.

    No one should take the third group of CPU because the forth group makes more sense. The forth group is the latest CPU with the latest technologies. It is good for people who want the fastest. Unfortunately it is also the most expensive.

    You may ask what is hypertreading. It is the latest and newest technology and probably the future trend. It does improve performance. However right now it is so new and nothing in the world of softwares etc. takes advantage of this and use this feature in the software design. So it is something more or less not worth the money for now. However, the 800 bus speed and support for dual channel DDR 400 is important in improving the performance.

(2) Memory

    First the easy question: how much memory. A minimum of 256 MB but 512 MB is better.

    There are 3 types of memory: SDRAM, DDR, and RDRAM ( Rambus ).

    SDRAM is the old memory and is going to be obsoleted. Rambus memory is on the way out. It is expensive and most people hate it. So we are left with DDR.

    There are different DDR speeds, 266,333 and 400. Right now, most will and should use DDR 333. A more important parameter is the "latency", or CAS. Most DDR has a latency of 2.5, which, of course, is not as good as those with a latency of 2.0. If you buy memory or computer, be sure to specify memory with a latency of 2.0.

    Some people say that you should only use memory from major manufacturers. Some say it makes no difference. The difference is in the money. The major manufacturers include Corsair, Kinston, etc.

(3). The mother board and chip set

Most people did not know the importance of this. I think the mother board and the chip set is more important than the CPU. I would pay more for a better mother board and not get a faster CPU.

For most mother boards, the major manufacturers are all OK. They include Asus, Abit, and Gigabyte. You will not go wrong if you choose one of their products.

The main component of the mother board is the chip set which is the soul of the mother board.

For AMD boards, the chip set to use is "N force 2" by nVidia. Of course there are others but this is considered the best. Be careful of the number "2". There was an older chip "N Force" which is not good.

For Intel boards there are 2 chip sets : 845 PE and 865 PE.

The 865 PE chip is the latest. It goes with the forth group of CPU mentioned above. It supports dual channel DDR 400 with a bus speed of 800.

For the other CPUs, the chip set to use is the 845PE.

You can ignore the other chipsets.

(4)The video card.

The two most important companies that produces the chips are : nVidia and ATI.
NVidia has 2 series, the older G4 : including MX, Ti4200, Ti4400, Ti4600
                                The newer FX : 5200, 5600, 5800, 5900

ATI has 2 series : the older 9000, 9500, 9500 Pro, 9700, 9700 pro
                            The newer 9600, 9800, 9800 pro

The higher the number, the faster the chip and the higher the price.
The MX and the 9000 are comparable. They are good boards but not performance boards.

The most cost effective boards are the Ti4200, Fx 5200, 9500 pro or 9600 pro. They are recommended.
Boards higher than these are mostly for gamers. Only those who are crazy about 3 D computer games would need them. They cost over $200.

(5) Hard drives.

They are all very good and you may not notice any difference with different manufacturers. The important ones to look for are those drives that have 8 MB cache and RPM of 7200. Western Digital Caviar series scores the highest in bench mark testing. The code number for these drives are WDJB xxxxx.

The newest hard drives are the serial drives. They have some advantage over the traditional IDE drives. Of course they are more expensive and right it is not worth to upgrade. If you are buying the best computer, you may consider it. Right now the one serial drive on the market is from Seagate. On bench mark testing , it is not as good as the Western Digital IDE drive. The serial drive form Maxtor, series Diamond Max Plus Nine is better.

A note about cables, the serial drives have better cables and easy to install. The old IDE cables are ribbon shape and interferes with the computer case ventilation and heat dissipation. Right now, round cables are available for IDE drives and floppies as well. They cost about $10 each. If you are buying new cables, you may consider these new type of cables instead of the old ribbon shape ones.

So where do we stand in choosing a computer. Here are 3 packages for your consideration :

AMD 2400XP $90

Asus A7N8X Mother Board $109

 Intel 2.4 G (533FB) $156

Asus P4PE Mother Board $133

 Intel 2.4 G (800 FB) $189

Asus P4P800 Mother Board $145
Corsair DDR 333 CAS2.0 512 MB $136 same A pair of Corsair 400 CAS 2.0 256 MB $178
ATI 9500 Pro Video Card $179 same same
Western Digital 80 G Hard disk $103 same same
floppy drive $10
CD-DVD $40
case 350 watt $60
Key board $$9
mouse $5
speaker $40		 same same
total : $781 Total: $871 Total : $958

Of course these price are not quite accurate. They are estimates only, based on advertised price on magazine ˇĄcomputer users". These packages are probably good enough for anyone except the sophisticate professionals doing video editing etc.

You may ask how fast a computer do I need. I am using a 4 year old Pentium 3 of 500 MHz. Anything in the market today will be at least ten times faster than mine. Yet I have no problem doing whatever I want to do and do not feel the slowliness. Of course I am not doing much. Please remember that computer time may be measured in milliseconds or nanoseconds. 100 millisecond is 100 times slower than 1 millisecond. This is not to say that a fast computer will have no advantage. I was trying out the program Acrobat and tried to convert a Word file into PDF format. The file is just less than 10 alphabets. It took about 30 seconds for the job. I guess that if I want to convert this article into PDF file, it may take half an hour and a computer 10 times as fast may take only 3 minutes. So you figure it out.

By the time you read this, everything may have changed. Intel is designing a new CPU code named Prescott. It is scheduled to come out late this fall. If you need to buy a computer now it is OK. But if you can wait it may be better to wait until this Prescott chip comes up and see what it is.

These are just my non-expert opinion. Believe it at your own risk. Not responsible for misleading informations.

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