Re: [tlug] Is Prime PC a good enough place to buy a PC

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

>>>>> "Edward" == Edward Middleton <edwardmiddleton@example.com> writes:

    Edward> On Sun, 2005-10-16 at 20:23 +0900, Ian Wells wrote:

    >> It's gone beyond the point at which processor speeds makes much
    >> difference to bog standard XP stuff.  Possibly Linux too, I've
    >> not had the opportunity to run it on a fast processor...

    Edward> I find XP runs like a dog unless you have a powerful
    Edward> system, I guess it just depends on your threshold of pain.

But "powerful" is a vector quantity.  As Bill Clinton wouldn't dare
say, "It's the memory, stupid."  And if it isn't that, it's your disk
system.

I'll admit that there's a perceptible difference between a 450MHz P2
and a 2.4GHz Athlon, but the Athlon box also has 1GB RAM where the P2
has 256MB, and a 133MHz disk controller where the P2 has a 33MHz
legacy bus.  (I don't have the controller cache size offhand, but that
matters a lot, too.)

Basically, for day-to-day work, there's just no return in putting
money into a state of the art processor.  (Well, JByrne will tell us
you can contribute the cycles to some hash-cracking effort, which is
just another way of saying the same thing!)

(N.B.  According to Tom's Hardware, there's really no point in PCIx16
for graphics, either; the rest of the system bottlenecks *long* before
the potential difference between AGP 8X and PCI x16 can be realized in
hardware.)


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