New Budget PC, Which Processor?

[Smiler]

Hello folks,

I'm looking to replace the old (probably vintage, it's past it's 8th birthday) home PC and have about £500 to spend. When I looked into this a few years ago AMD was the way to go as Intel seemed to be trying to continously develop old technology and spend lots of cash on flashy telly adverts.
With this in mind I was narrowing my search down to AMD machines. However, I have just read a thread on another forum that suggests that the roles have now reversed (I guess all that advertising has paid off) and Intel are now the better choice. Is this true for the lower end of the scale?

I also have a question about multi core processors and there speeds. Does the speed of the processor quoted count for each individual core or is it the total of all cores? Which are the ones to look out for and which should be avoided as old models being pedalled off cheap?

One of the machines that has caught my eye is the Hewlett Packard MS215uk. For those not familiar with it it does away with the tower and is built into the back of the monitor. It comes with an 64 bit AMD Athlon x2 3250e 1.5GHz processor which doesn't sound so impressive when similar traditional machines are avaliable with quad core AMD chips with 2.8GHz. I'm not sure if the CPU can be upgraded either due to possible cooling issues. I've seen the machine at my local PC Land and it is silent suggesting no cooling fans.

Sorry for such a long post, any help is much appreciated.

Cheers,

Smiler.

 

[Smiler]

Thanks very much for the replies everyone, your time is much appreciated.

I have a keyboard and a new mouse, the screen works but is old (and beige!)

I have since been shown an alternative route to go down, a second hand HP Workstation.

The ones I've found have been Hewlett Packard XW6000 models with twin dual core Intel Zeon 2.8GHz processors, reasonable (apparently) graphics cards, 2GB ram and a fairly small hard drive. They seem to average at about £175 delivered. That seems to be a lot of machine for not a lot of money.

 

[Smiler]

I imagine it is a bit old now but it's high spec old so my thinking is would its performance be up to that of a £500 single dual core processor machine?

What is ECC Ram?

 

[Smiler]

Those old workstations will be a none starter then.

The PC is used presently mainly for internet work including working on my own website and photo editing for the above. I also intend in the future to move into video editing but this may be a little while off yet.

I basically want something as quick as I can get for the money with a reasonably capable graphics card and preferably wireless though having said that I do have a wireless router so maybe that's not actualy so important.

I don't use it to play games or to watch films etc... I have a perfactly good telly/DVD set up in the same room for that and I'm not bothered about sound either. Al my musice is played through my Hi-Fi (seperates so proper Hi-Fi).

Ta very much for the help, much food for thought. Thanks for taking the time to knock up that spec list too Easyrider.

Just as an alternative, would I be better off getting a secondhand laptop?

 

[Smiler]

I've just seen your home cinema build thread, very jelose that you even managed to get away with it! My wife certainly wouldn't let me do that to our living room!

 

[Smiler]

Thanks very mucgh for that, your time is appreciated as I don't yet know what to look out for, especialy when it comes to mother boards.

However, I have hit a new problem, the funds have dried up! Sadly one of my fleet of vehicles has decided that it's been neglected for too long and has thrown a wobbly that requires a few purchases to be made to fix it. I'm afraid the cars come before the computer so I'm going to have to wait.

However, I have taken on board all that you lot have tought me and will certainly be refering back to this thread when the time comes to make a purchase.

Thanks again everyone for all your help.

Smiler.