RE: CPUs...

["Ian Lowe" <ianlowe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The only one I would rule out right off bat is the Pentium D - it's
dead end
technology, in it's final throes..



The Core2 Duo is, as you say the flavour of the month, and for good reason:
it runs cooler and faster (for now) than the X2.



My own personal preference is for Intel - I have had too many
"weird"
crashes on Athlon kit, and always found it a little less stable. I have
owned quite a few Athlon based PCs, and always had odd behaviour - the two
Intel machines I have owned since I decided "bollocks to this"
have been
brilliantly stable.



After some wackiness getting Vista running (my HDD was failing, with SMART
warnings, which XP would tolerate, but vista complained about constantly,
and the Microsoft AC97 Driver BSODed.) things are now looking nice, fast
and
solid.



The power management is slick - sleep that drops the machine into S3 state
in seconds, and wakes up as fast as you can say "vista".



My money would be (and is) on the Core 2 Duo. I'm running  the E6400, not
top of the line, but plenty fast.



Ian.



From: ukha_d@xxxxxxx [mailto:ukha_d@xxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Phil Harris
Sent: 21 January 2007 14:59
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: [ukha_d] CPUs...




Right - Vista brings my 2Gb Athlon XP 2400+ machine to a crawl and I've had
a number of BSODs (the best one of which was telling me I had faulty RAM
although I can run memtest for as long as you like and it's fine) so maybe
it's time to forget reusing old hardware (I had previously been trying to
reuse stuff like DDR RAM instead of changing to DDR2) and get a bit more up
to date hardware-wise.

So - Athlon X2, Pentium D or Core 2 Duo?

I know the Core 2 Duo is the current flavour of the month but it's also
quite expensive and I don't know whether it would even be of any real
advantage to me.

I use my desktop PC for ripping DVDs, watching stuff that has been recorded
on the MCE box downstairs or DVDs off the network server, email,
bittorrent,
web browsing, MSN, IRC etc. Nothing excessively taxing except for the DVD
ripping and DVD playback I guess.

Any opinions on the pros and cons of the different processors?

Phil





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