08-21-2004, 08:26 AM
Quote:Unless you're running SDRam, 512 should be plenty.
I don't agree at all. More RAM is good. RAM has fallen so low in price that you really have no reason not to get at least 768 megs, if not a full gig. To go to a gig is like another $150 when buying top of the line ram, which is more than worth the jump up.
Quote:I don't think you should go for 64bit. These will be a necessity in a few years, but by that time, your processor will be outdated anyway. A 3200 64bit is still only 3.2 ghz, and in a few years we can expect ~7ghz proccy's. I'd reccomend a regular 3200+, non-64bit, just your standard Athlon XP.
There's lots of reasons to go to 64 bit, besides being the new updated Athlons that probably have better motherboards (lower revisions are less stable, but Athlon 64 isn't exactly bleeding edge) but here's the simplest.
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc....-103-487&depa=0
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc....-103-391&depa=0
I'll admit $150 for RAM is a step a lot of people aren't willing to take - But it should always be noted RAM upgrades are far and away the easiest of all upgrades. Just plug, and play. But $25 for a newer, better chip? Admittely the motherboard is bit more expensive, but still. The Athlon 64s are, from what I'm told, faster. When you can get something faster for less than $50 more it's probably going to be worth it.
As to the whole AMD labelling thing, is basically a response to the fact most computer customers are morons who were only buying based on clockrate. To manipulate this, Intel intentionally developed chips with higher clockrates but inferior performance than their clockrate implied based on the previous versions of the Pentium. That's likely not true now, but at the time, that was the intention. AMD responded by marketing their chips as 3200+ or what have you, and this way, attract the same attention the high clock rate P4's were managing. AMD was developing chips for performance, not for some cock-eyed advertising style.