I bought a geek magazine yesterday called PC Pro. I'm hardly a pro, but the article on Vista caught my eye. Looks good. Are most pro-Vista here, or anti?

Anyway, I've been researching latest releases recently - with my new system purchase early next year in mind. I was amazed to hear of CPUs such as AMD 4800x2 the other day. That blew me away as I compared it to my old 2400.

But in this magazine there was mention of the Intel Duel Duo (I can't remember the spec). Another competitor bla blaaed about how it wasn't a 'real' 4 chip CPU because they are not all on one doo daa - which kind of made sense.

I looked at a graph and this Intel chip was winning by a long way with an analysis of its performance. Visually (on the graph), it looks amazing.

Well, that's it really. Not sure what you think of this muddle. Not sure if I'm really asking anything. I am sure that I really don't know what I'm talking about though.

I guess I thought I'd just throw that up for discussion - and see if anybody says 'Don't buy that! It smells of farts after a month'. Did I read it right? I presently think I'd be silly NOT to get one.

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Ask Forcey, hes got shares in Intel (well actually he worked there for e ayear and has a dual jobbie)

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"I wish my lawn was emo, so it would cut itself...."

Hi Flit

Well what PC Pro and all the other magzines are saying is correct. The Core 2 (not the duel duo..although i do like that name) is at the minute pounding AMD into the floor.

I'll be the first to admit we were selling a shit product for well over a year untill this came out, but when it did AMD lowered all their prices on their chips as there was no way they could sell them at the prices they were at.
So it really depends what you want, and how much you have to spend.

If you want an amazing pc that will make games/work so much better then I would say get a Core2 system. Have a read of the magazines out there and see what they recommend, after all they do extensive tests on them so generally they know what they are on about.

Im running an X6800 (top of the range one) and its certainly the best PC I've had. Quiet, stable, fast. Infact my CPU's idle temp is 38c. You would be silly not to get one.

Of course you can actually pick up a fairly decent AMD system now as their prices have plumented, so thats always worth looking into if your budget is a little tight.

Dual core btw is 2 processors on one physical piece of silicon inside the chip. This means they cna interact with each other fast, and share things such as the cache memory.

Little tip from me, if you can wait untill around january time Intel will be realising their Kentsfield processor (http://tomshardware.co.uk/2006/09/09/pr ... processor/)
which means that their Core2 prices should drop a bit.

any more questions feeel free to ask

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http://www.savenetradio.org

What you presently think is correct in one sense and false in another.

Thay are very good chips and the cheaper ones are excellent value for money, very good power consumption, dont require exotic noisy cooling and will be very good at general tasks for a long time yet.

On the other hand without AMD's innovation over the last couple of years Intel would be chucking out the same old inefficient NetBurst chips ala Prescott, chuck an egg at one and it'll over-react. Though we will probably be waiting for a while yet for an AMD chip to compete.

All in all it is a pretty good time to upgrade, all this talk of quad cores really isn't necassary for the home user and gamer.

That said I have been testing Vista at work and allthough very nice in some departments it does have some failings. It is a resource hog, with all its new security, indexing and GUI features it fills 1 gig very quickly. I quickly grew to dislike all the animated windows. User Access Control became a chore. I had to test legacy apps and it took a lot of work to get them going. Office 2007 is maybe a step too far for 95% of users. The Start menu is annoying. Gaming is a bit rubbish atm on it as well. Development for Vista is a bit sketchy atm as Visual Studio 2005 is not fully support under Vista cause they cant get the debugger to work with vista's security features properly and the development tools are still basically in beta stage.

Vista works ok on a P2.8 with integrated graphics card and shows all of the Aero interface features although there is a bit of lag. I do like the seperation of system processes and users under different UserID and the secutiry features should make it a more secure OS. I like the structure of the file system and the means of navigation around file explorer and the ability to save certain views and searches in a favourites folder.

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Thanks for the tips fellas. I will probably get that intel chip - that is if it isn't confused with 5 more variations by the time i get round to it.

Vista too, I've heard good and bad. In my (ignorant) opinion, the good outweigh the bad and I shall be brave and use it.

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I recently bought an Intel Core 2 Duo.
And damn, it runs nice.
My CSS will not lag, even tho im downloading 3 files, and unzipping a file
And its VERY fast, compared to the Athlon CPU. So you get a lot more for your money!

Vista.. Im pro-vista, as you could guess. Why? The new kernel, which is more stable.
It also have alot of new features minded for performence.
You can compare this, with the DOS -> Windows 95 step. Its a HUGE difference.
Some might argue thats its a bit slower. But you can judge it before RTM(Which rumors says is today, or friday, but normal people cant get it before January, inbetween that, they will focus on making the product even more secure, stable and fast)

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Codito Ergo Sum | Even i, who have no clue about social life

me too the nuts!

Flit!

Do get the E6600 or higher as they use the Conroe processing chip...Whereas the E6300 & E6400 use the lesser Allendale chip.

Ive seen many retailers advertise the 6300 and the 6400 as a Conroe....

PS Got the E6600 myself and it is astounding! The time required to extract a file from WinRar is fantastic and the video compression is easily the quickest thing. If I was converting a 700Mb avi file for use on an iPod it takes around 30-40 Minutes, whereas my old AMD Athlon 3200+ XP would take around 2 to 3 hours!

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The Road!

yup, go for an intel chip

Dr.Strangelove - AMD 4400x2 user

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m
mmmmYou sir, are a swaggering addlepated jackanapes!
m

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The Pancreas of S.T.F.U. | Never take life too seriously - nobody gets out alive anyway.
Disco_jim: um..... I have no excuse. | Chips: Thank the Beef | Rev Dr: Beef, I think i wee'd a little

Priceless

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Codito Ergo Sum | Even i, who have no clue about social life

lmao nice pic

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http://www.savenetradio.org

lol @ the pic ...the transformation will be complete when i install that chip

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Which did one buy?

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The Road!