Athlon X2 or Phenom X3

[ETC]

Hi All,

Im in the market for a new desktop this week and I cant decide between theese two, Its either going to be a 5200+ Athlon X2 or the 8550 Phenom Triple Core any thoughts or opinion on which is more suited. I dont really like Intel chips so will be going for one of the two

My only needs are Basic video conversion, photoshop and so the missus can play the sims 3.

the phenom is ?50 more than the Athlon
theya are both running Vista (basic or premium - I cant remember)

any advice will be great
cheers

[briareos_kerensky]

Phenom X3, its extra core will benefit greatly in video conversion.

[abigsmurf]

Make sure it's a Phenom II, the Phenom I's aren't too great. An extra core can shave a big chunk of time off of video conversion

[ETC]

cheers for the advice so far makes sense to me, I think its only a phenom 1 will that make a huge difference?

would I see a large difference biting the bullet and paying £120 more than the X2 / £70 more than the X3 to get the Phenom Quad or is that overkill for my needs

cheers

[abigsmurf]

Depends on the motherboard really. If you've an AM2 board you'll have to go with the Phenom 1's anyway but if you've an AM3 you get a much bigger boost with Phenom IIs. The best budget PII X3's are the 910 and 920 (around £90).

As for 4 cores over 3, you tend to get diminishing returns in most things the more cores you go. The only noticable boost for you would be video converting (would probably knock about 15% of the time off).

It's always tricky balancing power with cost. There's almost always something better if you just spend that little bit extra. It's a case of how much you would be happy spending and how much the boosts affect your general enjoyment.

[ETC]

Depends on the motherboard really. If you've an AM2 board you'll have to go with the Phenom 1's anyway but if you've an AM3 you get a much bigger boost with Phenom IIs. The best budget PII X3's are the 910 and 920 (around £90).

As for 4 cores over 3, you tend to get diminishing returns in most things the more cores you go. The only noticable boost for you would be video converting (would probably knock about 15% of the time off).

It's always tricky balancing power with cost. There's almost always something better if you just spend that little bit extra. It's a case of how much you would be happy spending and how much the boosts affect your general enjoyment.

Cheers,

at the minute im only running a Athlon Barton 2600 with 1gig Ram (1-2hr ish to convert a vid file from Camcorder/Video input), so think any will see a pretty big difference, think Im veering to the Phenom X3 seems more than enough for me

Does this seem ok

http://www.comet.co.uk/shopcomet/product/547417/ACER-98.3SM7Z.UCP/tab/specification

I know i could probably build it cheaper for less but would rather buy a complete one in shop (especially as this one has a free Windows 7 upgrade)

[abigsmurf]

That's about as cheap as you'd find a spec like that in a prebuilt. It's a slightly low clock speed but I'd imagine overclock it about 10% with little extra heat or reliability issues. If you don't need a monitor, there's a souped up base unit only version of that with more ram, faster CPU and bigger HDD on ebuyer.

Be warned, it's Acer. There's a reason their stuff tends to be cheaper (don't buy an extended warrenty though, they're worthless for PCs). Also, comet WILL fill that PC with crapware.

[ETC]

That's about as cheap as you'd find a spec like that in a prebuilt. It's a slightly low clock speed but I'd imagine overclock it about 10% with little extra heat or reliability issues. If you don't need a monitor, there's a souped up base unit only version of that with more ram, faster CPU and bigger HDD on ebuyer.

Be warned, it's Acer. There's a reason their stuff tends to be cheaper (don't buy an extended warrenty though, they're worthless for PCs). Also, comet WILL fill that PC with crapware.

Do Acer really have that bad a rep? hmm might stay off that one, the crapware i was expecting (have a copy of vista ultimate sitting here waiting for a clean install with whatever crap they give me on it and kapersky).

[abigsmurf]

Build quality is less important for desktops than laptops but it can still be a factor. There's always the prospect that they've put in slow ram or a 5400rpm HDD to save costs. Best thing to do is to look for some reviews and benchmarks (although pay attention to differing specs in the review model)

[Brad]

We had half a dozen Acer desktops at work. Every single one died with a motherboard failure.

[ETC]

Thanks all for advice, in the end I have decided to go with this

Core 2 E7200 processor
3GB DDR2 RAM
320Gb SATA hard drive
NVidia Inno3D GeForce 9400GT graphics

(went to the darkside of intel in the end )

so is this ok for what I paid (£479) - got a monitor with it but nowt special - standard 17/19" TFT

[abigsmurf]

word of advice, if you've handed over the cash, NEVER look around to see if it was a good deal or not afterwards.

[ETC]

I havent handed over the £££ until tonight, meant to ask of ot was worth 479

[briareos_kerensky]

I don't know the average prices in the UK, but it seems a bit expensive; also the 3 GBs of DDR2 sound strange, the Core 2 Duo operate in dual channel, not in triple channel, so 4 GBs would be better the difference in price is very low.

[abigsmurf]

http://www.meshcomputers.com/Default.aspx?PAGE=PRODUCTCONFIGPAGE&USG=PRODUCT&ENT=PRODUCT&KEY=559823

Upgrade the CPU and graphics card and you've a superior system for slightly less (I wouldn't recommend staying with that integrated card, the other ones aren't too hot but that's pretty bad).