God! what AM I TYPING!! corrections: higher ram inspite of lesser CPU speed will be better than a higher ram, lesser CPU must read: higher ram inspite of lesser CPU will be better than lesser ram with higher CPU. If am choosing between 700MHz/128MB and 1GHz/256MB for a home user I'd w/o second thought go with 700MHz or evev if its 600MHz/256 MB Must read: ....700MHz/256MB and 1GHz/128 MB...I'd go for 700MHz/256MB just woke up from sleep and had something else on mind...sorry! Good Luck and Happy Computing, Kailas Shastry, A brave man is a fool in the midst of cowards.<b

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Now coming to gaming, NFS7 is runs like a powerpoint slide show on my machine: Athlon 2000+ 1.67GHz overclocked to 1.875GHz with 150MHz core. 333FSB 256MB DDR On board 32MB Savage S4 DDR Video card. On a friend's machine, NFS7 is atleast playable: Athlon 2000+ running at stock. His board cant o/c. 256MB DDR onboard Nveida 32MB card. What are you getting at?? No duh that ur machine is going to run better, you have a higher clock speed. And onboard video just plain sucks, everyone knows that. For your point to be valid, make the two machines the same vid card, and put one with higher speed with less ram, and a machine with lower speed and more ram. That's like me saying that i am going to put together the exact same systems, but the only difference is i am going to put a p3 in one and a p4 in another, then saying "after careful tests and some consideration, i have deteremined the p4 out performs the p3" Things to take into consideration: RAM-today, at least 512mb-PC2700 or higher CPU-The set of instructions it uses for what you want to do(as i stated in my other statement) Vid Memory-The higher the vid mem, the more it can store for temp instructions, which then the less CPU it has to use Vid Speed-The faster it can recall those instructions from its RAM the better the vid card will be

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For your point to be valid, make the two machines the same vid card, and put one with higher speed with less ram, and a machine with lower speed and more ram. Then what do you think will happen? Let us consider machine A and B: A: 1800+, 512MB B: 2400+, 256MB All other h/w and even s/w same. Which machine will perform better? i) for gaming ii) for home purpose iii) image, audio, video editing Good Luck and Happy Computing, Kailas Shastry, A brave man is a fool in the midst of cowards.<b

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i) I suppose it depends on the game. If you're running little else, I suspect you'd find some games that don't need 512Mb RAM but benefit from >1800 CPU speeds. ii) Generally 512Mb would be better than 256Mb, but could you say the same for 1Gb vs. 512Mb with a faster CPU? Such is the danger of over-generalizing. iii) I guess editing would favor more RAM in most cases, but if more of your "editing" is re-encoding than manipulating, you'll want the faster CPU. I think the problem is that a one page article might be able to help "most" people, but it takes years of following PC hardware to know what's best in special cases. In some places, I'd like to see more warnings about all the assumptions you're making. In others, you need to address more issues affecting performance. For example, even your last paragraph misses a key point. Early P4s were slower than P3s because of the longer pipeline. P4s only became faster when clocked sufficiently higher. The new Prescott core suffers the same problem.

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agreed, my article is perhaps "over generalised". This is meant for people who dont have idea of comp specs and what they mean. I am saying in my article that higher cpu speed alone need not and in most cases does not ensure better performance. Special cases are special after all... I will edit my article taking inputs from this thread and also pondering abt it with the inputs given by giggles via email. Will try and make it less generalised. The ideal situation would be high end CPU, ram and vid card. But since everything in the world cannot be ideal. In such a case we decide which combination of h/w would be better than others. As stated by others, gaming performance depends on cpu, gpu, ram, hd access speed. If a game is written to use CPU instructions then a good CPU is the way to go. If a game is written to use gpu instructions then the vid card with its memory becomes primary and the CPU secondary. Leaving aside games, for most home users what would be a better combo? thats the question I am trying to address. Thanks a lot for the inputs, will add credit to contributers here while I edit my article. Also, following this thread. Good Luck and Happy Computing, Kailas Shastry, A brave man is a fool in the midst of cowards.<b

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i)Both ii)A iii)neither, cause amd supports 3dnow and not sse But we can finally agree on something. lol. And i hoped this helped Christian, really, i do.

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Well, being as memory is less expensive to upgrade as opposed to a processor, I would beleive configeration B would be the choice to most reading this post. Knowing that s/he made the wiser choice, s/he will sit there computing patiently playing and or running less "Memory intensive" applications until that other Moduel of RAM arrives. REMEMBER: u can have all the Ram in the world, but it would serve no Purpose if the brain of the operations (processor) can not process that data or perform the calculations required. A note to the original poster:. There are numeruos threads here related to your inquire one of which is just two threads down. It appears that many are posting this question just to laugh at Intel & AMD people duke it out. I have no objection...lol We only buy hardware so we can run software on it.

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Crickey... what a lot of waffle! Ok. Here's the difference. Amd are made by AMD Pentiums are made by Intel. Other than that, you cannot define the differences, because it is all relative. Consider the processor the GASOLINE. You put gas in a Jeep. It'll be able to drive on all terrain, through rivers, and won't let you down in slippery mud. You put the same gas in a Dodge Viper GTS. The viper will be able to roar to 60mph in about 3 secs. It'll corner like it's on rails. What brand of cpu you put in your machine is only part of the equasion. It is affected by the motherboard chipset, ram speed (a science in itself), hard drive speed, hard drive interface type (ATA, SATA, SCSI, ATA RAID, SATA RAID, SCSI RAID), AMOUNT of RAM, choice of operating system, and how much crap you load onto your machine that all loads when you boot it up. And if that wasn't enough, then you have the fun of choosing a graphics card. A headache these days as they all have pros and cons depending on the game you want to play. Pick your amount of cash to spend. Then come right back here and I am sure lots of people will advise you on the best deals they feel are out there.

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...which is basically what i was saying... Good Luck and Happy Computing, Kailas Shastry, A brave man is a fool in the midst of cowards.<b

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You'll NEVER know the difference. Buy what's in your budget. 2600+ 1GB Ram 120GB 7200rpm 200GB 7200rpm 128mb Radeon 9200 USB2/Firewire CDRW DVD+/-RW 330 watt PSU XPsp1 19" Flat Viewsonic Wireless Key/Mouse

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