hello all. i have a choice for a pc on my budget, and i can't decide which would be faster. i surf the net, play games, office, etc. option 1) dell precision 530 with 2 x xeon 1.8ghz processors, 512mb RD RAM, 18 GB scsi with ide as well (i have a spare ide drive to toss in), dvd burner, agp port etc. $90 option 2) hp workstation with pentium 4 2.8ghz, 512mb ddr ram, no hard drive, dvd burner, agp port etc. $95 what do you think? Do not try. Do, or do not. There is no try.

Option 2, RDRAM is very rare and quite expensive, while DDR ram is plentiful and still quite cheap. My Amiga 500 Rocks!!!

I'd pick the second PC if I were you. Why? -The Netburst architecture absolutely sucks ass (pardon my French) at clock speeds below 2.6-3.0GHz/FSB below 800MHz. A 1.8GHz Xeon is gonna give you performance roughly equivalent to that of a 1.8GHz P4, which is nothing to write home about. The second Xeon isn't gonna save you from the perils of low-clocked Netburst performance. The 2.8GHz in the second PC will give you much higher performance than the two Xeons in the first. It uses a much more common socket too, which will allow you to upgrade the processor in the future, should you decide to do so. -RDRAM is very expensive. The 2nd machine will allow you to upgrade its memory for much less cash, since it uses common DDR memory. The lean, mean, movie playing P3 machine P3-S 1400 @ 1.66GHz, 158MHz FSB 2GB PC2700 DDR 7950GT AGP Optoma 1280x720 projector JBL 5.1 amp and speakers Now storing 114 HD movies

Never buy anything with RDRAM! It's the biggest mistake I ever made.

Since you are obviously not going to be able to play any of the demanding (newer) title games & hopefully won't be gullible enough to try to upgrade them, either one will do as a general purpose PC. If I was you, I'd pick the first machine -- for your light computing needs -- since it seems to be a complete package & it's the cheaper of the two vs the second machine that's missing the HDD.

thanks all! whilst on my way to click buy on the first machine, i noticed another just like it for $20 more, but this one has 1gb of RD-RAM. should i spend the extra 20 bucks? i think i should, seeing's how RD-RAM is expensive and i've heard it's pretty quick. hey, with 2 processors, i just may barely be able to run windows vista! lol. and i also noticed, these xeon chips have hyper-threading, which windows will see as 4 cores/threads! *drools*** i think i'll take the second one! what are your thoughts? No try! Do. Or do not. There is no try.

now wait a minute! i keep on finding better machines as i go! i found a dell machine with dual xeon @ 2ghz, a 36gb 10,000 rpm scsi drive and 2GB RD-RAM! now that's a lot of ram. this computer looks like it'll haul ass big time. with taxes and shipping, it'll cost $268. should i splurge, or would the $110 system be good for a while? No try! Do. Or do not. There is no try.