On Thu, 27 Oct 2005 23:28:54 GMT, no@spam.invalid (tluxon) wrote:

>Well, I hope I didn't make a mistake I'm going to regret.
>
>I had a one time opportunity to buy an Abit IS7 and P4 3.0GHz 800MHz
>FSB Northwood combination for $230, but I had to decide before I saw
>any replies to my previous post. If I had to do it over again I'm
>sure I would go the A64 3200+ route. In fact, I'm thinking about
>eBay-ing this one to cut my "losses" and going forward with the A64
>3200+ Venice plan.

I dont think it would be worth it. Frankly your needs are really
modest from what you posted so you would probably be happy with
whatever you got. If you ebay it - theres the possibility you could
lose some money and its a hassle so its really not worth it since what
you got isnt bad at all.

The two issues you mention , multitaksing and upgradeability are
reasonably important depending on the price of the choice you make but
since you already got something , its worth selling just because of
the two issues. Your concerns about multitasking --- when I mention
it I mean in the context of what heavy users encounter not the avg
guy. Frankly once again for avg multitasking I didnt have huge
problems even with my old barton athlon XP or even when I was using a
1 gig ancient athlon for a while when I was waiting for all my 939
system parts which I had to do for over a month.

Im talking about having int explorer open, word processor, several
instances of agent a newsreader and even other stuff. Thats NO problem
as long as you have adequate memory. I have 1 gig thinking about more.

BUT --- if you do video encoding, video capturing (Ive got a TV tuner
card) and other things that puts a heavy load on your system. My
athlon XP barton was actually quite fast but it would get really
bogged down with video. The Athlon 64 is noticeably better in this
aspect. On top of that Im using RR cable which has 5 meg speeds now
and that seems to have an effect sometimes. Also newsgroups are
constantly expanding and news services are constantly increasing
retention. The new AGENT now is a system hog. just downloading all the
headers in a big group takes forever and searching newsgroup for text
and compressing and purging all seem to really bog my system down.
Lots of areas seem to hog my system more and more nowadays - BUT the
avg person doesnt do these things so its not a critcal thing for them.
If you do these thing then you should get the most powerful system for
your $$ and in fact even think of a dual core . In that case an
upgradeable board is a factor. But for just having a spreadsheet open,
word processing, tax program, simple newsreader etc - it should be no
big deal for any of the processors unless the spreadsheet is huge.



>I have a question about the RAM. The IS7-E only has 2 DDR slots so I
>don't want to make a mistake on this. I'd like to start the kids out
>on 512MB of RAM to see how it does and then up them to 1GB if/when it
>becomes needed. I believe I should be
>able to put a single stick of 512MB PC3200 DDR400 dual channel memory
>in there add another one later, but I've seen some insist that DDR
>memory must be installed in pairs. What's the real scoop on this?

For the intel? Check your manual itll say what slots to use but Ive
read the same stuff as the AMD if you run dual channel you get two but
you can run one. You get a slight speed boost when you run dual
channel.

Some sticks out now are not very compatible. I was looking at another
article on some Pent systems where a guy claimed there were lots of
problems with incompatibilities.

Read these reviews at Tiger Direct on some PNY they are offering for
10 bucks 512 stick 3200 aftrer rebate


http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...ab=11&NoMapp=0

I dont want to exaggerate for one thing maybe thats why its 10 bucks
AR. They point out the ULRA version seems to work OK with many
systems.

I had lots of problems with thew new generation of Kingston PNY and
CENTON 3200 DDR CL 3 vs my older 3200 CL 2.5 from the same companies.
However many dont have problems at least running it alone not with
other memory. On my system the sticks tended to do OK alone but went
wacko with my older sticks.