lOOKING FOR SOME HELP.......IS IT WORTH PAYING AN EXTRA $100 TO UPGRADE
FROM A:
AMD SEMPRON 2.OGHZ,1600MHZ FRONT BUS,256 CACHE OR
iNTEL CELERON, 2.4 GHZ,FRONT BUS 400HZ,256 CHACHE
UPGRADE + $100 TO:
INTEL PENTIUM 4, 2.93GHZ,FRONT BUS 533MHZ,1MB CACHE
THANKS FOR ANY ADVICE
MARK
Depends on what you're doing with the system.
Usually, "no", but then again, the more expensive any parts
are, the less often they're worth the added cost on a
relative scale.
If you'd just put down $400 on a new gaming video card
though, it's pretty much manditory to get the fastest CPU
the budget allows else you're not getting the value out of
the video card.
Ultimately you should focus on your most common and/or most
demanding uses of the system then seek benchmarks of these
tasks. If it's something like Photoshop, you also have to
consider the version as older versions didn't even have the
P4 optimizations. Likewise with other older apps, the
Sempron architecture will gain ground against the P4 or the
Celeron.
Of course there's also the rest of the system. If your work
is mostly disk-bound then that $100 might be better spend on
a newer/larger/faster (whichever applies) hard drive... or
some memory or ??? Towards that end, it can be seen in
perspective of the value of the system. If it's all made
out of old leftover parts, it makes a lot less sense to
splurge on a more expensive CPU unless the specific tasks
clearly warrant it.
