This is a fascinating subject. i.e. cost vs performance ratio ?
Ages ago I read a piece on micro hardware purchasing, written by a quite
respected "computer" person, (quite a few years ago - can't remember who it
as), advising a smallish embryonic business on budgeting and specification
of a micro computer system which would fulfil their business needs, ...and
somewhere in his deliberations he said something like, "...think of a
figure you can just about stretch to, for your computer system, then
multiply it by at least 3, ...and that's how much you really ought to spend
!" ...it was a really entertaining piece - wish I could find it again.
Regarding the home PC at least, I've never been too keen on the 'often
heard' *advice*, "If you're only ever going to do a little word-processing,
emailing, and occasional web-surfing...you don't need a top of the range
machine." (and more often than not, the person espousing this view is
quietly drooling and looking forward to getting their hands on almost as
much money for their "old" system, as was recently paid for their bang up to
date PC system !!!!!!) ...this is unarguably a very dirty trick to play on
people !
i.e. I've come across too many people who have been ripped off by having
paid FAR TOO MUCH for an older generation PC, which the buyer quickly
"out-grows," and eventually discovers cannot be upgraded and needs to be
completely replaced ! IMHO, the money paid for that older PC, almost
always, would have been MUCH better spent on a much newer and more up to
date PC.
I see that Galen Somerville, (on this thread), had a Intel Pentium D 935
3.2. I currently have one in my main PC - I was impressed with it,
initially, ...then for months it didn't seem as swift, ...then cpuZ revealed
that my bios / "auto" settings were setting a 133mhz fsb ...once I'd sorted
that out it - the machine once again was heaven
. Prior to that, I
discovered, (whilst fitting a heat-pipe cooler), that the grey thermal paste
on the stock Intel heat-sink had not spread out enough and appeared quite
dry and thick, and was obviously acting as a heat-barrier instead of
heat-conductor ! This makes me suspect that if I had simply replaced the
compound on the stock h/s/fan, it would have been perfectly adequate, and I
often wonder how much of the "talk," ages ago, about Pentium D's running hot
was indeed due to this REALLY bad quality h/s compound on the Intel stock
h/s fans, rather than the themal specifications and characteristics of the
cpu itself !
Speedfan currently reports my D935 cpu core/cpu ambient/system - case
internal?, temperatures, respectively, 38/32/30. Admittedly it's not doing
very much while I'm writing this but, even at heavy-ish load for prolonged
periods, it doesn't go much above 43 deg. C (core)
I would have a liked an "old" Intel Pentium D 965 to put into my main PC,
but, they're almost all gone, and nowadays rarely appear on ebay. The last
batch that appreared on ebay were up for sale for the ludicrous sum of,
around about, £130, so it would obviously be daft to buy one at that price
when my board supports lots of CoreDuo's.
I'm currently tempted by the
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 2.66GHz 1066MHz FSB Socket 775 8MB L2 Cache (2 x 4MB
(4MB per core pair)) Retail £159.99 from ebuyer.com
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/common_cpus.html ...my poor old D935 only
scores 847 here :-(
Q6600 £117.99 mmm !
Core2 6700 £110.22 mmmm !
....I'm doing it again i.e. lusting after hardware I don't need !!!
regards, Richard
