which pc is the better deal..??

928 Views 11 Replies 7 Participants Last post by Princess Garnet, Aug 24, 2009

kenmasters1983

Discussion Starter · Aug 23, 2009

i have 2 choices one or the other which is faster an why?

first up is this one..

Newegg.com - Gateway SX2800-01 Core 2 Quad Q8200(2.33GHz) 4GB DDR3 640GB Intel GMA X4500 Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit - Desktop PCs

next up is this one.

Newegg.com - DELL Vostro 220S (464-2923) Core 2 Duo E8400(3.00GHz) 2GB DDR2 80GB Intel GMA X4500HD Windows Vista Business / XP Professional downgrade - Desktop PCs

the first one is quad-core and the 2nd one is a fast core 2 duo..

i want something future proof and thats pretty snap when editing video's.

i would put one together but looking at building a barebone and then buying a legit OS..makes it cheaper to buy a pre-built pc...

Save

1 - 12 of 12 Posts

Video editing should be faster for the Quad.

Now don't think that it is a good deal, the reason why it is at that price is for a reason, building something from scratch is always better, when buying a pre-built, usually everything put in it is cheap, meaning cheap Mobo(no OC capability), cheap PSU that could ruin ur system if trying to upgrade something, no GPU (or cheap one that's barely worth it). You basically get what you pay.

Save

Hatorijr

· #3 · Aug 23, 2009

yep thats exactly my point. you buy a premade pc and well to be blunt you get dirt cheap crap. or you can pay an arm and a leg for a half decent custom premade system too. but you want future proof, build it yourself, other wise the moment you get your pc its already out of date but that is any pc really.

Save

Princess Garnet

· #4 · Aug 23, 2009

kenmasters1983 said:
i want something future proof and thats pretty snap when editing video's.

For that, the first one is better, and it's fine for your needs. The quad core CPU will be better for video editing (although it is a slower one), and the 4GB of RAM is "decently" future proof (2GB isn't). The first one also has a larger hard drive. They both have the same onboard GPU. Just do remember that it's not quite future proof with the lack of a GPU and a PSU that will likely not take a high end GPU (but no, the PSU likely won't cause your PC to go bad).

Save

Master_DX

· #5 · Aug 23, 2009

Lord Zedeck said:
the 4GB of RAM is "decently" future proof (2GB isn't).

wow, big slap in my face. LZ that was a low blow, I'm thinking of mugging u, so be very careful, sleep with one eye open that's all I have to say.

Save

Princess Garnet

· #6 · Aug 23, 2009

I was being truthful? I thought anyone would agree that 2GB isn't future proof. I never said it was a small/bad amount to have. It's just not future proof. If people say 1GB is too little, how can you call the next step up future proof? It's tha standard, but that too is shifting up and away from 2GB. Its already been shown that having 4GB makes differences. With 64-bit, new operating systems, and things using more and more RAM, 4GB is going to be the standard very soon (if it already isn't...).

Of course, it matters little what the rest of the world and the standards say. If 2GB is enough for you, and that's all you desire, then you're set.

Save

gamefreak94

· #7 · Aug 23, 2009

I have 2GB it's enough for now, but I'm itching to get another 2GB module since DDR2 prices are creeping higher and because some newer games are starting to demand 2.5 or even 3GB if running on Vista.

Save

Hatorijr

· #8 · Aug 23, 2009

i have had 4 gb since not even half a year after i built my current pc and if made a big difference when i played crysis under vista. so i wont ever use less than 4 gb now as it does help a lot.

if anything i will have even more ram put into my next pc.

Save

Phil

· #9 · Aug 23, 2009

That's because Vista allocates and utilizes the full breath of RAM unlike XP. Disable the page filing for real fun.

Save

Princess Garnet

· #10 · Aug 23, 2009

Why, does it have a bad effect? I remember when I first installed Windows 7, on my motherboard, unless I install the Intel ACHI/RAID (or something like that) drivers, for some reason, I can't adjust the virtual memory/page file, and it's thus disabled entirely. It took me a while to realize it was disabled, but I was running it disabled with 4GB and 8GB and it never acted odd, threw errors, or anything (but this was Windows 7, not Windows Vista).

Save

bkwegoharder

· #11 · Aug 24, 2009 (Edited)

The second pc only has an 80GB HDD that is horrible.

also, I tested a few games with 2GB of ram on my vista 64bit systemn, Grand Theft Auto 4, Crysis, and definitely ARMA 2 had problems. Grand Theft Auto 4 played the best out of all of them. And this was AFTER I used Gamebooster to close all of my processes and Vista services. It cleared out 500MB of ram for me to use, and it still wasn't enough.

But for the TC, it wouldn't matter since the pcs don't have graphics cards anyway.

Oh and it isn't good to disable the page file even if you have lots of ram

Coding Horror: Running XP with the pagefile disabled

So, if you have a lot of RAM, you don't need a pagefile, right? Not necessarily. When certain applications start, they allocate a huge amount of memory (hundreds of megabytes typically set aside in virtual memory) even though they might not use it. If no pagefile (i.e., virtual memory) is present, a memory-hogging application can quickly use a large chunk of RAM. Even worse, just a few such programs can bring a machine loaded with memory to a halt. Some applications (e.g., Adobe Photoshop) will display warnings on startup if no pagefile is present.

My advice, therefore, is not to disable the pagefile, because Windows will move pages from RAM to the pagefile only when necessary. Furthermore, you gain no performance improvement by turning off the pagefile. To save disk space, you can set a small initial pagefile size (as little as 100MB) and set a high maximum size (e.g., 1GB) so that Windows can increase the size if needed. With 1GB of RAM under normal application loads, the pagefile would probably never need to grow.

It's just a few GBs of HDD space even on small HDDs it's not like it makes a major difference.

See less See more

Save

Princess Garnet

· #12 · Aug 24, 2009

I didn't intentionally disable it. It was disabled from the start due to a lack of drivers (alot of Maximus Formula and some other motherboard users are having this "issue" in Windows Vista/Windows 7). Once I figured that out, and why, I corrected that and enabled it. I didn't get any errors during the time it was off though, even with 4GB, and that consisted of some Photoshop, Firefox, gaming, etc., etc.

I've only ran into an out of memory situation twice that I can recall, and ironically, I had the page file enabled in both cases. Both cases were years ago and were under Windows XP, when I knew little about page filing.

In one case, I had 128MB of RAM, and I was running some map creator tool for the Red Alert 2 game and some other small applications, and Windows gave me the bubble notification (upon loadup of the map creator tool) about low virtual memory. I adjusted it (and that's when I read up on virtual memory more), and then it was fine.

In the other case, I had 384MB of RAM, and a window of Firefox, an instance of Adobe Photoshop (an older version, maybe 7), and Winamp, maybe more but at least those three, and it didn't throw an error, but the computer basically froze outright (not literally, but it was so unresponsive that it may as well have). I had to do a hard reset.

See less See more

Save

1 - 12 of 12 Posts

This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.

Top Contributors this Month