Yeah , I just got a 2.8 P4 8250 . There wasn't much difference between that and the 2.6 in price and I doubt that I'd notice any preformance difference, but I just had to have the 2.8, lol. The hyperthreading jobs are still a bit pricey, but will come down in time. Don't you just love all these names they come up with? I wonder if they have a dept. that just dreams up names for new products.

You need to buy a processor according to what you are going to use the PC for, I do some online gaming so I went as high as I could afford with a good video card of course. Generally speaking, if you get a computer that will run todays games good , it will do whatever else you want it to, except maybe the dishes, lol.  That's my thinking anyways.

I usually keep a PC for two years before buying a new one and I like to have one where I don't need to read the system requirments on software boxes before I buy it.

Not a thing strange about that at all. Welcome to computers!!! The 2.4's are cheap as dirt EVERYWHERE...its in the 2.66 where you get into the "elite" league of processors at the current time. Therefore, you will pay the price. However, intel is working on an 800mhz FSB P 4 and rumors are its gonan be over 3.4ghz with hyperthreading. Can you imagine? Its never gonna stop until we have supergigahertz or somethig.

There is no noticable difference between a 2.4GHz and a 2.66GHz in most situations.  Even if you did get the faster chip doing intensive processor-oriented tasks, you'll only realize a difference of a few seconds.  Greatone is correct.  You will only be paying the money to impress a couple of geeks for a couple of months.

(I sold my Dell and built a system using a 2.4GHz system.  I immediately started overclocking it to see what it could do.  I went from 2.4 to 2.53 to 2.66 to 2.8 to 2.95 to 3.06.  I only started to see a reasonable difference in speed going from 2.4 to 2.95 and 3.06.  There was no real difference between the 2.4 and the 2.8 except for benchmark points.)

The price differential is far less if you configure on the Small Business site. 8250 prices are currently far less there as well,
by about $500 for faster processors.

     I've been to three Intel Conferences for work and here's the deal.  You may have already figured it out, they work in threes.  2.0-2.53 are cheap now, 2.66-2.8 are a hair down from their debut price, and 3.06 is on top.  These are the three current tiers.  When intel's consumer lines surpass 3.06 it will be 2.66-2.8 cheap, 3.06 hovering around the same, and 3.?? is on top.  It's actually a very smart ploy on their part, right now you want that 3.06Ghz P4, right? and when the next set of P4's are availible you'll say well i don't really need the new ones, i'll wait for the 3.06 to come down in price.  So then another set of processors come out, 3.06Ghz will be cheap, you'll be on the bottom tier and want the top.  Eventually your current system is so far behind in your mind, that you breakdown and get a new system and spring for the Top 'O' The Line P4 (or P5 or ?  for that matter).  It's a cycle you can only escape by going the AMD route, but in the end Intel usually profits from this.

 

 

I wouldn't touch an AMD system with a 18 foot pole. Theres too much controversy over how well they perform, how many GHZ your actually getting, what is beats, which applications, etc etc....sounds to me like AMD will say anything except the facts.

 

It's called "merchandising"  !!!!!

Bev.

The 800FSB should be available on the P4 3.2GHz and the release date will be on Feb 23, 2003. Also, the computers price will go down too.

Wouldn't it be better too wait (maybe 12 or 18 months) for the latest and greatest system to become the not so latest and greatest system and then buy?  Wouldn't you be able to save quite alot of money and still have a real good system?

CyYoung

Some people really like AMD...