[Sasuke!]

is pentium better than AMD? and on the other computer that i put up on the link, is it a good deal for me, i dont really use the computer much anyways!

[PieMaster]

Pentium 3 is better than an AMD Thunderbird
Early P4's and AMD Athlon XP's are evenly matched
AMD64's are better than the later P4's
AMDX2's are better than the Intel dual cores

The second one wouldnt be *too* bad, as long as you give it some more memory and dont plan on playing any games - but for your budget youre not going to be anyway.

[sr4470]

Actually, PieMaster, for the most part P3 is trumped by the socket A Athlon Thunderbird because the P3's FPU is poor. The P3 was also very expensive so this outweighed any advantages it had in performance.

[PieMaster]

I mean for thermo-nuclear reasons . The Tunderbirds were driven stupidly hard towards the end of the range, much like the palimino core AthXP's

[sr4470]

(Original post by PieMaster)
I mean for thermo-nuclear reasons . The Tunderbirds were driven stupidly hard towards the end of the range, much like the palimino core AthXP's

True, but I'm talking about everything up to about 1.2ghz.

[PieMaster]

Fair enough then... I doubt the OP is looking at anything this old anyway to be honest.

[sr4470]

(Original post by PieMaster)
Fair enough then... I doubt the OP is looking at anything this old anyway to be honest.

For basic use and older games theyre good enough.

[Sasuke!]

oh what is overclocking? i heard that the AMD can overclock, but it may damage the hardware!!

[Yakka]

Whats SFF? And why does it take such a long time???

[Mad Vlad]

Overclocking is effectively - getting something for nothing. It's the process of making your hardware work harder to gain more performance. AMD's are good overclockers - but you have to know what you're doing to be any good at it as well as having a rig that's built for the job - you're not going to get anywhere with overclocking with an OEM machine by Dell

You can read more about overclocking here:

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1804
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1803
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overclocking

[Mad Vlad]

(Original post by Yakka)
Whats SFF? And why does it take such a long time???

SFF is an abbreviation for Small Form Factor. You'll find this abbreviation commonly associated with "Shuttle" PCs. I don't know what you mean about it taking such a long time though.

[Yakka]

When putting a PC together.....

[PieMaster]

It takes about 40min to an hour for a normal ATX PC including XP installation; and a bit longer for a SFF since its a bit fidly.

[Yakka]

OHHHH! Thanks. But what is a ATX PC? is ATX a make of mother Board?

[PieMaster]

ATX is the form factor most computers use at the moment. It defines a set of sizes, power requiremenets and connectors that all componenets must follow.
There are several versions of ATX, which use different sized componenets.

[sr4470]

(Original post by PieMaster)
ATX is the form factor most computers use at the moment. It defines a set of sizes, power requiremenets and connectors that all componenets must follow.
There are several versions of ATX, which use different sized componenets.

Micro-ATX being the smallest, then ATX, and Extended ATX being the largest.

[Phonicsdude]

Right. I have £800 MAX to spend on a LAPTOP.
Advise.
You nerds will probably fire back a million questions and get into a pickle over what a ignoramus I am for not making any further clarifications, but feel free to do so.
I am compliant.

Edit: As my parents are buying this machine for me it shall be bought from a physical, as opposed to online, store.

[sr4470]

Nice budget. Are you thinking of gaming or multitasking?

[Phonicsdude]

I will probably want one or two games on there, but I imagine it shall primarily be used for tinternet, music and *cringe* work.

So I guess the answer is multitasking (!?!).

[sr4470]

Ok, give me a few minutes while I get a list sorted.