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Subject: Re: Which PC to buy? A question for the hardware gurus...

Author: Tom Kerrigan

Date: 10:36:04 07/18/00

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On July 18, 2000 at 10:55:23, Gordon Rattray wrote:

>I've been holding off buying a new PC until AMD launched it's new chips, etc.
>I've been reading www.tomshardware.com occassionally.  Anyway, now it's time to
>buy...
>
>I want a PC mainly for performing chess analysis, quick results and overnight
>analysis of positions.
>
>Which of these PC specs should I buy?  They are all in the price region that I'm
>looking at.  Will there be any significant performance differences?  Is there
>anything else I should be considering?
>
>A) PIII 933Mhz, Intel 815e chipset with ICH2(?), 256k L2 cache, 384Mb RAM
>
>B) Athlon 1Ghz, Athlon enabled motherboard with 200Mhz bus, 256Mb RAM
>
>C) PIII 933Mhz, PIII VIA chipset (133Mhz bus) + AGP Port(?), 256Mb RAM
>
>D) PIII 850Mhz with 512k cache, PIII 133 VIA Apollo motherboard, 256Mb PC133 RAM

B is probably your best bet, simply because of the difference in clock speed.
Clock for clock, the Athlon and the PIII aren't very different.

Depending on which chess program you plan to use, one chip might be better than
the other. You might consider testing your programs on computers at a store or
something... But if there is a difference, I'd be surprised if it made up for
the difference in clock speed.

-Tom



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