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Subject: Re: comparing price 2x amd mp to 2x intel xeon

Author: Matt Taylor

Date: 23:42:46 02/17/03

Go up one level in this thread


On February 18, 2003 at 01:47:07, Anthony Cozzie wrote:

>On February 18, 2003 at 01:14:58, Matt Taylor wrote:
>
>>On February 18, 2003 at 00:49:10, K. Burcham wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>your prices will vary.
>>>both systems have medium price video cards.
>>>both systems have one single ide 7200 rpm hard drive.
>>>both have 4 x 512 megs ram.
>>>both are tower only.
>>>i suspect big difference in motherboard cost because i think the intel
>>>    system had onboard scsi controller.
>>>both have extended warranty.
>>>
>>>2 x amd mp 2400+ 2000 mhz, 4000mhz  $3486
>>>
>>>2 x intel xeon   3060 mhz, 6120mhz  $4952
>>>
>>>kburcham
>>
>>No way. I've invested about $1,800 in my system. Here are my specs and rough
>>estimation of prices that I paid:
>>
>>Antec 1240SX full tower - $150
>>Tyan TigerMPX - $200
>>(2) AthlonMP 1600 - $340 ($170/ea.)
>>Samsung 1 GB ECC/Reg pc2100 - $330
>>3ware Escalade 6410 - $100
>>(2) Seagate Barracuda IV 60GB 7200 rpm - $200 ($100/ea.)
>>GeForce 4 MX440 - $75
>>Soundblaster Audigy X-Gamer - $100
>>Sony 16X DVD-ROM - $50
>>Philips 24/12/48 CD-RW - $50
>>Linksys EG1064 Gbit NIC - $80
>>
>>Add $330 for another 1 GB of ram, add $160 to get AthlonMP 2400. Add another
>>$300 and you get on-board SCSI and other bells & whistles. The brings the total
>>to $2,300 with IDE RAID, SCSI option, 2 GB of ram + 2 empty slots for future
>>expansion, Gbit NIC, etc.
>>
>>$2,300. Not $3,500.
>>
>>The Xeon system is probably equally overpriced. Bob could offer a good
>>comparison with his dual 2.8 GHz Xeon.
>>
>>-Matt
>
>not everyone is willing to build their own pc matt :)
>
>btw its nice to see someone else going for the stealth pc with seagate HDs and
>the antec case.
>
>anthony

The Antec case is awesome. I will never build another PC without an Antec or
equivalent OEM. (The Chenming are Antec cases too IIRC.)

The Seagate HDs are also unbeatable. Supposedly the Barracuda V drives have both
best ATA reliability and highest sustained transfer rates. I believe the 80 GB
SATA version is about $120. The 3ware 8500-4 is the SATA version of that RAID
card. I would like to replace my 6410 with the 8500-4, but there are many better
ways to spend $380. (Not to mention I would need new drives -- investment of
$600!)

Though not everyone builds their own PCs, it is trivial to order a custom PC
prebuilt with 3 years warranty. The overhead for ordering it prebuilt and
including warranty tacks on maybe $400 if the shop is reasonable. The components
listed in the original message do not even add up to $2,000.

A superb dual-Athlon (RAID, lots of ram, fast chips) can be prebuilt for around
$2,000. I know this because I have a friend who runs a shop that does this, and
the quote I put together 5 minutes ago was around $2,000. His prices tend to run
high.

-Matt



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