Guide for buying a new PC. Review on Buying a Computer

Nowadays, buying a new PC/Laptop or even advising people on how to do it is extremely common. Everybody who has a computer upgrade it from time to time or buy a new one completely. Those who dont have a PC would buy one surely later. But the question is . what should I buy? Let me add a little bit of gravy on the meat.

Branded or Assembled

One wonders whether he should go for a branded or assembled PC. If you ask me as far as performance is concerned, there is no difference. The Branded PC uses the same components as the assembled. The difference is the service. Most branded PC distributors offer direct service. Just call them up and they will guide you on the phone if it is not a serious problem. But if you buy an assembled PC, if you call the guy in case of a problem, he will take time to come over to your place and sort out the problem.

If you do know quite a bit about computers, I don't think you'll need any help anyways. Furthermore, if you wany to fool around with your computer, go for an assembled. It offers more flexibilty. Its better if you buy your assembled PC from some'known' person cause then, the warranty and service will be an obligation.

The need for speed

Most people think that the faster the processor, the faster is the PC. WRONG. There's more to that. We can boil down the speed of the PC to 4 main components:-

1) Processor+ Motherboard

So what do you buy? Intel or AMD? Frankly speaking not much of a difference in performance. Intel's better at DivX encoding whereas AMD is better at MP3 encoding. Intel runs Quake 3 faster but AMD runs Serious Sam faster. So they are neck to neck in each benchmark. The difference is the cost and the motherboard.

With an Intel chip, you'd rather buy and Intel motherboard(or an Intel chipset motherboard) with 3 years warranty cause its the best motherboard for an Intel chip. But with AMD, you have a wide variety of choices of different makers offering different motherboards with different features.An intel board is fast but the onboard features like sound/video are poor compared to some features offered by other manufacturers.

Some manufaturers offer AMD compatible motherboards with NVidia Chipsets and onboard GeForce 4MX and 7.1 surround sound for a very competent price. And if you add the price of the processor and motherboard, AMD has an edge as far as price and features is considered.

Next, reliability. Intel chips are reliable and they work for long. But is AMD reliable? As far as I know, YES. The newer AMD chips starting from 1Ghz have heat sinks and fans provided by AMD themselves. I know quite a lot a people with Athlons and so far nobody's had any problem. In fact I have 2 athlons myself since 2 years. And they work great. so far atleast.

Next, is a 64-bit chip worth it? For the time being . NO. Beacuse applications which are now being developed have not been optimised for 64-bit architecture. But in the near future, say 2-3 years . it will make a big difference. When you are buying an AMD processor, look at its performance rating and not at its clock speed. Eg:- an AMD 2000+ works at 1.66GHz but performs the same as an Intel P4 2.0 GHz.

And another thing is that look for technology change in the processor. Eg:- Intel P4 1.5GHz and 1.7GHz are both made of the Williamette core(0.15micron technology). So the difference is just 200Mhz which is hardly noticeable. But Intel P4 2.0GHz is made of the Northwood core which is 0.13micron technology and this is a technology leap which makes a lot of difference. Same for AMD. Eg:- Athlon 2000+ and 2200+ have 0.15micron technology but Athlon 2400+ has 0.13micron technology and the thoroughbred core. So the difference between 2200+ and 2400+ is much more than just 200MHz.

Motherboards do make a lot of difference in performance. The faster the motherboard's bus speed, the better is the performance. Motherboards for Intel chips are generally more expensive but have a slightly faster bus speed. So look for a combo of good features and budget.

2) RAM

The amount, type and speed of RAM makes a whale of a difference an all kinds of applications. 512MB is the norm nowadays and so is DDR. Try to get a motherboard with a dual channel DDR which makes as lot of difference.

3) Hard Disk

This is something which many people do not consider while buying a PC. Faster the rpm, faster is the HDD and hence faster is your PC. The difference is a lot more than you think. SATA HDDs are faster than IDE HDDs and SCSI HDDs are the fastest and most expensive, running at 10000+ rpm. Choose the manufacturer wisely. Make sure of the warranty you are receving.

4) Video Card/Video RAM

This is another thing which people tend to ignore. If you are a gamer/Designer/CAD-CAM specialist, you cannot possibly ignore this. A good video card has a built in chip which does most of the on-screen drawing calculations and ensures that the main processor is free to do the other tasks. So everything drawn on the screen is faster and clearer. The difference is seen especially in Games.

Laptops

As far as a laptop is concerned, you'd rather go for a branded one with decent features than an unknown assembled one so that you are safe. The ones with Centrino chips are good since they are lighter and give you some serious battery backup time which is exctly why laptops are bought. Look for Wireless LAN/Infrared/Bluetooth and enough peripheral slots. You cannot compare the Laptop to a desktop of the same config. The desktop will be much cheaper and slightly faster. If you are buying one, use it for atleast another 7 years.Of course, laptops are not meant for gaming/hardcore computing. They are for mobility. So use it like its meant to be used.

Buy to your need

Everyone does not need the latest technology and fastest PC. For doing these, - word processing, accounting, watch a VCD/movie(not DivX), surf the net, listen to MP3 or send an email, all you need is as old Pentium 2, 350 Mhz, 20GB HDD, 128MB RAM, Windows 98 and the rest of the peripherals. You don't need to burn money and buy the latest PC for doing all this. Hyperthreading(HT technology) or even 64-bit processors will NOT affect any of these things and will not make any difference to you unless you are a rocket scientist.

You need a new computer/technology only if you do one of these things - heavy MP3/DivX encoding, Designing and 3D modeling and analysis in CAD/CAM, heavy floating point/mathematical calculations or SERIOUS Gaming. If you don't do any of these things, just buy a 2.4Ghz AMD/Intel, 80GB Hdd, 256MB DDR with onboard video/sound and save a lot of money instead of buying a 3GHz Intel/AMD, 512 MB DDR, 160GB HDD. This PC will satisfy an occasional gamer too.

Your comments please.