Re: PC components

Sam Varghese wrote:
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> On Sun, Dec 18, 2005 at 03:40:21PM +1100 Russell Shaw said:
> 
>>Andrew McGlashan wrote:
>>
>>>Hi Sam,
>>>
>>>Sam Varghese wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>My initial idea was get a 64-bit AMD processor and an ASUS board (like
>>>>the A8N-VM CSM). I intend to get one or more SATA drives. The box
>>>>will run Debian testing and I intend to use it for some
>>>>experimentation with DVD burning and analogue to digital conversion.
>>>>
>>>>I'd appreciate comments from anyone who has gone down this path.
>>>
>>>My comments are to stick with Intel; seems to be many more Intel boxes 
>>>around and the level of problems seem less to me.  Personally I would be 
>>>much less confident with an AMD box.
>>
>>I haven't tried 64-bit, but i used AMD athlon (on debian-sid) because
>>they're more power efficient for the same computing power. That third
>>fan in the pc case is for hot pentiums;) (and hot graphics cards)
> 
> 
> I'm planning on getting a really good case which runs silently - so the
> heating shouldn't be a problem.
> 
> I'm looking at 64-bit because I figure the next time I buy a box it'll
> be another six years down the line - my current PC is a Celeron 466 and
> an ABIT board - the latter sadly don't seem to be available at too many
> vendors - which I built in 1999.
> 
> Price-wise the drop is amazing - the last box I built in 2003 December cost 
> me $1175; this time looks I'll be spending close to $825.

If you're doing mainly typing and editing and need to be mobile, widescreen
laptops are rapidly dropping in price too. I wouldn't recommend someone to
put debian on a laptop if they're not that practiced at fixing problems at
a low level tho (i have debian-sid on a Dell C610).

64-bit doesn't get much in extra speed for most apps. It is good for large
data problems such as video or databases, or it can be as simple as making
tar files a few gigabytes in size for backing up lots of data (2GB is the
limit for 32-bit systems iirc).