[CLOSED] -Dell 2.6ghz 512MB Base unit £151.57

PhilWales_2

Is it worth upgrading to the P4?

jo3uk

No - the price charged for the upgrade (which I don't think is shown including VAT if I remember rightly) isn't worth it for the performance increase you would see in this machine.

Self build (or getting a mate to do it for you!) becomes a much more attractive option if you are looking at a P4 2.8 which would work at around £230 from Dell with this deal.

~£250 would get you

P4 2.8
512 Mb RAM
80 Gb Harddrive SATA (instead of 40 Gb IDE)
DVD/CD-RW Combo (so you can watch DVDs and burn CDs) - instead of bog standard CD drive
Motherboard with onboard graphics but potential to install an AGP graphics card if required.
Bog standard case.

HTH
Jo3

meinnit

Is it worth upgrading to the P4?

Without the AGP or PCI-E slot you'd be wasting your money on a P4

islandannie

Thanks just ordered one of these. ;D

Jamescarver

I have contacted DELL about this - but no reply yet. Does anyone know if DELL supply a Windows XP backup-disk, so that XP can be re-installed after say the HDD dies?

GDB2222

Without the AGP or PCI-E slot you'd be wasting your money on a P4

Agreed. £70 extra for the P4 is not worth it.

But note that the 2.6 GHz Celeron is the old-style celeron with 128kb cache and 400 MHz FSB. The new-style Celeron D is a much better proposition. Benchmarks indicate twice the power of the old-style celeron at much the same clock speeds. Available at 2.66GHz and 2.93GHz.

Dell are not offering the celeron D on this particular package. If available, it should be only marginally more expensive than the old-style celeron, whilst giving a useful performance boost.

HTH

Geoff

joshm_2

I have contacted DELL about this - but no reply yet. Does anyone know if DELL supply a Windows XP backup-disk, so that XP can be re-installed after say the HDD dies?

Yes, they do. You should get an XP Home CD & a license. Dell also set up a rescue partition on their machines that can be used to restore the machine to its factory settings should anything go wrong. Uses up about 4 GB of storage.

joshm_2

The system will almost certainly take PCI expansion cards, which will allow you to upgrade to *any* (correct me if I'm wrong) internal sound card, from one costing a fiver right the way up to a few hundred pounds. So sound isn't an issue - the on board sound will be probably be sufficient anyway and might even cater for 5.1 surround.

Graphics is a different beast, there are currently three types of graphics expansion cards:

PCI - Oldest technology - a few expansions cards still available but they are quite old technology now, so wouldn't be able to play the latest games.

AGP - The latest cards are still available in AGP format and are roughly equivalent in speed to their PCI-Express counterparts but there is less selection than before - signs that AGP is being phased out in the coming 12 months.

PCI-Express - Latest technology - the fastest cards will be released only in PCI-Express format in the near future.

Expansion on these budget DELL systems is usually limited to PCI cards only - meaning that you wouldn't be able to upgrade to play the latest games. They should be fine for kid’s educational software, office work, internet browsing, etc.

HTH & Merry Christmas!

Joe

Just to confirm, Joe is right - no AGP slot, just 3 PCI slots. Apparently about the best graphics upgrade you are going to be able to manage is to fit a GeForce 5700 PCI card. The graphics performance out of the box is too low for today's games (I got a woefully low Aquamark when I benchmarked mine - about 2300 as opposed to the ideal 20000), but it's more than adequate for everyday use.

escapee

Can anyone point me to a website that compares the older style celeron processor with the newer celeron D please. I have just ordered one of these systems but would have prefered the newer celeron D processor, now I am just hoping the performance and speed is not much slower.

thanks in advance
escapee

malcolmord

great deal