Difference between these 2 specs before I buy?

gotan

One of my favourite websites is mac incompatible so am prob sticking with PC.
Dell gave me a quote on 7 march which is £50 cheaper than the virtually same spec quote today. I don't understand the tech-spec differences and am hoping that someone here may be able to advise me. The 2 specs are:

T5200 1.60GHz core 2 duo processor and Intel Media Accelerator 950 up to 256MB of shared memory with TV and S-Video Output; or

T5500 1.66GHz core 2 duo processor and ATI Mobility Radeon x 1400 256MB with TV and S-Video Output PCI Express x 16.

The latter is the more expensive. I had asked for a 1.83GHz processor but they won't match my budget on that apparently.

many thanks.

skr00ge

Not really the answer you want.

If safari won't work try Firefox. I put it on our mac a couple of days back. Works fine.

Millionare

The T5500 is a slighlty faster processor running at 1.66 rather than 1.60 with a fsb of 667 from 533 on the T5200.

You have a better graahics card on the T5500.

hobo28

The Intel media accelerator has shared memory which means it uses the same memory as the main computer. So lets say you buy one with 1024MB RAM. 256MB Shared graphics means Windows can only use 768MB.

With the second, the ATI, it has 256MB of its own memory. So Windows would use 1GB and the video has 256MB.

To be honest if you just want to surf the web then its not going to make much difference either way. But if you want to play games or you will push your system quite hard by running lots of apps at the same time then the ATI is worth buying.

The CPU is slightly slower on the first but you'll not notice this at all.

Hope that helps

Forris

I'd go for the 2nd option. The difference is that it has better graphics and is more future-proof. The 1st one has a built-in graphics chip which can hamper future upgrading.

crox

If you really want a mac and have an xp licence already then you could use bootcamp to dual boot.

gotan

I was annoyed with the sales rep at Apple too and his childish 'websites aren't worth visiting if they don't support mac' attitude. It's a music site and its administrator says their clips will remain Windows only for cost reasons. Macs apparently don't have a player that will read the latest version of WMP as the 2 cos didn't agree to an update. But I will check with a mac owner whether the video works within Firefox but suspect not.

I am not sure if the better card is worth £50 more on the Dell. It seems a lot. Thanks for confirming what I thought about there being little diff with the processor. I will see if I can talk my new Indian friend down a bit with the slower processor and the decent graphics card but expect he will tell me that they are incompatible (what he usually says and I wouldn't know).
He says that the 6400 Inspiron can only take 2 x 512RAM rather than 1 slot (?).

Also MS (not Dell) have now ended their free upgrade to Vista so it would cost nearly £200 at a later stage. That is a rip off in any language.
Many thanks for helping me out.

Millionare

gotan wrote: »

I was annoyed with the sales rep at Apple too and his childish 'websites aren't worth visiting if they don't support mac' attitude. It's a music site and its administrator says their clips will remain Windows only for cost reasons. Macs apparently don't have a player that will read the latest version of WMP as the 2 cos didn't agree to an update. But I will check with a mac owner whether the video works within Firefox but suspect not.

I am not sure if the better card is worth £50 more on the Dell. It seems a lot. Thanks for confirming what I thought about there being little diff with the processor. I will see if I can talk my new Indian friend down a bit with the slower processor and the decent graphics card but expect he will tell me that they are incompatible (what he usually says and I wouldn't know).
He says that the 6400 Inspiron can only take 2 x 512RAM rather than 1 slot (?).

Also MS (not Dell) have now ended their free upgrade to Vista so it would cost nearly £200 at a later stage. That is a rip off in any language.
Many thanks for helping me out.

Personally if it was £50, i would go for the one with the better card and slightly faster processor and fsb. the card dosent use your 256 ram from your system ram. leaving you with just 756mb ram for actuall memory.

That is if your going to run vista off it. also get minimum 1024mb ram as from your above post are you trying to get 512mb?

Cricri

Personally, if it was £50 less, and unless you are going to play the latest 3D games, I'd go for the first one and save the money

In other words, if you are only going to use the PC for office applications, web surfing and the occasional multimedia application, you won't notice any difference whatsoever. Let's face it: powerful hardware is good if you push it to the limits, but if you are not, you'll pay more for a PC which will idle more.

If you ARE going to play 3D games and want the opportunity to upgrade the GFX card (although by the time someone might want to update the GFX card, the rest of hardware will be equally obsolete anyway) and have the money, then sure, go for the most expensive one.

Millionare

Cricri wrote: »

Personally, if it was £50 less, and unless you are going to play the latest 3D games, I'd go for the first one and save the money

In other words, if you are only going to use the PC for office applications, web surfing and the occasional multimedia application, you won't notice any difference whatsoever. Let's face it: powerful hardware is good if you push it to the limits, but if you are not, you'll pay more for a PC which will idle more.

If you ARE going to play 3D games and want the opportunity to upgrade the GFX card (although by the time someone might want to update the GFX card, the rest of hardware will be equally obsolete anyway) and have the money, then sure, go for the most expensive one.

Its actually a low spec core 2 duo system. The t5200 is like the cheapest core 2 duo you can get and the intel is the cheapest graphics solution around, not even a dedicated graphics card.

thats why the final question is, are you going to be running vista? if you are then the 2nd option is best. otherewise option 1 on Xp is fine.

Cricri

Ah, yes, Vista, I forgot that some people use that

I had a P2-233 with 256MB of RAM running winXP and Office 2003. It was running ok (although I had to disable a lot of services and eye candy).

The Vista recommended requirements (not minimal) are:
1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
512 MB of system memory
20 GB hard drive with at least 15 GB of available space
Support for DirectX 9 graphics and 32 MB of graphics memory
DVD-ROM drive
Audio Output
Internet access (fees may apply)

So the cheap one should do the trick as well?