Re: Which computer to buy
I worked at a computer sales/service store for a year, and was the system builder there. I am also currently studying in college to get my Certificate as a Computer Technician.
Intel makes the Celeron D and Pentium processors. The Celeron D is the budget line of their cpus and are ment to compete with AMD's Sempron. Reason why they perform at a lower standard, is the celeron D's and Semprons only contain 256kb cache on their cpu cores, as opposed to (512kb-2mb) on the Athlon 64, Opteron, & Athlon X2 lines.
One thing to not get fooled with when looking at processors is AMD's frequency rating. An AMD 64 3200+ is only rated at a frequency of 2.0Ghz. You may say well, Intel makes processors from 3.2Ghz and on up. Yes...BUT, youve got to look at AMDs Performance rating (3200+) They run many more instructions per clock cycle then do Intel's P4. (9 verses 12) So they are much more efficient in getting more work done at a lower frequency. Some of the socket 754 Semprons are 64bit and as are all the socket 939 Athlon 64's.
As for the purpose u want this machine to serve, I would look into dells/hp/compaq lower line of PC's. If you want my honest opinion I would get something with an AMD 64 or Sempron 64bit cpu. Sooner or lately every thing is going to be 64bit. Windows XP 64 is out now but due to the lack of driver support its going to take a while for people to get switching over. And also, i would suggest nothing under 512mb Ram for running XP, as mentioned before.
Ive custom built all my machines (of coarse) but it will prob end up being cheaper for you to just go with a lower line from one of the companies. A machine like ur asking can be had for $300-$400 and thats even including a new CRT or in some cases...an LCD monitor.