Aldi Medion Computer

MunsterCycling

http://www.aldi.ie/special_buys/product_291.html

Coming up in August

michaelanthony

Do you know what the price is?

jhegarty

MunsterCycling wrote:

http://www.aldi.ie/special_buys/product_291.html

Coming up in August

it can hardly be a Bargin Alert without a price....

MunsterCycling

Whatever hegerty

event

whats that graphics card like?

challengemaster

S3 Graphics UnichromeTM PRO IGP (on board)

dahamsta

Slower processor than the last two. Is dual-core really that good? I wasn't exactly impressed with hyperthreading like, which while not the same thing, suggests a similar approach.

adam

muppetkiller

with those specs it would want to be pretty cheap... it's onboard graphics and no room for upgrading the Ram, no PCI-e SLOT etc..less than 500 me thinks.

damnyanks

Dual core = 2 cpu on the one chip.

It's nice

Akula

They have a slightly better pc on the german website for 599. So I'm betting around the same.

dahamsta

I get that, but is it 2x 2.8GHz or 2x 1.4GHz?

adam

MunsterCycling

Dual core Ken > 2 x 2.8 GHz

Timans

With a better gfx card, that's an awesome pc!

isn't it? It would play lot's of games with a better gfx card.

If it's less than 500, I could be forced to get it. Although, the brand put's me off a bit..

jor el

But isn't it the case that only applications specifically written to take advantage of Dual core or SMP will have any performance boost?

The spec itself is nothing great, it's about average if not below for current requirements. Whether it's a bargain or not will depend on the price I suppose. €500 or below would be good, more than €500 would be no great shakes I think.

Timans wrote:

isn't it?

I don't think so. Only 200G SATA disk (if it's SATA2 then OK, but could be 320G or more), 1G DDR2 using both sockets so you need to replace all the memory to upgrade it. Only AGP port and not PCI-E, not so good. Sure it'll still play the games with an AGP card but your scope for improvement is limited. If it's €500 or less then it wouldn't be too bad.

Mountjoy Mugger

You're tying yourself to an AGP card also, which limits future upgrade paths.

challengemaster

however you are getting a dual core, a gig of ram, a case, 200Gb hdd, CD burner, and some other stuff, so you could get a new mobo and stick in a PCI-E gfx card if you wish

jor el

Mountjoy Mugger wrote:

You're tying yourself to an AGP card also, which limits future upgrade paths.

Current paths and all, selection of AGP cards Vs PCI-E cards on komplett. AGP is getting to be slim pickings.

MunsterCycling

The AGP or PCI-E argument is a bit null as anyone who buys this to game at the high end would need their head examined, go build a PC if you want to game FFS that way you get what you (over)paid for.

dahamsta

jor el wrote:

But isn't it the case that only applications specifically written to take advantage of Dual core or SMP will have any performance boost?

This is my concern, and why I mentioned hyperthreading earlier. There's no point in dual-core being great for smp-enabled apps if the apps I use (Outlook, Firefox, etc) can only use one core; assuming that's the case. That would be a downgrade for me.

adam

jor el

MunsterCycling wrote:

The AGP or PCI-E argument is a bit null as anyone who buys this to game at the high end would need their head examined

All arguments are null at the moment as there is no price yet, that will tell if it's worth buying or not.

I agree though, this is not for serious gaming. Even for low end or medium res games the AGP slot is restrictive and if you want to upgrade it in a few months time your choices may be very few. I also think the overall spec itself is nothing special, bar the dual core P4, which I don't think will do all that much for you.

kaizersoze

This site is talking about 599euro. Not much of a bargain if true.
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.billigdrucker.de%2Fdrucker-8451.html&langpair=de%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools
It's a Google translation so the english is a bit iffy .

dahamsta

Irish items are traditionally more expensive.

TempestSabre

I don't thinks its a good deal. Wait for the Dual Core 2 Conroes.

bk

Ken Shabby wrote:

This is my concern, and why I mentioned hyperthreading earlier. There's no point in dual-core being great for smp-enabled apps if the apps I use (Outlook, Firefox, etc) can only use one core; assuming that's the case. That would be a downgrade for me.

Adam, it depends on how you use your PC, if like me you multitask a lot then it can be very useful.

For instance with a single core CPU, if I run a virus scan, burn a DVD, rip mp3s or anything else processor intensive, I can't really use the PC at the same time for anything else.

However with a dual core machine, you can have the virus scanner happily running away in the background doing a full scan, while you surf the web, emails, etc.

It is also great for software development.

Personally I'd gladly take a drop in max processor speed in order to get a dual core, I find having two processors has a greater impact on day to day computing speed then a fast processor.

BTW I wouldn't buy this PC, the Pentium D isn't very good, I'd wait for a machine with the new Intel Core 2 Duo processors or maybe cheap AMD x2's. These CPU's are not only dual core, but they are significantly faster then any single core processor in any single core task also.

dahamsta

Hmmm, so although there aren't a whole lot of apps that can do SMP, the machine can assign different apps to different processors, yes? That would certainly work for me anyway.

adam

SamoZlo

Ken Shabby wrote:

Hmmm, so although there aren't a whole lot of apps that can do SMP, the machine can assign different apps to different processors, yes? That would certainly work for me anyway.

adam

The system (Windows XP/2000 or Linux) can do that. Also aplications using hyperthreading such as AutoCAD, most of graphic programs (Corel Draw, Corel Painter, 3D Studio Max, Adobe Photoshop, etc.) work much faster on dual core processor systems than on even fastest single core (even those with HT technology - Pentium 4).
You won't get big advantage in games for now, but it's said, that incoming games (Crytek from creators of Far Cry, games based on Unreal 3 engine for example) will be using dual core processors to make world more detailed. There's already patch for Quake 4 that makes use of HT technology - it gave me about 20-25% more FPS and eliminated anu shutterings in sound, etc. And that's all with DC++ and Torrent client running in background.
For every day work it makes huge difference comparing to Ahlone XP 64bit processors. Aplications open up faster, work smoother, there's no such a thing as waiting for system to respond. No matter - windows or linux. Few programs running at the same time and system does not "freeze". And I've got Pentium D 820 (2.8GHz) - the same as offered here.
Comfort of the work in Windows (especially) changes a lot. But games run slower. Choice is yours.

bk

Ken Shabby wrote:

Hmmm, so although there aren't a whole lot of apps that can do SMP, the machine can assign different apps to different processors, yes? That would certainly work for me anyway.

Yes, the OS (windows, *nix, Mac, etc.) can assign different, even single threaded, applications to the different cores.

In my experience it makes a massive difference to anyone who uses many different apps on their PC. It may not seem so in reviews on tech sites on the web, but in real life it makes for a much better computing experience.

I'll give you an example, I've gone from a single core P4 3GHz CPU to a single core 3.4GHz CPU and I can honestly that I haven't noticed any performance improvement in my day to day tasks (or even games for that matter). Sure a benchmark might say that it has knocked one minute off my dvd burning time, but not really noticeable.

In work I've got a SMP machine with two single core 2.8GHz Xeon CPU's. Benchmarks might say it is slower then my P4 3.5GHz, so DVD burning might take 35 minutes versus 30 minutes. However the real world experience is different. In the real world I might want to burn a DVD, and write a computer program (say it takes 30 minutes), on my single core machine I have to wait until the DVD finishes burning before I can write the program, so in total it takes 60 minutes of my time. On the SMP machine I can burn the DVD and write the program at the same time, so in the real world it only takes 35 minutes of my time.

That is the big advantage in SMP and multi-core machines, but it is hard to get that from straight benchmarks.

Really the whole GHz thing is over, GHz is no longer a good way to compare CPU performance other then between models of the same family. For instance Intels new Core 2 Duo processors range from only 1.8Ghz to 2.9Ghz, yet even the 2.4GHz model in even single core, non thread benchmarks performs almost twice as fast as Intels 3.73GHz Pentium 4 Extreme Edition CPU.

The new hype is performance-per-watt basically getting more performance out of existing CPU GHz at low energy use. We are very unlikely to see CPU's going anywhere over 3GHz much over the next few years, instead we will be seeing more and more cores per CPU.

dahamsta

Sounds good, I must look into getting a dual-core machine. Thanks for the info.

I completely agree with you on the GHz front, that war ended a long time ago (although the bad boys kept going anyway). For Joe User there really isn't a "bad" processor out there these days, most are surplus to requirements. Running basic servers is a hoot, you can just buy the cheapest thing out there, and lots of em.

adam

TerrorFirmer

Doesn't look too bad. Dual Core is nice but I wonder what the psu rating is? Could make a decent machine if its cheap enough, the onboard is muck but at least it has an AGP slot.

I want to go Dual Core soon enough....did you guys see the minimum requirements for Crysis? 2.8GHZ and X800 card minimum - **** sake!

TempestSabre

HavoK wrote:

Doesn't look too bad. Dual Core is nice but I wonder what the psu rating is? Could make a decent machine if its cheap enough, the onboard is muck but at least it has an AGP slot.

I want to go Dual Core soon enough....did you guys see the minimum requirements for Crysis? 2.8GHZ and X800 card minimum - **** sake!

Wait and build one on dual core 2.

Check out these articles. In particular the ASUS P5W DH Deluxe mainboard.

"ASUS P5W DH Deluxe can be considered a pretty universal product in terms of supported processors and memory as well as expansion options. This board can work with any LGA775 processors, including the old 90nm models as well as the new CPUs with Core microarchitecture. I would like to specifically mention that this mainboard will also be compatible with the !quad-core Kentsfield processors that are coming out in Q1 2007."


Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 + ASUS P5W DH Deluxe: Ideal Mainstream Platform?
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core2duo-e6300.html

Getting Ready to Meet Intel Core 2 Duo: Core Microarchitecture Unleashed <http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core2duo-e6300_6.html&gt; http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core2duo-preview.html

As soon as funds allow I'll build one myself.

zod

Price is definetly €599 just seen it