"Steve Wolfe" wrote in
:


Ultimately, I'd like to wait until Doom 3 is released, and make my
purchase then. I don't expect a huge difference between AMD / Intel
top of the line single CPU performance. But I think there could be
some significant differences in video cards. But it's taking quite a
while and I don't want to stay on a dual P3-800 forever. I may have
to just go ahead and buy a system sooner.

One more snippet - I'm also eager for Doom 3. I upgraded my
CPU/mobo/RAM just this week, believing that the XP-M 2500+ (actually
running at 3200+ speeds) will be fine for Doom 3, and I could use a
bit more speed for some of the games I play right now. However, as D3
seems to be able to overwhelm even the fastest video cards, I'm
waiting until I have the game in my hand to upgrade the video. Speeds
will only go up, and prices will only go down!

Yep, I know what you mean. With a system running at 3200+ speeds, the
waiting isn't quite as bad I bet. That's the biggest thing holding me
back right now, and the only thing that keeps me waiting is telling
myself exactly what you said. Faster cards. Lower prices.

I identify what you're saying about a dual system being more responsive
too. Everything GUI oriented just seems to respond that much quicker
when the system is loaded. As you said, it might not be doing anything
faster at least on any benchmark, but it definately seems that the GUI
gets a chance to respond faster to the user. I was able to rip all my
MP3s in a huge batch, and had 2 instances of LAME running at any given
time, while still surfing the web, reading newsgroups, newsgroup
downloads, kazaa and edonkey downloads, all at the same time, and the
system still seemed responsive. I'm wondering what it will be like
going to something like a 3400+. I'm positive individual tasks will run
faster, but I wonder how it will behave when I get it loaded up with all
that stuff running at once.

To be fair, each generation of OS has multitasked more smoothly than the
one before it. Win2K definately seemed better than NT4.0 to me. After a
brief trial of XP, I went to Server 2003. I definately prefer Server
2003, it seems to multitask the smoothest yet. It also seems to page to
disk a lot less than XP. Even with 1GB ram, XP seemed to hit the disk a
lot. That never seems to happen with 2003.

I have Terminal Services Admin mode running on the current system (dual
P3-800) and so I can access it remotely to start up downloads, etc.
Worst case if I buy single CPU system and find it doesn't multitask
well, I can always Remote Desktop into this old system to fire up the
type of batch jobs that run for hours and days. Ripping, format
conversions, P2P and newsgroup downloads, etc. If instead I went to a
slower, more affordable dual-cpu system, there is basically nothing I
could do to speed it up for games.

Thanks again for the tips! Much appreciated. Add one more person to
the list of people waiting for Doom 3.