The Joel on Software Discussion Group

All - I'm about to purchase a new PC. While I'm not going bargain basement, I'm also not going top end.

Dell has 2 PCs of interest:
PC A -
Processor: Intel® Pentium® dual-core E5300 (2MB L2, 2.6GHz, 800FSB)
Memory: 3GB2 DDR2 SDRAM3 at 800MHz- 2 DIMMs

PC B -
Processors: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E7500 (3MB L2, 2.93GHz, 1066FSB)
Memory: 2GB2 Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM3 at 800MHz- 2DIMMs

Yes, PC A is about 150 bucks cheaper. But, it does have more Memory. So what is truly the better value?

As far as PC use, nothing fancy. Email, a few docs, Web Cam, and simple Card Games. I might install Visual Studio, but no heavy game play.

Thoughts?

Upgrading RAM is easy.  Upgrading the processor, not so much.  (I'm talking after the fact, not at build time)

I would go with the Core 2 Duo, and then you can order more RAM from NewEgg and put that in yourself.

I agree. PC B has bigger L2 cache and FSB shows more performance, besides the higher frequency. Also, Visual Studio IS a heavy load.

Agreed with the above.  You can always add ram, usually for less than $100 (or even $50), but a new cpu is in the $200-$300-and way up range.

Jeff Atwood wrote a post last month about the huge performance gains from solid state hard drives.  I'm rooting for this to become a more economically viable option in the near future.
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001304.html

PCB is WAY better. The FSB speed increase will do more for you than the raw clock speed, by the way. There's very little that 3GB ram will do faster than 2GB ram, but there's TONS of things that will be faster with the Duo2 instruction set over the pentium (SSE3 for example), faster clock speed, faster instructions, etc etc. No comparison really, the second computer will be substantially faster than the first.

The E7500 also has virtualization instructions that make vmware/xen etc much better

When making/building machines for friends/self, I like to look at the server "deals" for small&medium business from dell. I find that they're changing what they offer based on my IP address, so I see a different selection of computers based on whether I'm browsing from home or work (they cut the cheapest 2-3 off when browsing from work). Cheapest runs about 399, and the most expensive starts around $1300 (but if you want a dual xeon with 32gb of ram, you'll pay a little north of $2k).

Besides the facts said about the CPU, memory runs significantly better in pairs (dual-channel). So 2 Gb (2 x 1 Gb ) or 4 Gb (2 x 2Gb) it's the recommended configuration.

3 Gb it's the worse possible option from multiple points of view:
 - it's slower than either 2Gb or 4Gb dual-channel configuration
 - proves you either don't know enough to choose a dual-channel setup or you are incredibly cheap (4Gb over 2Gb Kingston DDR2 800 Mhz is only 62$ more, 3Gb is even lower)

Thanks All. I'm just waiting for a Black Friday deal on Computer B.

I have 2GB in my development PC at home - which has pretty decent CPU, disks and graphics card and lack of memory doesn't seem to cause too many problems. I use VS 2008 a lot and occasionally run Virtual PC sessions and apart from times when I start Sharepoint in a VM it is pretty happy. I think that says more about Sharepoint than my PC though.

My work laptop has 4GB of RAM and is always running low on memory even though I actually develop much more complex stuff at home than I do at work.

My work machine has Vista (which I'm not a fan of) while my home PC has Windows XP - this might be a factor.

RAM is so cheap and easy to install that this should be a no-brainer.

@Popescu: " proves you either don't know enough to choose a dual-channel setup or you are incredibly cheap "

LOL.  Speaking of not knowing what you're talking about, here's some food for thought.  How do you know it's not 2x1GB and 2x512MB, all in dual-channel?  Dell and other manufacturers have recently begun selling systems with *exactly* that configuration. 

3GB has become more popular recently with 32-bit systems because of the 4-gig address space limitation -- since all 4 gigs might not be  reported by the OS if a vid card is using some of the address space.  I imagine they don't want to get thousands of complaining phone calls so they just configure 32-bit systems with a max of 3GB.

Although Patrick has made his choice I will post my opinion on this too :

Do not bother with Core 2 Duo or brand systems. Build one yourself (or have the shops do it for you to your specs).
 I have done market studies on this and if I buy from Dell a E8400 3.06 Ghz Core2Duo with 4GB RAM DDR2  I get to pay little less then a Core i5 4GB RAM  DDR3  that I build myself to my specs(60$). The difference in performance is huge (4 cores vs. 2 cores ,better architecture, FSB 1333Mhz vs. 1066Mhz (memory),better upgrade possibilities. .
 And I really care about the noise factor so I am willing to invest more in making it quiet for instance and less in the video board performance.
I just don't know whether I should buy for LGA1366 or LGA1156 for now :).

For your requirements I think my current computer will fit : Amd Sempron 2500+(1.4GHZ) 2GB RAM 160GB HDD so if you want to save money go for a Celeron/Sempron computer just make sure it is quiet (my AMD is not very quiet now).

>Peter
Careful with that, a lot of the Dell servers look cheap but remember:
They come without a monitor, although they are ridiculously cheap now.
They often only take ECC ram which is NOT cheap
Drivers will only be available for server OS, which if you can't , obtain by other means, is expensive. Although most of them run Linux very well.

I would agree with more posters that PC B is better. You can add RAM later but remember..Windows XP is limited to 2GB whereas no limits or Vista...

Ezani

@Ezani

32bit Windows has a limit of 2Gb per process.

Windows Vista/7 don't make that limit go away, for that you need to go to a 64 bit version.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778%28VS.85%29.aspx

OTOH both of those machines are *way* over spec for doing "Email, a few docs, Web Cam, and simple Card Games" andeven Visual Studio isn't going to be a problem with 2Gb RAM (despite what the tough guys who post here will tell you).

If you're price-sensitive enough that you're not getting 4Gb of RAM as standard* then go with the cheapest machine.

[*] Last week I bought a branded Core2 quad machine with Windows 7, 4Gb RAM, 1033Mhz bus and 750Gb disk for only 450 Euros.

Sure, we all know that "build it yourself" looks cheaper. But, it's not what I do anymore. Back in the day, I had added hard drives, RAM, etc. Not build from scratch, but a pretty good overahaul.

My time is more valuable to me, then the 100-200 bucks that I would save. Oh, I'm probably going to just pay the extra 30-50 bucks and get 4 GB of memory.