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Budget System     -      Mid Range System       -       Power System

What do you really want your computer to do, we will help you to decide what type of PC is best for you first of all select the section you think you are likely to require in terms of how much money you are likely to spend. The budget system will be for work only and will save you the greatest amount of money. The mid range will be for a home system, basically for the adults to work and the kids to play, nothing serious but a capable machine. The power system is what it says, it the most powerful systems around, this are for you people with a lot of money of anyone into serious gaming. so choose you section above and get started with what you are looking to get for your money.   

Budget System

The Budget system is really designed for the home user in terms of the internet and school work etc. These systems are very capable of maintaining good speed through applications and non 3D intensive games. This option will save a lot of money and provide great value for all but the most intensive 3D gamers. An example of this system would be;

Example system,

Choice of Cyrix MII (PR300 - 433MHz) or AMD K6-2 (450 - 550MHz)

With, 32Mb PC100 RAM. ATX Mainboard, 8Mb onboard Graphics, 16 bit 3D sound onboard ,4.3Gb HDD, 15" monitor, ATX Tower Case, 56k modem onboard, Mouse, Keyboard and Speakers

Average Price * (£300 - £350)

You will notice that the main feature of the budget system is that the fact that the sound video and the modem are classed as onboard. Onboard simply means that these components are built onto the motherboard to cut down the cost. These components are mostly only standard pieces of equipment and are nothing special, they just do the job. The real problem with onboard components is that they are not upgradeable. To be able to change your video card for example will (9 times out of 10) have to change the entire motherboard.    

You would consider this type of machine as the perfect machine for the business or office worker who has to work at home. Or even the university student who needs the computer to study and type essays on etc. Plus these machines would have the ability to play music, basic fun games (nothing 3D). They would handle Encyclopedia's. They would be perfect for an internet machine.

Good all round machine but if your going to upgrade it will be a case of buying nearly a whole system, so you have to consider the future now. if you are likely to want to upgrade later on its worth thinking about spending the extra bit of money now and moving up to the mid-range system. 

You can check the hardware reviews to the components featured in this page and loads more. 

Mid Range System

These Mid-Range systems are aimed at the user who wants internet access and the use of business applications but who also has an interest in playing some of the latest 3D games at a decent speed. This option will be good for the game player who doesn't need the top spec performance of a high end machine and wants to get good power for their money.

Example system,

Choice of Cyrix III (500 - 700MHz), Intel Celeron II (533 - 700MHz) or AMD Duron (600 - 900 MHz)

With 64 Mb PC100 RAM, ATX Mainboard, 32 Mb Geforce 2 MX Graphics card, 10 Gb HDD 15" Monitor,56k Diamond PCI hardware modem, Mouse, Keyboard and Speakers.

Average Price * (£400 - £700)

This is the category that most people will fall or want to fall into. Its the everything you want but not far too expensive category. These machine will cope with most of what today can throw at them. Games should not be a problem. They will run fine, not competing with the frame rates given by the power system but still no slow down during game play. They are fast enough to software decode DVD's (with DVD Drive) and they will do every other simple task you may want to do.

Choice of CPU

The three main CPU's in this category are very different. They were released at very different times and have very different cores. The CyrixIII released by VIA was not really intended to go head to head with the Celeron and the Duron, if it was then they really were kidding themselves. Performance is pretty poor really, would be better in the budget section if it wasn't for the fact it was a 7th generation processor like the other two. gets the job done for a very reasonable price. Might be worth spending that extra few quid though. 

The Intel Celeron has been out for a few years now, it has however evolved into a better chip. The story behind the release of the CeleronII is tied in behind the release of the PIII. Basically the PIII's came with 256k cache, however due to high technology involved in producing these chips sometimes the cache doesn't always work. It became apparent that 1 bank of cache broke and so giving the PIII only 128k cache and slightly lower performance, Voila the CeleronII is born. This means that the CeleronII is a PIII at heart and core, with the cut down price. A very attractive buy. 

AMD who have really come into the market challenging and even beating Intel in the CPU market, needed something to challenge in this section of the market. I'm not sure who came up with the idea first but the Duron is simple the TBird (Athlon Thunderbird AMD's top of the range chip) with less cache. The Athlon and the PIII are very close in performance and the Duron certainly has the edge over the Celeron, especially with the lower prices.

Before making a decision on which CPU to base your new computer on a few notes on potential issues you might face especially if you are building your own. 

1) CyrixIII CPU's need a motherboard that supports it, not all socket 370 boards support CyrixIII

2) You can buy boards that run more than 1 CeleronII in the boards to increase performance. Note Win9x platforms do not support more than 1 CPU.

3) AMD Duron needs more power than the others and requires (at very least) a 250W power supply, its worth going for 300W, better to plug the monitor straight into the mains instead of it getting the power via a pass through cable to the PSU.

4) The Socket A boards needed to run the Duron are more expensive than the socket 370 boards for the other two, coupled with the more expensive case, this could out way the price issue with the Duron being cheaper than the Celeron.    

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