Maximum PC

We picked up the Sony SDM-HS74P 17" LCD Monitor with XBRITE LCD. When viewing them at Comp USA, the screen saver they had going really showed what it was capable of. It was a bit over-priced (well more than my budget) but it did have a $50 rebate and I'm hoping it will go on sale this week.

We really liked this Sony, but were afraid the base wouldn't work for me.

well u have to understand that my frined lives in canada, and those are american sites/stores and prices.

what do u think of the benq fp71g? i saw it at a lcal store for 319.99$cdn
and it looked pretty nice.

I understand your friend lives in Canada, I'm trying to show you there are other options. I had a Benq on my list at one time, not sure why I took it off. Type the model # into google & use reviews as your key word. You may even want to look at Newegg's reviews if they sell it- there were some monitors that had a lot of complaints about dead pixels.

Since I am not up on Canadian verses American $, you should go to a search site and see the difference in price for monitors with analog input verses DVI which is the newer technology. When I was looking last week, I found some cheaper models that also had it.

I have one ? and thats why not go to Ebay and look for a system. Now I know ya gotta be careful and that even a savy ebayer can get taken but if you take your time and are careful you can reduce the chances. To be sure tech support is an issue with ebay buys to but if your friend does or has friends who can help or is willing to learn how to be his own tech support you can do quite well with ebay purchases of computer hardware.

the most important thing is to learn all you can about hardware and how it works together and then you can make informed desicions about the kind of system ya want and how to pick it. KOMM~VS~

yes- and dont put a 7 year old hard drive into a '01 machine and almost fry your motherboard.

heheheh

I bet there are several locally owned computer shops around you, check around in ur yeller pages or something under "computer repair/support" or somethin cuz once u buy off ebay there aint no support unless they say so.

i looked at alot of stores today and when i come home my friend called me and tells me that he already found a samsung 910t lcd screen for really cheap somewhere.

thanks for all your help, i guess the search is finished.

I still dont think your buddy needs a 64 bit proc. Specially since he's not gaming.. Oh did i mention that my 2500 barton is running at a 3200 bartons speed with normal cooling. but ohh well sometimes people read articles and assume that the numbers mean everything instead of saving a buck or two to settle for what they actually need. But hey this is your friend not mine so if he wants a 64bit cpu then thats cool too.. As for the benq go with the samsung so much better plus the whole no dead pixel warranty they have.. otherwise good luck dude..

he wants amd64bit. icant change his mind even if it will save him about 300$

I think he's smart to go with 64. I would go with the 939 socket, not 754- even if he had to kick the processor down for now. Maybe you'd want to do a search here to see how everyone feels about 754 & longevity.

This was my thoughts on the 754. You're stuck with agp, and in the future single core. That's ALL. If you can live with that and dont need to have the fastest of the fastest, no reason not to consider it. The processor is rarely upgraded with me. It's usually ram, or the videocard, or something else. It just so happens that videocards coincided with a big release of engines, so you're safe for a few years, with a 6800 or better - Hell i'd guess safer then say back when the 9700 came out - And that card still makes todays games playable. I wanted the a64 architecture for it's low latency, and superior compile times. Also, it's a cheap 64 bit processor in case you're looking at 64 bit windows/linux/bsd. Sure i think most 64 bit is a marketing gimmick, but in case it's not, it's there.

Also, consider the 754 3400+ is faster in general than the 3500+, and costs less.

Of course here's the main arguments against as they hold today considering the above reasons why one would go 754 if they applied -
go for the 939, because pcie version of the 6600gt, and 6200(non tc, tc = ick:P) will save you a bit.
nforce4 ultra hardware firewall.
dual core in the future if you want it (though i dont think it's necessary yet for most)
winchesters for overclocking. when amd moves to 90 nm accross their entire line, and perfect it, along with soi, and ss, the 939 will get the benefits.

I went for a 754 and am perfectly happy. Running at 2.6GHz, there's little difference in benchmarks between this an an fx chip. But of course, the fx is also overclockable, and the dualchannel/extracache/1000MHzHTT but it makes little difference as anyone can see from cpu reviews. Bonus is the overclocking prowess.

well the thing is with him is:

he doesnt play games, he doesnt kniw 1 thing about computers so he cant overclock and when i suggested it to him he started throwing wild stories of ppls computers blowing up. The stuck with agp part wont bother him since he wont play game at all. and if i get him a s939 pci express or if i get him a 3400+ s754 then it goes over his budget. The proces that i liosted didnt include s&h or taxes.

edit:

also he buy new computers when ever a new generation od cpus come out. I even told him to just buy a new cpu becuase he already currently has a Intel p4 2.4B, but he wont listen he wants new everything except the vid card.

I knew a few cases like that. Had to sit them down and ask then what do you want to upgrade? what do you want faster. blah blah, etc. Anyway, he sounds as if he's going to waste his money if he does upgrade. i think you should convince him to hold off, and check his pc for spyware if he's complaining about slowdown. he may want it an amd64, but does he even know what benefits he'll get from one? He doesn't know anything about pcs, does he really need speed he's not going to use? confer with him, and if he absolutely must upgrade, see if you can convince him to go for the lowest amd64. why bother with speed if you're not using it?

looking at your system spec and going along with the "he knows nothing" bit - get him xp home. Sure it seems like a waste, but he's not going to use any new/extra functionality anyway.



edit: about the linux comment - while some guys at college use linux, the colleges i know, dont use it. They use windows, or net bsd, and a few use osx, though my college only used it in the library which wasn't bad.