what is over clocking and does it matter to me?Thanks, you did so good see #9

[fuse04]

Jann, your PC sounds very similar to mine and am looking for a new PC; only problem is that I am one of those gamer types as well as into photography.

Anyway if you get PC which is running Vista you will need at least 2GB ram; many come with 4GB but Vista 32 bit only recogonises 3gb of that.

For basic PC applications and photgrapghy it is best to have a couple of hard drives (one for just the photo's and other data) probably 500gb in total.

If you are not running several application at once then Dual core processor is fine E6550, E6750 ( Intel far better than AMD these days)

Monitor, must have a very good monitor for images.

Re gamers (me!) and overclocking, in the UK several companies sell PC with mid range CPU overcloked to high end, saving $$$ and come with three years warranty.


Good luck

 

[Groucho]

If you are not running several application at once then Dual core processor is fine E6550, E6750 ( Intel far better than AMD these days)

Not true at all... AMD is still very competitive. Intel does have the fastest CPUs at the moment (for the first time in several years, AMD was murdering 'em until the Core 2 Duos came along) but in the mid-market, AMD does very well cost-wise (usually cheaper for comparable performance) and offers a cleaner upgrade path to quad-cores in the future.

I'm currently speccing a mb/CPU upgrade and will probably go with an Athlon X2 5000 "Black" which is specifically designed to be overclocker-friendly... giving roughly equal (slightly faster) performance to an E6550 for about 2/3rds the price.

Details aside, I strongly disagree with the notion that you shouldn't consider one or the other. AMD or Intel, both are plenty capable and chances are that the slowest CPU you can get today from either one will be way faster than the average user will need. It all comes down to the best deal that you can find.

 

[dburg30]

I bought the inexpensive quad core intel, 2.4 ghz and have it overclocked to 3.2 ghz and it still runs cool, very cool as a matter of fact. I think when I was benchmarking the system, and it was running under 100% load for a while, the hottest it got was maybe 55 celcius possibly 60, at stock speeds it was maybe 2 degrees cooler.. If it was going to run hot, then I would've left it be. I do a fair amount of gaming, so the graphics card is more important to me then anything, and it runs hot even when everything is at stock operation.


I would say not to worry about it. With what you are planning to do, ie: photography and stuff, you'd be better off to spend more on extra ram, big hard drives, nice monitors and such .