Jayachandra's BlogI hate telling things as a simple synopsis, so bear with my long narration...
Of late I was helping my house owner and his kid to buy a PC. Help as in suggesting a configuration taking into view their budget, guiding them to parklane and giving them a good deal at a known shop. Last Sunday they requested me to accompany them to some shop in Ameerpet. It has been quite a long time that I was abreast with the hardware market trends and all the hardware models out there and supposedly the buzz of the moment are all appearing very new to me, except for the company names (Intel, AMD etc) everything else especially the model numbers are all unheard before. I informed them earlier that parklane is a better place to take a PC than Ameerpet, but still out of over excitement they wanted to go and give it a try at the earliest, and since it was Sunday parklane shops won't be open so they asked me to come to Ameerpet shops.
There we roamed around and got some three quotations and found one vendor to be giving the best price. The vendors suggested 101gcc intel motherboard against a P42.66G saying its the latest from Intel and all other models including 915 and 945 chipset boards are outdated and not in market. I too believed it blindly without looking into the technology side of it and began to work out the bargaining aspect. The deal came so very close and at the choice of cabinet, the vendor wasn't agreeing to give a better cabinet which it seems was worth Rs.150/- more than what he thought we would take. May be it's all for our good that even upon repeated request he wasn't agreeing for the requested cabinet model (he was fully under the mindset that these ppl will definitely take the PC, so better not compromise). Some spike of frustration zoomed up in uncle's mind and he cancelled the deal and came out. That was what I exactly suggested him about half an hour earlier. Good we came out, or else we would have made a very foolish choice.
The next day i.e. yesterday (yeah its a Monday, and a workign day!) uncle requested me to spend a few hours of my time to visit Parklane and buy the PC. So as per my convenience I asked them to call me at 3p.m. They did and we went to park lane starting here outside my office arnd 3:30p.m. I straight away took them to my known shop, Bhumika Computer peripherals as I know out of my experience that there we'd get the best prices than anybody else would give (it happened everytime I went to buy anything at parklane, so ek "faith ka bandhan" ho gaya). I wrote down on the quotation book 101gcc and P4 2.66G processor. The rates were given, initial quote itself was competent than the Ameerpet guy's bargained price. Uncle felt happy. When still some amount of bargaining led to even reduced price quote, he is determined to pay the money afront. After that, Shailesh the shop owner just had a look at the quotation and began to *suggest* that there can be better configuration. This was when I got the hardware update. P4 2.66 we had in our budget is the normal processor, without HT and Dual core. The 101gcc intel MB was designed to support dual core. Their combination is like marrying a french to an arab. Not that they can't live together, but wouldn't succeed in understanding each others feelings properly and effectively. In this case the same translates to deprived performance of the system as a whole. Shailesh being an old friend of mine, showed there itself the intel site and the video clipping that illustrated the clear difference b/w normal, HT and dual core technologies. I'm glad I had an important update. Then shailesh laid in front of us, the rates of several other avlbl motherboards and processors. And to fit into uncle's budget I selected 2.66G Dual core Pentium 4 processor. There was an extra 1850 difference though, but uncle and his kid were really satisfied and went to make the deal.
Crux: 101gcc is the board for dual core technology processors, and worst for normal processors and HT processors. For normal P4 processors Intel 915 or 945 mother boards are suggested. That too if you choose hyper threaded processor 915 is advised as 945 doesn't have HT support. If you are looking at a cost effective solution then Intel's 865 chipset board but assembled by Mercury is the suggested one for a normal processor. If I could include the update I had last time I bought a PC for my sister. From 2.6 P4 processor onwards Winodws 98 and lower will NOT be supported. P4 2.4 is the best that one can wish if he mandatorily wants on his PC Windows 98.
If my suggestion matters an iota... Future is gonna be dual core era, as I see it. So better take a dual core configuration if you are looking for a new PC.
