Hi Ray,> <<In the end I've gone for the latter and just ordered a complete new
> system based on the P4-2.4GHz.>>
>
> Oh, that surprises me but perhaps you know something we don't. Maybe
> Intel have finally caught up with AMD and can now offer similar power
> albeit at a greater cost.
The Evesham Evolution 2400 DVR (P4-2.4GHz) is actually the same price at the Evesham Axis 2100+Pro (Athlon 2100XP) but performed better in benchmarks, despite the latter having faster memory (PC2700 instead of PC2100) and twin RAIDUDMA133 disks.
I guess a Pentium running at 2.4GHz is faster than an Athlon running at 1.73 GHz (the actual speed of the XP 2100+). Still gives Athlons the edge clock for clock, but they haven't come out with one clocked as fast as Intel's new breed yet. Evesham are advertising an upgrade from the 2.4 to the 2.53 GHz Pentium, but these aren't actually available, and at an extra £250 just for several months delay and 5% extra speed I decided not to bother! <G>
I'm going for Evesham as I've had good experience of them in the past, and their systems regularly hit the "A" spots in PCPro and other mags. It'll come with XP, though I could have opted for 98SE -- but I thought I ought to have just one system on XP, for testing purposes. The USB EPIC works better under NT/Win2K/WinXP in any case, so it'll do for that. But for debugging and getting inside FS I'll have to use the older PC -- I'm not forking out for NT versions of my tools!
> I assume you will be getting the Ti4600 card
> as it's just a little too early for Matrox's Parhelia which sounds
> wonderful once the drivers have been finalised.
It comes with the 128Mb Ti4600, yes, and an 18"DVI TFT screen. As you know, I do like these, and will end up with no CRTs left one day! <G>
> I'll call you around lunchtime Saturday. I'm sure we have a lot of
> catching up to do
Okay ... I'll be out dog-walking sometime between 11 and 1, so make it after 1 -- but before 4 as I'll probably be out with them again by then!
Looking forward to a chat ...
Best,
Pete
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