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Murcielago77
10-23-2005, 12:21 AM
ok, im thinking of upgrading my old computer to make it faster. I probably wont be gaming on it, so im wondering if an its still better to get an athlon over a pentium. Another question i have is if i plan on mainly surf the web, download some stuff, and use photoshop, is a celeron/semperon processor suitable enough?
CappyCobra
10-23-2005, 01:15 AM
You'll be doing yourself a disservice running a Celeron/Sempron. PhotoShop has optimizations for P4 CPU's(SSE2). Best thing you can do for your current machine is to bump up your RAM. 512MB being the baseline 1GB being optimal for Photoshop.
Lice
10-23-2005, 01:22 AM
Yeah do the Ram, easiest and generally cheapest and you should see an improvment... Now you cant just place any processor on the motherboard you have, you would have to buy a new one if you want to stray from the company and chipset that your processor is now. Some mother boards wont even let you put a faster processors in ( Built into the Bios, Yes you can flash a new bios on there but not recomended.)

Good luck
Murcielago77
10-23-2005, 02:19 PM
Alright, thanks, but im still wondering if a athlon or pentium is better if i dont plan on gaming on it
jaykrue
10-23-2005, 05:46 PM
Alright, thanks, but im still wondering if a athlon or pentium is better if i dont plan on gaming on it

Just for websurfing and downloading, it really doesn't matter at this point as the processors are fairly fast on both sides. The only time it matters is if you're a speed junkie and want faster access times. That said, if you ARE going to use photoshop, yes there are special optimizations for the Intel line but doesn't mean photoshop won't work on an AMD cpu. And photoshop is a resource hog so you'll need a LOT of RAM (minimum 1 Gig for smooth rendering) as well as sufficient hard drive space for your scratch disk. I reserve 3 Gig alone for photoshop. Some of my graphic designer friends reserve 10 Gig of their hard drive space (but I think that's a bit overboard).
Murcielago77
10-23-2005, 05:56 PM
one last thing, i can get a chaintech SPT800 and a 3.0ghz prescott P4 combo (slightly used) for $150, good or bad?