PII Advice Needed.

[Son of Zeus]

Hi all. Been away but back again. Need to post in a hurry, but basically my next system based around an AMD Duron 700MHz CPU & 128MB Micron PC1600 DDR SDRAM has been put on hold, as realistically it won’t be available in Australia by Christmas so my original date of March/April 2001 will have to do.

In the meantime I will be probably be returning to my home state of Tasmania to be with my family for Chrissie & to have an evaluation on my spinal condition to see if I should go ahead with a “spinal fusion”. As my mother has decided that she too wants a PC I am debating re selling my current i486DX4/100MHz system here in Brisbane & picking up something like a Pentium II 233MHz PC from Red Hill Technology in Ballarat on the way home as a stopgap measure till I finally get my AMD solution next year.

Paleo Pete, I noticed that u posted the following: “I'm running a P-200MMX with 32MB RAM” so u may be able to give me some first hand advice. My mothers demands are higher than mine as she wants to do more graphic type things like printing out the grandchildren’s PC art type doodlings. Would a PII 233HMz be enough for this? I don’t think my DX4 would be strong enough for that sort of thing. Do PIIs use EDO RAM or SDRAM? They have AGP I believe, which would be better than my DX4’s ISA or PCI based video card solutions & help take a load off the CPU?

Any thoughts?

Cheers.......Son of Zeus.

[Paleo Pete]

If the main consideration is just printing the graphics, that has little to do with the CPU speed, it basically sends a copy of the document to the printer, which stores it in its own memory until the entire document is printed.

Scanning drawings is a bit more demanding on memory, with my 32MB when I scan a 4x6" picture it locks my mouse until the scan is finished. Then I get my mouse back.

For most average home graphics uses, the P-II 233 you referred to will probably do pretty well, just try to get at least 64MB RAM in it. Again, for most home use, 128MB is about the most you'll need, anything requiring more is getting into serious professional graphics applications, like AutoCad. The P-II you're thinking about should use 72 pin SIMM, 168 pin DIMM or maybe SDRAM. Either will do fine, just don't mix 72 pin SIMM and 168 pin DIMM or SDRAM.

I'm not sure if the AGP video will make much difference in CPU usage, it's mainly a faster graphics port, I need to look into whether it affects CPU load. A good AGP or PCI video card will have some memory of its own, which eases the load on system RAM. There it does make a difference, but with either type it depends on how much memory the video card has onboard. I only have 2MB on my Matrox Mystique, but hope to upgrade it to at least 8MB someday. With 2 MB I have very little problems with graphics, but I'm not into serious gaming, and haven't tried any of the newer, graphics intensive games. The newest I have on this thing is Descent II...It works perfect, never freezes for even a second, and only once in a great while it slows down for a second or three.

Overall, I think the P-II 233 will do pretty well, just try to get plenty memory in it, at least 64MB and you'll be pleased, especially compared to the DX 4...

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