Yes, this seems like an odd topic for a post, but whatever. I noticed the other day that my desktop was getting more and more sluggish. Also, my new game addiction is somewhat beyond that this box of nearly 2 years will handle well, so its time to consider upgrading. Keeping in mind that I'm lucky to get 2 years out of a desktop, this one has served me quite well, and I shall have a use for it once it has been replaced. What that is, I'm not really sure, but its plenty fast enough with enough ram/disk space to do anything I really need a server to do.
The question I keep bumping into is what should I replace it with. The CPU debate is as old as the CPU itself, and I've been a huge AMD fan since the K6 was around. In face, I've not purchased a non AMD based system since the K6-2 I built many moons ago. After looking into the AMD offering, I find myself wondering if I can get a better bang for the buck, and a more tailored system. The dual core AM2 caught my attention from a design standpoint, but somehow I don't think the ability to go quad core without changing boards would offer any advantage. About the only thing I can say that really shoved AMD above Intel for me is power consumption and thus heat generation. Heat is something I keep in mind as well as power consumption since my systems are almost never powered down.
With the Intel chips, I see a better selection of main boards, and perhaps a slightly faster chip for the programs I will be running. My main gripe with Intel is their need to push clock speed so much. After reading endless white papers years ago, I found that the AMD offerings had a much higher throughput per cycle than their Intel counterpart. Where Intel made up for that is simply pushing more cycles. When you push the clock speed higher, you end up generating more hear, and being less power efficient per cycle.
There are of course people who will disagree with me, and produce their benchmark du-jour to tell me I'm wrong, but I really don't care about that. I enjoy reading white papers, and read most anything from a reliable source which includes both AMD and Intel.
Another thing I notice is the choice of main board, and the options that are included with each unit. For some, having integrated everything is very nice, and makes things so much easier, but I really dislike that. Having just a main board with no extra bits allows me to build whatever I want, and choose my components based on what I'm going to use the system for. When you have integrated video, LAN, sound, etc, you end up with less expansion slots for install your own components. For the most part, the NIC is less important than it used to be, but I still prefer an Intel chipset, or as a second choice, a 3Com. Sound is something that I really with wasn't integrated into every main board I see. I would like to have my Creative super Hi-Def card in the system without having to disable the onboard unit which always ends up showing up in Winders anyway.
Onboard video these days is fine if all you're going to do is check e-mail, run Vista in ultra stripped mode, and maybe play a couple kids game. If you have any thoughts of playing any real games, or perhaps doing some kind of TV/Video work, forget about onboard video. To me it ends up getting in the way anyway. Many of the Dell systems come with an add-in card, as well as the on board unit. The trick they're using is simply covering the DB-15 so the cattle plug the monitor into the correct hole.
The simpler the board, the less there is to go wrong. Just give me a solid and stable chipset, fast memory and a respectable disk controller, and I'll be happy. If I want to add a RAID controller or something fancy, I'll do that, but the on board SATA raid controller is not really a hardware RAID anyway, so who really care about that. Also, this is a workstation, and doesn't need to have 2 TB of space. Thats what the server is for, and servers normally have off board RAID controllers that do real RAID.
If I sound a bit bitchy, thats fine too. Keep in mind that opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one, they all stink, and no one wants to hear anyone's but theirs. I don't know if there are many people like me out there anymore, but somehow I don't think there are. If there was, I'm sure the plain main board selection would be a whole lot better. The main board is one of the key bits that is tempting me to go with something like a Core 2 Duo. Intel as well as several other vendors offer a simple spec board with plenty of memory bandwidth, slots, and an impressive number of expansion slots of all kinds. We'll see what happens, and where I go. Whatever I get will likely last about 2 years, and end up in the pile.