Bargain?

[womble]

I'm looking to buy a new machine before I head back to Uni in December, I have a tiny budget of around £500 that I'm looking to buy a machine (with flat panel monitor) with the most bang for my meager buck.

 

Now I don't expect or necesarrily need the most powerful machine on the market, I'm just looking for something that will run Max and Vray competently, rendering smallish models quite quickly and painlessly.

 

The machine will be used almost exclusivly for 3d work (and maybe some video editing, although I don't expect to be doing that very often and the machine doesn't really need to have this in mind).

 

I found an advert for a Dell machine (i normally stay away from Dell machine's as they often come bundled with a bunch of stuff I don't need), but this machine sounds ok,

 

I could go with:

 

Intel Pentium D Processor 820 (2.80Ghz, 2x1mb l2 cache, 800Mhz FSB)

Windows XP Home

2048mb Ram (4x512mb DDR2)

160GB HD 7,200rpm

17" Analogue Flat Panel Monitor

Intel Graphics Media Accelorator 950

CD-RW/DVD drive

 

for £499

 

or

 

Intel® Pentium® D Processor 820 with Dual Core Technology (2.80GHz, 800MHz FSB, 2x1MB cache)

Windows Media Center Edition

1024mb RAM DDR2

160GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200 RPM)

17" Analogue Flat Panel Monitor

256MB PCI ExpressT ATI RadeonT X600 Hypermemory

16x DVD+/-RW Drive#

 

for £539

 

 

 

Well the first machine lacks the graphics card and DVD RW drive, but has twice the RAM of the second machine. I thought about trying to call up Dell and see if they would double the Ram on the second machine (they seem to be doing a deal on double ram at the moment).

 

These machines all come with VAT and shipping so from my point of view there are no hidden costs involved (I looked into building my own machine, but I was getting very little benefit when I looked at shipping costs etc, plus lack of competence when it comes to building computers).

 

I would probably prefer an AMD chipset as I haven't heard good things about Intel, but maybe someone out there can tell me if the above chipsets would be any good?

 

This is all very confusing >_

 

Cheers, Gary,

[AJLynn]

Find out if the first one can take a video card upgrade, get it and when you get frustrated with video performance upgrade to a Geforce card (one without "TurboCache") bought cheaply on Ebay. The X600 Hypermemory isn't that good anyway, and the difference between the systems is probably enough for a video card upgrade. Warning: some Dells don't have a PCIE or AGP slot, so check first.