[plug] Celeron vs Duron - and a Linux question

[Trevor Phillips]

Dennis Plester wrote:
> 
> Any comments would be appreciated. If any Duron owners out there reply,
> could you indicate your motherboard model as well please?

We recently helped a friend of my Wife's get a new PC, and went with a Duron
(650 I think). Soon after, we did a similar thing for her Mum (700).

I now have a Duron 750 system, and am very impressed with it. Personally, I'd
now select Duron over Celeron without hesitating. I still have a Matrox G200 -
sure, I have to drop the detail, but I still get decent frame-rates. I'm a
gamer as well as a Linux programmer, and Quake3 (and others) perform well under
Windows and Linux with it. I'm hanging out for a new graphics card - probably a
GF2MX...

I have 128MB of PC133RAM, and have an MSI K7TM Pro2, chosen after reading good
reviews of both its speed AND stability over other similar market motherboards
- and it tends to be cheaper too!! Sounds hard to believe, but I think I'm more
impressed with this MB than I have for any other one. ^_^

So my current Dream Budget Machine is the MSI K7TM Pro2a (the a revision came
out recently), a fast Duron chip, 128MB PC133 RAM. These, plus a decent case,
will set you back a measly $600(est. price - not quote ^_^), which is
considerable grunt for your buck! ^_^

On a semi-related issue - with my new beastie system, when I "thrash" the HDD
(eg; copying bulk stuff around), Linux freezes every few seconds for a pause.
I'm pretty certain this is the kernel flushing the disk cache, but it freezes
EVERYTHING, including mouse movement and actions. Is there something wrong with
my setup? Is this fixable? I wouldn't mind slightly less thrashing, if I could
maintain some mouse action, so I can keep working effectively.

The HDD is a 13Gig (Quantum, I think), and I think it's UDMA/66, with the
aforementioned Motherboard. I tried a recent 2.2 kernel and 2.4.0, and both
have a similar "problem".

Any ideas?

-- 
. Trevor Phillips             -           http://jurai.murdoch.edu.au/ . 
: CWIS Systems Administrator     -           T.Phillips at murdoch.edu.au : 
| IT Services                       -               Murdoch University | 
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