Get the right PC: judging from questions from friends, relatives, acquaintances, co-workers and many readers of our magazine, the quest for the right machine can often be a confusing, wearying and trying one. It is very easy to get bamboozled by a myriad of details suddenly thrust upon you when you shop around for a new PC. (Feature PC Head-To-Head).

Here, we offer some information that should be helpful in determining which current system best suits your wants and budget, using two Intel-based systems and two AMD-based systems to illustrate. This article will not tell you which brand of computer to buy; rather it will help you to understand various configurations of current components. As these configurations will vary in price from vendor to vendor, sample street prices are provided for these systems to guide you.

Although components such as monitors, speaker systems and fancy keyboards and mice will affect the final price of the PC and the enjoyment you get from it, these items are easily interchangeable and will not affect the performance of the system.

TAKE A LOOK

We asked a vendor to supply us with four Windows XP systems based on Intel and AMD's best performance and best budget processors. For your own reference, look at the four configurations that appear in boxes. These are our sample PCs and in order to get the most from this article you need to take note of at least the CPU, details of the graphics card, the amount and type of RAM, and the hard disk drive.

All of these system configurations will provide you with excellent all-round usability and solid graphics, games and application performance, even at the budget end. Street prices for each system are included as a guide and include operating system, speaker systems, keyboards, mice and a high-end 17in monitor for the performance systems or a standard 17in monitor for the budget systems.

PROCESSOR (CPU) RELEVANCE

All PCs are based on a central processing unit (CPU) so this is often the defining point of the system. Street prices of current processors can range in price from $110 to almost $1100 and it can have a large effect on the overall cost of your system. The strength of the processor is generally indicated by a figure in megahertz (MHz) or gigahertz (GHz) (1000MHz roughly equals 1GHz) that appears before or after the processor's name, e.g., Pentium 4 2.2GHz. This varies somewhat with the AMD Athlon XP line of chips, which has been a point of contention among many in the IT industry. To illustrate, in AMD's Athlon XP 2000+ the `2000' does not indicate a clock speed of 2000MHz. AMD has adopted a different naming convention whereby they name a chip after what they claim is the equivalent-performing Intel chip.

The Athlon XP 2000+ actually runs at 1.67GHz but is AMD's equivalent performer to the Pentium 4 2GHz. This might help to explain the $500 price difference between the top-of-the-line Intel 2.2GHz Pentium 4 and the AMD Athlon XP 2000+. If we compare price by clock speeds, a 1.7GHz Pentium 4 costs $200 less than the XP 2000+ but provides nowhere near the performance.

The four processors you'll encounter in 2002 are Intel Pentium 4, Intel Celeron, AMD Athlon XP + and AMD Duron. The Pentium 4 and the Athlon XP + series of processors represent the performance end of the market, while the AMD Duron and the Intel Celeron represent the budget end.

As one look at our sample street price table will tell, the prices of processors range massively between the budget and performance ends of the market.

AMD ATHLON XP +

The relatively lower street prices of $285 to $595 for an Athlon XP + versus a Pentium 4 mean that users who buy systems based on these processors can redirect the money saved into enhancing their systems with better quality sound, graphics, memory or storage. Expect to see high-spec Athlon XP + systems cost considerably less than the equivalent Intel system; you should also expect more fiddling with chipsets and hardware configuration.

INTEL PENTIUM 4

The Pentium 4 has been around since last year when it was first introduced using 0.18-micron technology. Clock speeds ranged from 1.4GHz to 2GHz.

The processor was heavily promoted and took the lion's share of the market despite the fact …