The Systems that Sell

[Mercutio]

I always liked the Celeron. Unlike the K6-2/3, there were plenty of very good, inexpensive motherboards out there for them (did Socket7 ever get a fully functional AGP implementation?), they were easy to cool, and they provided more than adequate performance for the money. they also forced an upgrade to ATX. Much as I don't care for the soft power button, I really did appreciate losing all the ribbon cables of AT form-factor, and it was clear that the entire market was moving that direction, anyway.

I sold lots of K6-2 machines, then just as many Celerons, and now I'm back to the Athlon. I try to build systems based on what I think the best value for my customers is. For a certain period, the Celeron was absolutely the best value.

 

[Tannin]

For desktop apps, AGP performance is a non-issue.

 

[NRG = mc²]

I always found that Celerons were more responsive than 512k half speed cache CPUs (PII, PIII), and K6's couldn't do anything multimedia related properly (eg some videos never played properly on a K6-II 350 whereas they have on a P2-350, same thing with most games.

Big deal, you might say. Well I don't quite remember how much more celerons costed in respect to the K6, but I would take a nice stable LX or BX board with a Celeron than a K6 and its socket 7 board any day. I've just seen so many unstable and buggy ones, even with Asus and Soyo boards it makes me sick.

 

[Vlad The Impaler]

I agree completely. Once upon a time we had to replace a batch of K6-2 450s with Celerons. They all went to different customers, but they all had random crashing problems. Mixtures of video cards O/Ss and apps. Even mobos and chipsets were different; we tried them all. That was the start of our falling out with AMD.

 

[Vlad The Impaler]

Tannin:

What you said may well be true, but a lot of customers wanted to play 3D games on their new PCs. AGP performance is a major issue in any circumstance when you sell a PC as a 'do it all' home computer.

 

[LiamC]

Confession time. I have never liked Celerons. Come to that, the only chip in the whole damn P6 family I have ever remotely enjoyed using is the P-III. The real P-III, I mean, not that slug-like P-II dressed up with 512k external cache they started the P-III name with. The EBs, though, give that "instant snap" feel to the desktop that is the one thing I crave above all others - and something that no Celeron has ever been able to deliver.

Tannin,

my experience is slightly different. I look after a few small business networks and (as with most small businesses) $$$ are everything. I've found that Celerons teamed up with SiS or VIA chipsets to be slugs, but I personally had a Celeron 300A and BH6 450 - and that simply put faster C's to shame. Some of it could have been the faster FSB but some of it was probably the BX chipset.

I've just completed an upgrade of one clients network and even a 733MHz Celeron with SiS chipset and unknown HDD is a dog. I think that half the reason the AMD platform is so good is that (VIA nothwithstanding) , it has reasonable (and always has had) reasonable chipsets and motherboards to go along with it.

I'm still using the SlotA 550 you sold me as my server and it performed much better than the Celeron 450 - more than the 100MHz would suggest.

I was fooling around with it a while back and disabled the L2 cache - and I didn't notice for a week until I was running a couple of benchmarks and I thought the numbers were a bit low! Still much faster than 66Mhz Celerons

I think the system as a whole has a lot to do with things as well as the chip - and the tweaks of course...

PS Nice place you have here...

 

[Tannin]

Hi LiamC! Good to see you here!

Yup. Put a Celeron A a decent BX board and it was a whole different banana. That 100MHz FSB was the secret, I think, plus all those extra MHz. But for us that was a non-starter: we could never sell overclocks as our mainstream systems, no matter how solid they might have been. The PR factor would have been a guaranteed deal-killer in this small, conservative country town. A decent product, a 300A on a BX board, but an unsalable one in my market.

Of course, we do (and did) have computer-savvy custmers too, and one or two of them asked us to build them a C300 at 400ish, or just sell them the parts. But even here, outside the hard core gamer, they were not all that attractive: the cost of the CPU was higher than an AMD, of course, but the cost of the board was a bigger factor, and the cost of an ATX case added on to that. As a rule, people want MHz for the money, and whichever way we sliced it, the Celerons did not compete. As much as any other factor, the lack of a SIMD instruction set killed them: 3DNow is small beer these days, but it was enough to sway many a buyer in the AMD direction.

All of which was fine by me, as there are three or four local shops that used to sell decent Intel kit in those days, but no-one except us had nice AMD systems back then.

-------------

Ahh! The monster Athlon 550 Classic! I remember it. You know, I think the key thing that made the Athlon (and AMD chips in general) so competitive was the size of its primary cache. If it hadn't been for that masive 128k primary, the higher-clock Athlon Classics (the 950, say) would have been absolute dogs.

You say your cacheless Athlon is still much faster than 66MHz bus Celerons? Sure it is. But then, so is molasses. :wink:

(One day I really, really must sit down and do some proper reading again - why is it that the P-4 can perform quite decently with a piddly little 4k primary? It seems to fly in the face of reason.)

 

[LiamC]

Tony, anyone,

are more people buying whole new systems or are they upgrading? I know I haven't bought a whole system since 1995 - just upgrade a CPU/motherboard here, vid there, disk, monitor etc

 

[Mercutio]

I'm not a computer shop-owner. I sell maybe 45 systems a year, which isn't that bad for something I do as a hobby.

An awful lot of my sales come from people who either have never owned a computer, or bought a computer so long ago there's no reason to attempt an upgrade. Can't say how many times someone has asked me to take a look at their 486.

There's also a market of idiots who buy a computer because the shortcut to IE disappeared; that is, they figure some silly software problem is a sign that their computer is dying, or don't understand the distinction between hardware and software problems. I try to avoid those people, but they are out there.

I like dealing with anyone clueful enough to ask for specific parts, but those aren't the people I deal with.

Personally, I work on a continuing series of cascading upgrades... but since I'm always buying new hardware for someone or other, I pretty much upgrade my PCs constantly, too.

 

[Tannin]

I just spent a good half hour re-reading this thread. It's a darn good one, and I think it's worth reviving. There are about six or eight issues arising that I haven't dealt with yet - hell - I haven't responded to Cougtek's question in about the fourth post yet! - but seeing as Tea has half done this already in another thread, I'll start by just bring the hot sellers list up to date.

1: The integrated-everything Celeron has gone from 900 to 1100MHz, otherwise it remains a 15 inch monitor, 20GB hard drive, 128MB. Still no-one buys it. Which is good.

2: The integrated-most things Duron has gone from 900 to 1000, still has the 17 inch monitor, 20GB drive, 128MB SDRAM, on-board sound and video, but full-size case and quality power supply. Sold zero of these too.

 

[Tannin]

Now the real machines again.

A few changes over the last few months. We still can't get Honeywell (i.e., Keytronics) keyboards and stuffed about for ages trying to find a decent substitute. Went with Cherry for a while - German made, not bad, a bit dear, various others, eventually got onto Samsung. These are really cheap for a quality keyboard (no dearer than a lot of really crappy things) but (as Kristi and I see it) of equal quality to the Honeywells. Better in fact - they have a nicer feel than the over-light Honeywells of the last year or so. As good as the old Honeywells.

Dropped the Panasonic 48X CD drives in favour of Mitsubushi 52X ones. We had - must unusually for Panasonic - quality issues with two or three shipments, and the Mitsubushis are cheaper too. Only 12 month warranty instead of the 2 year Panasonic one, but the failure rate so far is really, really low and we figure that the saving we make will more than make up for the chance that we wil have to replace the odd one out of pocket in 18 months.

1: The business system is almost unchanged: only a different brand video card - a SiS 8MB now instead of S3.

2: Professional system: 40GB 7200, Matrox 16MB G450. Unchanged.

3: Cheap home system: Unchanged. Still a 32MB TNT-2 M64, 40GB Samsung 5400, half-decent 380W speakers. Stil a big seller too.

4: Bigger home system: Still 60GB 5400 RPM but 64MB Gforce II MX-400 now, instead of the 32MB MX-200. Sold a few of these in the old config earlier this year, which is unusual.

5: The more games oriented: one is still 40GB 5400, no longer a 64MB MSI Gforce II MX-400, now a GTi with DDR. Sold these too lately - which is also unusual.

6: Bumped the top one up to a Gforce III Ti200 the other day. But looks like I'll have to change it again soon - I'll start another thread to work out what to.

7: Stopped playing cricket.

 

[Buck]

I just spent a good half hour re-reading this thread. It's a darn good one, and I think it's worth reviving. There are about six or eight issues arising that I haven't dealt with yet - hell - I haven't responded to Cougtek's question in about the fourth post yet! - but seeing as Tea has half done this already in another thread, I'll start by just bring the hot sellers list up to date.

1: The integrated-everything Celeron has gone from 900 to 1100MHz, otherwise it remains a 15 inch monitor, 20GB hard drive, 128MB. Still no-one buys it. Which is good.

2: The integrated-most things Duron has gone from 900 to 1000, still has the 17 inch monitor, 20GB drive, 128MB SDRAM, on-board sound and video, but full-size case and quality power supply. Sold zero of these too.

Yes, this is a good thread – today is the first time I’ve read it.

1. The integrated-everything Duron @ 900 Mhz with a 20 GB drive and 128 MB SDRAM with onboard video, audio, and LAN has been selling.

2. The semi-integrated system: Athlon XP 1600+ with integrated sound and modem (riser card) has been selling too. As of late, this has been the ECS K7VTA3-2 board with 20 GB drive, 32 MB GeForce2 MX-400 video, NEC 16x10x40x CDR-W, WindowsXP Home, 3 Com NIC ... oh yeah, 256 MB of DDR memory (decent case, of course). I can usually get by selling this box with a nice Keyboard and mouse for under US$960.00 after tax. Darn good system too, I’ve contemplated making one for myself and selling my dual Athlon MP system.

 

[CougTek]

Dropped the Panasonic 48X CD drives in favour of Mitsubushi 52X ones.

Tony, you really won't attract many BSD users with your featured configurations. As I once told you, the Panasonic CD-ROM drives are problematic for FreeBSD and OpenBSD has issues with the driver of the Mitsumi! I'm sure you didn't know, but it's funny to see that no matter what you choose, it's always problematic for potential customers who would like to install a BSD OS on your boxes.

But since I'm sure there's a lot of BSD users among your customers...

 

[Pradeep]

I'm sure the only BSD they have contact with is the win98 BSOD.

 

[Tannin]

Pradeep is right, big CT. In fact, I can think of exactly one BSD user among my customers. No doubt there are others but I only know of one. But they are Mitsubishi drives, not Mitsumi. Quiet, seem fast enough, no failures out of 100 or so ... Hard to fault really.

 

[CougTek]

And since you don't know much of anything about BSD (sorry if it's false, but I don't recall you to be very familiar with most Unix OSes), if that customer has troubles with his system, he will be Sol, isn't he?

Sorry about the confusion regarding your CD-ROM brand. I remember now that you wrote you replaced the Panasonic by Mitsubushi. Is it a regional brand of Mitsubishi for the Australian outback? ;-)

 

[Tannin]

I have many faults, and my spelling is formost amongst them.

Or should that be "foremost"?

Nope, not Sol. But you are quite correct, I know little of Linux, BSD or any other 'nix.

 

[James]

I've essentially stopped selling systems, because the things that people wanted to buy got gradually less and less fun to build, and just repetitivve instead. I only sell systems to people who want top end gaming systems/bragging rights, and I don't do much volume. Maybe one a week is all, if that, and my margin on it is hardly anything - I do it mostly for fun, which is why the fun factor of getting to see new hardware bought with someone else's cash is the important bit to me.

Lately we seem to have reached a point that for even the most advanced system the configuration has essentially plateaued - Epox or occasionally ECS (SiS based) mobo, Athlon 1700 or 1800 XP, GF 3Ti200, 7200RPM IDE HD (either a D740X or a B IV), 256-512M of DDR RAM, C-Media 8738-based sound card, Realtek LAN card, Pioneer 16x slot load DVDROM, and maybe if you're lucky a Lite-On CD writer. It's been like that for more than six months.

No one, even the most hardened gamer, seems to be willing to step up to the plate and buy a GF4 (I haven't been able to get the 4200 model yet, and that's the only one that I think will sell). 24X writers are more than anyone really needs, the 32X and 40X stuff seems to bear no interest for anyone. No one is interested in the Audigy. The system described above will run 99+% of the games out there at blinding speed and should continue to give good performance for at least two more years, even for the most frantic parts-upgrader.

I do sometimes have a bit of a hankering to build a P4-1.6G system and overclock it to 533MHz FSB on one of the SiS645-based boards, but then what would I do with it? The last Pentium system I used apart from in a laptop or a server was a Celeron 300A @ 450, which is still running happily in my father's main machine. That was perhaps 4 years ago. I still have a P166 I've turned into a FreeBSD box at home and use as a SMB file server, so I can sell my Sun box to buy a digital camera, too. But that's it.

 

[CougTek]

Lately we seem to have reached a point that for even the most advanced system the configuration has essentially plateaued - Epox or occasionally ECS (SiS based) mobo, Athlon 1700 or 1800 XP, GF 3Ti200, 7200RPM IDE HD (either a D740X or a B IV), 256-512M of DDR RAM, C-Media 8738-based sound card, Realtek LAN card, Pioneer 16x slot load DVDROM, and maybe if you're lucky a Lite-On CD writer. It's been like that for more than six months.

You are right. The system you described is similar to my own main home computer and I built it back in September last year. The most powerful graphic cards I sold have been GeForce 3Ti200. I sold a few Radeon 7500 too, but no Radeon 8500. Until the GeForce 4 Ti4200 arrives on my lists, I won't sell any GF4 for sure unless someone with too much money to burn tells me that he wants to have the fastest possible gaming system. But that doesn't happen very often (usually once or twice a year).

 

[Tannin]

Yes, things are pretty stable right now. There is really very little point in getting anything other than an XP1700 or close equivalent. This happens every now and then when you get a really good product: the K6-2/300 was the same, as was the 6x86MX-200. You had to work really really hard to think of any good reason to buy anything else. Not long to go now though. Already the 1800 is worth considering.

 

[James]

But the performance improvement is unnoticeable, isn't it?

 

[Tannin]

Unnoticable? Pretty much. "Marginal" is the term I'd use. On the other hand, so is the price difference now. From memory and in Oz dollars, the gap between the XPs, starting at the 1600 to 1700 difference, is:

$10
$35
$60
$120

And I forget what the gap from the 2000 to the 2100 is.

In the context of a $1500 to $2500 system, $35 is pretty bearable.

 

[The JoJo]

First time I'm reading this thread.

Funny about the last posts, the last computer I built for a friend had a XP1800, SBLive 4.1 and a GF3 TI200 .

 

[Sol]

I've been trying to think of ways to boost my Genome work without actually leaving my computer on more of the time (My parents pay the electricity bill and I value my life far too much).
One of the options I've been considering is ways of using the uni computers. There are usually a couple of dozzen P4s going to waste much of the time. I could pretty easily leave 2 going all night on tuesdays but much more than that might be chalenging.

Worth it?

The other option would be to leave a copy running on the Uni web server 24-7. But I reccon they'd cotton on to that one pretty quick, and I don't imagine it would be apreciated. Unfortunatly the computers all load an image file on boot so a program will only run untill somone reboots.

 

[Sol]

Bugger, sorry guys wrong thread. Had too many open at once and I just stuffed up. If anyone could find it in their hearts to move that last post I'd be most grateful.

 

[Tannin]

I could edit it for you, but I can't move it. Only Doug has admin rights. People with mod rights (Flagreen and Mercutio because they are mods, and me because I made up some outrageous excuse and Doug fell for it) can edit, delete and inspect IPs. There is a really nifty admin console thingie that phpBB provides that let's you move, graft, lock, prune, reap sow and harvest, so Doug could use that but it would set a precedent which might not be such a good idea.

But I'd rather leave it. Why should you be the only one who hasn't made an obvious stupid stuff-up? :mrgrn: