Samsung 214T Monitor and Athlon vs Pentium

I've scanned through the archives to see who recommends what kind of monitor. I see a lot of Dell, Sony, Samsung & Mac so I know the opinions will vary :)

However, just wondering if ANYONE is using Samsungs 21.3" monitor. I'm getting quotes for a new PC & monitor & both companies surprisingly quoted the same monitor after they received my 'wish list' of what I wanted to use the stuff for!

I don't really care about the fact that it can rotate...does anyone use this feature?

I'm a build-it-piece-by-piece computer person so I don't do proprietary store-package systems cuz I want to know exactly what's in there and how it works.

I've had both AMD Athalon & Intel Pentium in the past! But for the purpose of digital photography, is there a recommendation of one over the other?

Thanks

Becky,

I just put together my own system and I'm thrilled with the results running Photoshop. Here's the guts of my tower:

AMD Athlon 64 dual core 4400+
2 x 1MB Kingston RAM (I have PS7 so max useable is 2GB - the board is upgradeable to 4GB when I upgrade to CS2 or beyond)
ASUS A8N-E motherboard
3 x Western Digital 250GB 7200RPM SATAII 16MB
eVGA e-GeForce 6500 256MB PCI-E
ANTEC Sonata II w/ 450W Power Supply
NEC 16xDVD+/-RW

I went with the Samsung 204T 20" LCD and I am very happy with the quality. The price was great too because as always with technology there is a new one just out and they are looking to clear the 204's out of stock. I never use the rotation feature myself. Of course if money is no object (lucky to be you if that's the case) then you can check out the LaCie or Eizo brands but the Samsung works great for my purposes. I can't speak to the 21.3" Samsung but everyone I know is happy with the Samsung line. Of course see one in action hooked up via DVI before you buy because expectations vary. I hope some of the above helps. Happy shopping.

Thanks Peter,

Sounds pretty close to the systems I have been quoted, except you have a couple more hard drives!! I'll maybe get there one day but gotta start somewhere because in the real world, money is always an object so we budget, budget, budget!

Thanks for the reply!

Becky, I think at the moment you get more for your money with a AMD based system.

I to am building my own at the moment to and my specs are:

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (will upgrade to X2 chip later)
2 x 1GB kingston Value RAM
ASUS A8N5X mobo
WD Raptor (systemdrive)
storagedrive (don't know yet)
NEC 3550 DVD drive
Club 3D X800XL 256MB Graphicboard

Regard

I'm thrilled with my machine I just built - it is designed with an AMD.

I have the AMD 64 dual core 4400+
4 gigabytes Corsair RAM
Windows XP Pro and Photoshop CS2 on a Raptor 10k RPM 150 gig drive
2 additional Western Digital 500 Gig hard drives
The new Matrox P650 dual head 128 meg graphics card for PCIe
Abit Motherboard
Antec Sonata 2 case with the 450 watt PS.
I still have a fairly new LaCie 19" CRT and additional 19" pallet CRT on the side.
I also have 1 Terabyte of back-up storage on a set of LaCie back-up external drives.
The system CPU runs at a maximum of 30 degrees centigrade with stock cooling. I'm adding an additional 120 mm fan to pull additional air through the hard drives and across the RAM modules.

So far I am loving it!

I have a Mac dual 2.7Ghz G5 - I run a recording studio and it's the heart of the studio. I have 2 Samsung 213T's (silver) and they are wonderful monitors. They calibrate well and are still very crisp and accurate after almost 1.5 years of use.

Apple monitors are made by Samsung, btw.