Gateway 1.4 gh Pentium IV computer for sale on QVC

[SilverThief]

Came across it while flipping the channels today. Gateway is offering a P-IV computer package @ 1.4 GH on, of all places, QVC!

Nice setup for $2988.00 DOh!

just thought I'd share that.

 

[DAM]

i though intel was gonna recall these, they found a bug in the cache or something like that, or was it just one batch?






dam()

 

[ForeverSilky]

With a smokin TNT2 Vanta of course!

Seriously, what else comes with it? It better have at least a 19" monitor and geforceGTS 64mb video card. And some badass speakers.

 

[SilverThief]

Its got:

SBLive
19" monitor
CD-RW
DVD
40gig hd
128mb rdram
32mb video card(didnt specify exactly which card it is, just that its a 32mb one. go figure!)
looked like an ALtec-Lansing 3pc. speaker setup.

I caught the tail end of the promo, interesting to note that the systems wont be shipping untill Dec. 1. And that they had only 400 total to sell.

 

[StageLeft]

WTF!!

I swear to God these pre-built systems don't have enough ram. If you have a 1.4 the least you can do is a MINIMUM of 256 ram, should really be at 384 or something...

Its like the Apple G4 which costs about $2k without a monitor and a pathetic 64 (I think) ram.

Its probabaly because anybody buying this system buys it for the "1.4 ghz" and doesn't actually know anything.

 

[ForeverSilky]

probably has a 4x cdrw drive, 6x dvd drive, 40gig 5400rpm hd, and a regular tnt2, SMOKIN!!!

 

[Windogg]

I love watching the shows and catching all the inaccuracies becaus ethey don't have a clue what they are selling.

Some of the finer point on one show:

"With a 10x DVD you can run your movies up to 10 times faster"

"Old fashioned computers have a fixed amoung of video memory. With this integrated chip, the system uses as much as it needs. If it needs 1MB it uses 1MB, if it need 20, it uses 20. Integrated means you never need to9 upgrade it."

"Look at all this software, it's close to $6000 worth of titles. You're basically getting the computer free"

"It has a network adapter that is 10 and 100 uhhh.... you can network very fast with a 100 but it's also a 10... uhhh.... LET'S TALK ABOUT THE MONITOR SHALL WE?"

"64MB of memory!!! You'll never need anymore than this folks, it's loaded."

Some people have even reported BSODs live on TV.

Windogg

 

[SilverThief]

Or this on HSN just today:

"This 900mhz Duron processor is the fastest processor available today."

 

[ForeverSilky]

<< &quot;Look at all this software, it's close to $6000 worth of titles. You're basically getting the computer free&quot; >>


YES!!! Exactly what I want, crap software that I'll never use in my entire life!

 

[Windogg]

The best part about the &quot;$6000&quot; worth of software is that, &quot;It's all preloaded so we have taken care of the hard work.&quot;

Uhhh.... yea, they have a bunch of minimum wage workers pluging drives into a imaging unit. The system I saw was so bogged down that a video stream from a game was studdering. Of course they had to menation, &quot;LOOK AT THE SMOOTH VIDEO!!! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT'S NOT LIVE???&quot;

Nothibg like 3 useless encyclopedia's and 3 touch typing programs to each up the &quot;never need to upgrade 64MB of RAM&quot;

Windogg

 

[SuperTool]

I saw the P4 on QVC last night while channel surfing. The guy kept saying &quot;16 billion colors&quot; about the video card. What a lunatic. Also, &quot;60 GB hard drive... Even Brady bunch couldn't fill up all that space&quot;
Here is the link

It's a descent setup. But I have not seen $3k systems since P2 266 first came out. That time has long passed.

 

[pac1085]

They did say that it has a GeForce 2 32MB didnt specify which flavor, MX, GTS, Pro or Ultra. Im willing to bet its an MX...lol...It was funny when the old lady called in she was like &quot;well this is my second gateway my first doesnt even have a cd-rom&quot; the tard on the show says &quot;it has a CD-RW!!!!! you can even make you own CDS!&quot; the old ladys like &quot;uhh.......ok&quot; then he talks about the portable mp3 player and stuff which she has no clue wtf it is..its funny how people spend 3000 on a system and dont even know what there getting....

 

[etech]

It's pretty obvious what sort of user they are trying to sell this system to.

&quot;with the included 1-year AOL membership&quot;

I saw a HP P4 system being sold at Bestbuy.com, it came with PC600 memory.

 

[piku]

<< It's pretty obvious what sort of user they are trying to sell this system to.

&quot;with the included 1-year AOL membership&quot; >>



And those people don't need more than a Pentium 300.

 

[PCAddict]

You can get the same damn thing by going directly to Gateway and you can change/add stuff.

BTW, GW's 1.5 GHZ P4 comes with a 64 MB GF2 Ultra.

 

[DABANSHEE]

Apparently the 1.4ghz P4 doesnt perform any better than a 1ghz Athlon or P3.

Which is quite the opposite of what a new generation chip is s'pose to do - the Pentium 70 scored about the same as a 120mhz 486.

Really the P4 is designed to rev up clockwise, so Intel is just playing with numbers (the mhz war) rather than building better chips.

 

[CAK]

DABANSHEE got it right. Liek the lady mentioned a few posts up, ALOT of buyers are like her and &quot;bigger is always better&quot; 1400 is bigger then 1000 so it must be better right? Same reason the use big, cheap, slow HD's. They see 60gb and thier mind is made up.

 

[SilverThief]

I'm in aRyll.
Now that might make a fun day out of an otherwise boring Sunday.

 

[pen^2]

where is the damn show! we should all swarm them with calls lol

 

[MC]

finally!

 

[ltk007]

I don't know what channel is QVC, but some moron is selling a P3 on one of the shopping channels.

 

[VladTrishkin]

I remember something on HSN a while ago:



<< &quot;The Athlon has 512 MegaBytes of 200MHz DDR RAM! You go and try to find a processor with this much memory!&quot; >>



LOL?!

 

[Harvey]

Oh JOY! The P4 is RAMBUS exclusive, so even if you plan to &quot;upgrade,&quot; there's still the question of getting a second mortgage to finance it.

Windogg -- <<Some people have even reported BSODs live on TV.>>

Only on QVC. It fits! LMAO!

 

[DABANSHEE]

Actually Intel are selling retail kits that contain both a P4 CPU &amp; 2 Samsung RAMbus sticks.

Samsung has in fact got a multi-bullion dollar contract to supply Intel with RDRAM.

As well as them being needed for Intel's P4 kits, Intel has a huge assembly factory in Singapore, where it makes complete computers that then get sold to other OEMs &amp; re-badged (officially its a different company, it just so happens to be wholey owned by Intel).

That's why Samsung settled its Rambus law suit. The other 3 RAM makers that settled with Rambus, settled because they either had big Rambus contracts; or were involved in the Sony PS2 industry (Toshiba), which uses Rambus; or were planning to sell of their fabs or RAM divisions &amp; didn't want law suits hanging over their heads. The other 12 RAM makers that haven't settle, I doubt ever will, because they have no reason to settle &amp; its doubtful that Rambus's patents will stand up, if tested in the courts.

As far as clockability, memory bandwidth &amp; SSE2 (Screaming Sindy) the P4 flys, but as far as everything else is concerned it's worse than a equilivantly clocked Athlon or P3.

So for current software the P4 is a waste of good money, it will only be utilised by its full potential through the use of re-compiled new software. Even then only Video encoding codecs would give you the time saving worth the re-compile. As far as 3D productivity software where repedative simple calculations are involved, its big cache RISC CPUs such as Alphas that are the go, even a P2 Xeon would be better than a P4 (well that's what my draughtman mate told me).

 

[DABANSHEE]

Knowing the awe inspiring respect, Harvey has for Tom's work, I felt I just had to link his experiances with the P4.