is this dual CPU PC a good deal for $320?

[in silico]

comes with mouse/keyboard,all for $320.
local deal so no shipping costs.

"COMPAQ DESKPRO AP550 PROFESSIONAL WORKSTATION WITH DUAL PENTIUM III 667MHz CPUS

DUAL Intel® Pentium® III 667MHz Slot 1 CPU's

This is approximately equivalent to a single Pentium III 1.2GHz CPU running under WINDOWS 2000 PRO or WINDOWS XP PRO

SPECIFICATIONS:


Intel® 840 chipset motherboard
256 MB Rambus®
Compaq 18.2GB 10,100 rpm Hard drive
CD-ROM
3.5" floppy drive
Integrated IDE controller
Integrated Adaptec SCSI controller
High end AGP dual head/monitor graphiccs adapter
Integrated 10/100/ Network Interface adapter
Integrated audio
2 USB ports
2 Serial ports
1 Parallel port
Windows 2000 Certificate of Authenticity (COA) License on computer case
Windows 2000 preloaded on hard drive"

i was also wondering if anyone knows how much i can upgrade the CPU's to in the future.

[John Prophet]

if you look here they seem to be selling it with a 1Ghz P3 setup...so it has some room for expansion but it would cost a tonnnnnnnnnnnnnn to get dual fast P3's.

Also the scsi drives may have a steep learning curve as far as if something went wrong......plus RDRAM....costly to add memory etc.

What do you want to do with the computer when you get it?

[in silico]

gaming, mostly CS. and dl music.

I would buy it. The parts alone are worth more than $320.

That little statement about it being equal to a 1.2GHz is NOT true. though. You don't get 100% from the second CPU in dual CPU configs. Usually only 50-75%. It's still a good deal.

What video card comes w/ it? Dual head/monitor graphics adapter doesn't tell a lot.

[5atanic]

Yup usually around 50-75% in SMP supported OSes/applications. You won't get a performance boost in games tho, especially if you play CS/HL since that engine only supports one processor. Quake 3 engines support SMP as far as I know.. but they are becoming a rarity these days..

With d/l'ing and using the net and playin games I would suggest getting a single faster processor instead and invest that money on a gfx card.

But as said before, the parts are worth more than the $320.. so it's really up to you

[jmichna]

With a bit more storage space, that dualie box would make a very respectable file or web server.