If it’s just for movie watching and/or web surfing, I’d recommend to not even worry about it. If you spend an average amount of money on this thing, you’re going to get an average computer regardless of which processor or computer you get.

For the most part, the market remains competitive by offering products similar to their competitors.

It’s like buying anything else. Buy an economy car, pay an average price for it, and regardless of whether you go Honda or Toyota, you’re going to get pretty much the same value for your money.

Spend $500 on a computer, and whether or not it’s HP or something else, (especially nowadays), you will absolutely get a computer that can allow you to put the movies on and surf the web, and type a paper or answer an email :)

I know it’s not a direct answer to your question, but I hope it helps . . .

AMD processors are uniformly slower than Intel CPUs, and consume more electricity.
When I discussed the AMD vs Intel issue with my colleague concerning which ones to buy for a future renderfarm, AMD quickly fell behind. While cheaper initially, but not by much anyway, they would eat up the saved money later due to being slower, therefore increasing render times, and consuming more electricity, thus increasing electricity costs, a problem which is only made worse by the longer render times. The longer you render, the more power consumed overall.
The power consumption alone is reason enough to go for an Intel CPU.

First, off, I am not comfortable with HP. They fare barely better than Dell; basically a D versus a D-minus. I would avoid HP unless you want are a masochist. They occasionally make a good showing for a short time before slipping back below mediocrity.

As for AMD vs Intel, there was a time when AMD made sense, and that time was fairly far in the past. The A6 and A8 series have their uses, and may actually be sufficient for your needs. I have a first-gen Core i3 that I rarely use the full power of, so a current-gen i5 or any AMD FX-series may be overkill unless you plan to actually do stuff lie gaming. Hell, I transcode video on my laptop at a fair clip and it’s barely more powerful than the current generation of netbooks!

Also note that the DIY option often only makes financial sense if you are going high-end. For a budget system, the fact that you pay more for an OEM copy of Windows than is added to the price of a pre-built system for the licensed copy of Windows on it, your savings disappear in a flash.

@ragingloli The power consumption figures only really matter if you have a fair number of computers going. Looking at the differences in power consumption, and taking into account that I only have one desktop PC in my home instead of 50 in an office the AMD would consume enough extra power to increase my electric bill by (at most) $8/year over a comparable Intel chip. As for render times, I don’t think that is a concern for the OP.

Here are benchmark tests and CPU pricing on a series of processors. For the money, the AMD 6100 series Six core gives you the best bang for the buck available. For about $60 more, you could move up to a box with a Intel Core i5–2380P @ 3.10GHz. That boosts the benchmark test by about 12%. Several other processors in the under $200 range come close to those two choices. The AMD FX-6200 Six-Core outperforms the Intel chip and only costs $30 more than the 6100 series. Look over the test results and see if they help you select. And be sure there is sufficient L2 and L3 cache for the target applications.

@ETpro It depends on whether bang for the buck matters, or the OP is just looking for the cheapest way to get a computer that will stream internet video. If the latter, even the AMD A6–3500 would do, and it’s only $70 at Amazon. The way I see it, anything that doesn’t strain my old Toshiba’s SU4100 (or even my Droid X) will do perfectly fine on just about any chip on the market. And the fact that the GPU portion of the A6-series beats the built-in graphics of the Intel CPUs makes it better for some applications.

@YoKoolAid So, how truly humble are your requirements? What else do you plan to with the computer? If we are only talking basic net-surfing and video watching, even a five-year-old recycled PC will do. But without knowing for sure what the end use will be, it’s hard to make a solid recommendation.

@jerv You’re quite right about what will suffice for surfing the web and watching movies. But I’d always ere on the side of buying some overhead expansion room if I can afford it, and it sounds as if @YoKoolAid can. Once the parents have the machine, you never know what new uses they may find for it.

@jerv this pc will be an upgrade from a 9 year old Dell Dimension. So like @ETpro said I believe it’s something along the lines of: “well if we had a decent pc it could be used for more than web and email”

I know they could get by with a 5 yr old pc, but I suppose they want something nice that will last awhile, and ‘still be relevant’ years down the road. Originally the price ceiling was around $800

@YoKoolAid $800 today will buy a very nice PC. Maybe not a gamer’s dream machine, but for anyone else, way more horsepower than they are likely to use.

@YoKoolAid

You mentioned Acer and while I was checking through a few of the daily deal apps each morning, I came across an Acer all in one significantly reduced from mid 700s down to $450

Its on Yugster.com if you want to check it out. Hopefully it will still be there when you see this. Its one of those “offer valid until they’re gone” type of deals.

@Buttonstc I would be happy with an Acer, but not looking for an all in one. I appreciate the suggestion though! I bookmarked that site, perhaps I might find other deals in the future.

To expand on @ETpro‘s point, I got a little lazy on my last upgrade a little over two years ago, and got myself a fairly low-end Gateway with a Core i3–530, and put a low-end nVidia GT240 in it. Thanks to a sale, the total outlay was barely over $600 (as opposed to $750-ish). Well, I can play World of Tanks at 1920×1080 with details cranked up and still keep the framrates smooth. I can transcode videos to a format/resolution that my phone will accept rather swiftly, and I can rip audio CDs in about a minute.

Note that, by current standards, it’s a couple of generations behind on the CPU, yet it is still quite relevant. And now, for the same price, you can find an i5 two generations newer that is twice as powerful as my still-relevant relic.

@jerv What concerns should I have when considering a purchase from HP?

Longevity and reliability.

HP used to be rather robust. I have an HP 48G calculator that I forget when I got it except that it was at least 17 years ago; it still works (and looks) just as good as the day I bought it. However, those days are long gone, and their reliability rating in recent years has been pretty low. I have killed two HP printers in five years after having an old one last over ten. While they have recently made great improvements in that area (or rather, taken a few small steps back to their former selves), I still remain a little skeptical.

Gateway has been consistently above average; never great, but never below-average either. It seems that many people have experiences that mirror my own. I like consistency, especially when someone is consistent about not sucking.

Asus is also strong. They don’t offer anything that I personally would buy since I am rather fussy (mostly due to gaming), but if you want a solid, low-cost box that will get the job done now and for years to come, something like the Essentio 6730 would serve you well and fit your budget. However, I still prefer the Gateways since they offer more models/configurations, and I like options.

My dad has an irrational hatred for Gateway, so unfortunately that’s not an option. After forgoing any HP I’ve narrowed it down to these.

Acer AMD vs Acer Intel vs Asus Intel

And if I take a step up to an i5 it’s between these two:

Asus vs Acer

Well, Acer is an odd duck. Let me start by saying that if your dad hates Gateway, he won’t like Acer either; Gateway is a subsidiary of Acer! Better keep that fact a secret from him ;)

Now, their reliability is decent, but not quite in the same league as Asus (few are). However, their support is amongst the worst in the business. That isn’t an issue for me as I never trusted tech support anyways, but some people consider customer support more important than I do. I assumed you might be someone who does consider such things important, which is why I didn’t mention them.

The one Acer I owned was a rugged, reliable little netbook that survived a lot more knocks than I ever expected the cheapest such machine on the market would; after all, like Apple fanbois say, quality costs money, right? Apparently not :)

Since you plan on this system being around a while, I would spend a little extra for the i5. I like this one as it’s a decent system for a decent price. The reviews are generally positive (11 reviews with a 4/5 average) even compared to the Asus you linked (4 reviews, 3/5 average, and two of those (half!) were 1-egg), so it seems like a safe bet.

Thanks for all the responses, great help!

Someone asked me by pm if I know of any other deal-type sites so I figured I’d list the ones I normally look through each day in case anyone else may be interested.

Actually, I use them in the form of Apps on my tablet. For those of you with Android devices, these Apps are free in the Google market (not sure about IOS bit you can check.

The three I look through each day are

DEAL DROP

DEAL NEWS

BEST DEALS

The first two also have an internet site by the same name in case you don’t have access to the apps.

The third one is a bit different in that it has. the deal listings of about a dozen different sites including New Egg, Amazon and others.

The first one has all the Woot categories right at the top.

Ive found the absolute rock bottom best prices at the first two since they truly do list one day deals and sometimes especially desirable items (TVs etc.) are already sold out.

Just a few examples of what I’d consider fantastic deals were things like name brand iPhone cases (Belkin, iFrogz, Incipio etc. for $3–10, portable iPod speakers (Logitech or Belkin) for under $20 and really cool and unique T shirt designs from ( Woot $12 with free shipping always)

The majority of the offers on. Deal Drop and a goodly number of those on Deal News are with free shipping.

I come across lots of computer deals but its not something I need at this time but I notice them. Thereafter also lots of storage media, name brand and cheap.

Ive saves quite a bit of money on various items in the last six months and have not had any negative experiences with any of the sites ive dealt with.

Hope this info helped. Enjoy.

As another example of great bargains, I just opened my latest Woot box. Three Stanley 24 oz. stainless steel bottles which were about $3.30 apiece. And they aren’t flimsy either.
Found it a few days ago in their recent newest category of Sports. I love that site.

IA few weeks ago I had bought one stainless bottle which I found at the grocery store (NOT Stanley quality,) 18 oz. and that cost $8.99 just for the sake of comparison.