So there I was...

standing in the computer store, Caramel Latte' in hand, head tweaked
to the side trying to understand what this 17 year old kid was tell me
about the next generation of computers.

It was all greek to me.

And to think, at one time, I was that 17 year old kid. Wow. How time
flies.

So, my point is. I'm old school... I've gotten away from learning
every minute spec of hardware from college, and basically become your
typical power PC user. Well, until my desk-top finally gave up the
ghost, after a new hard-drive, new ram, and still, (oh, but I'm so
tempted) no real video card... so here I am, ready to get back in and
learn some nitty gritty details about what to purchase. I think
somewhere between this kid telling me about 512 caching on the AMD
3200 and me contemplating my next purchase at Lowe's, I realized I was
going to be taken if I didn't do a little research on the matter.

So, being the 'old-school' computer geek, (back when my friends told
me my 720mb hard drive would 'NEVER' run out of room) I decided I'd
better check with the experts here on the NG's to see if I could chase
down some expertise.

Basically, I want an affordable Motherboard/CPU combo- I'd prefer a
stand-alone video card and sound card, but it seems alot of the boards
I'm looking at are combo. So if anyone has experience with these, let
me know. It seems 2 of the last 5 computers I've owned had
integrated, and while they worked fine, I've always had an aversion to
them for some reason. Kind of like those TV/VCR combo's I suppose-
they just don't seem right.

So in doing some research on these cards, I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA
what any of the priorities should be when selecting a card. I'm
thinking, PC 2700/DDR Ram is good, USB 2.0 is good, Firewire is good,
but thats about all I know. Am I missing something? If so, please
let me know. I want to buy a decent MB/CPU Combo, but I'd like to get
some advice from some knowledgeable folks first. I posted here,
because I'm interested in AMD. But if you can tell me why INTEL might
be better than AMD, by all means, let me know. At anyrate, any help
that can be extended would be greatly appreciated. I'm no idiot- I'm
just a little behind on the CPU times. Thanks in advance-

Hal W.
Whidbey Island, WA

a good price point on current AMD cpu's is
XP2600 which also features the 333FSB... a fast board that wont break the
bank A7N8X-X (asus built nforce 2 second revision) the onboard 6channel
sound should do just fine...

A medium to enthusiast video card would be the 9600pro from ATi look out for
makers such as Sapphire & Powercolor for a good price point & quality. If
you dont plan on playing all the new games... get a 9000pro/9200

120gb HDD from any maker is a reasonable price point...
8mb is a bonus *up from 2mb* Seagate have a quiet HDD but all major (maxtor,
western digital) are much of the same performance.

CDRW drives are VERY cheap and are worth the buy ...
the LCD vs CRT debate still rages on... but a 19inch CRT is still great
value for money... dont go for the most expensive... most tubes out there
are great quality...

"Hal Wilkerson" wrote in message
om...
standing in the computer store, Caramel Latte' in hand, head tweaked
to the side trying to understand what this 17 year old kid was tell me
about the next generation of computers.

It was all greek to me.

And to think, at one time, I was that 17 year old kid. Wow. How time
flies.

So, my point is. I'm old school... I've gotten away from learning
every minute spec of hardware from college, and basically become your
typical power PC user. Well, until my desk-top finally gave up the
ghost, after a new hard-drive, new ram, and still, (oh, but I'm so
tempted) no real video card... so here I am, ready to get back in and
learn some nitty gritty details about what to purchase. I think
somewhere between this kid telling me about 512 caching on the AMD
3200 and me contemplating my next purchase at Lowe's, I realized I was
going to be taken if I didn't do a little research on the matter.

So, being the 'old-school' computer geek, (back when my friends told
me my 720mb hard drive would 'NEVER' run out of room) I decided I'd
better check with the experts here on the NG's to see if I could chase
down some expertise.

Basically, I want an affordable Motherboard/CPU combo- I'd prefer a
stand-alone video card and sound card, but it seems alot of the boards
I'm looking at are combo. So if anyone has experience with these, let
me know. It seems 2 of the last 5 computers I've owned had
integrated, and while they worked fine, I've always had an aversion to
them for some reason. Kind of like those TV/VCR combo's I suppose-
they just don't seem right.

So in doing some research on these cards, I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA
what any of the priorities should be when selecting a card. I'm
thinking, PC 2700/DDR Ram is good, USB 2.0 is good, Firewire is good,
but thats about all I know. Am I missing something? If so, please
let me know. I want to buy a decent MB/CPU Combo, but I'd like to get
some advice from some knowledgeable folks first. I posted here,
because I'm interested in AMD. But if you can tell me why INTEL might
be better than AMD, by all means, let me know. At anyrate, any help
that can be extended would be greatly appreciated. I'm no idiot- I'm
just a little behind on the CPU times. Thanks in advance-

Hal W.
Whidbey Island, WA

Hal Wilkerson wrote:
So in doing some research on these cards, I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA
what any of the priorities should be when selecting a card. I'm
thinking, PC 2700/DDR Ram is good, USB 2.0 is good, Firewire is good,
but thats about all I know. Am I missing something? If so, please
let me know. I want to buy a decent MB/CPU Combo, but I'd like to get
some advice from some knowledgeable folks first. I posted here,
because I'm interested in AMD. But if you can tell me why INTEL might
be better than AMD, by all means, let me know. At anyrate, any help
that can be extended would be greatly appreciated. I'm no idiot- I'm
just a little behind on the CPU times. Thanks in advance-

Personally I'd go with a Barton core, thats the ones with the 512k of L2
cache and start at the XP 2500+. Then there's the possibility of running
the FSB and memory at 200MHz, DDR (400MHz effective, althought the clock is
actually 200MHz). This will give you a nice boost in memory bandwidth over
166MHz DDR, which is PC2700. PC3200 is the 200MHz stuff. Good quality RAM
is always advantageous - Corsair, Mushkin, OCZ, Crucial are all pretty good.

Now, the motherboard chipset to go for is the nForce2 - it's simply a very
good chipset. The prefferred motherboards seem to be the MSI, the Asus
A7N8X (Deluxe) and the Abit NFS-7(S). On the latter two yu'll want to get
Rev 2.0 of the motherboard. The deluxe version of these boards has the
nVidia SoundStorm built-in sound and is considered excellent, additionally
you get all the bells and whistles such as USB 2.0, SATA, FireWire etc.

SATA support might be useful, although I expect it to be quite some time
before you can't get hold of a normal ATA drive - and currently SATA drives
are no faster than normal ATA. (Think of it this way - same drive,
different controller - it's the mechanics that are slow, not the
electronics) with the noteable exception of the WD Raptor - but thats a SCSI
drive with a SATA interface - it's 10 000 RPM and runs rings round most
other, if not all other IDE drives out there.

Intel MIGHT be better than AMD, but it all depends on what you want to do.
Video editing seems to be where they shine most (Clock for Cloc... ahem PR
rating :-) There are a whole buch of technical reasons why - essentially it
has to do with increased memory bandwidth and different architecture -
wheareas AMD are on 400MHz effective with DDR, Intel are up to 800MHz with 2
DDR controllers.

Feel free to ask any specific questions.

Ben
--
I'm not just a number. To many, I'm known as a string...

a good price point on current AMD cpu's is
XP2600 which also features the 333FSB... a fast board that wont break the
bank A7N8X-X (asus built nforce 2 second revision) the onboard 6channel
sound should do just fine...

Agreed. I would definately go with an Nforce2 board. They're the best.
Onboard sound is a much smarter compromise than onboard video.

A medium to enthusiast video card would be the 9600pro from ATi look out
for
makers such as Sapphire & Powercolor for a good price point & quality. If
you dont plan on playing all the new games... get a 9000pro/9200

I wouldn't steer away from Nvidia. I don't want to sound too much like an
advertisement, but they're the best. They always keep their drivers
top-notch, and they have the most trouble-free video cards on the market.

120gb HDD from any maker is a reasonable price point...
8mb is a bonus *up from 2mb* Seagate have a quiet HDD but all major
(maxtor,
western digital) are much of the same performance.

I've always been partial to Maxtor myself, but there are plenty of quality
makers.

CDRW drives are VERY cheap and are worth the buy ...
the LCD vs CRT debate still rages on... but a 19inch CRT is still great
value for money... dont go for the most expensive... most tubes out there
are great quality...

Exactly. I'm still using my Envision 19" that I bought for 50 bucks off of
Half.com a year and a half ago. Also, it's generally a good idea to have
two ROM drives. I tend to go with 1 DVD-ROM drive and 1 CDRW drive. One
last word of advice : use the internet. I've built three computers off of
parts purchased entirely from Ebay. You can save a ton of money by doing
this. I haven't had one problem doing this, and I've bought everything off
of there. CDRW's, processors, hard drives, video cards, cases, etc... The
deals are out there.

Thanks for the help gentlemen. This helps quite a bit in my search
for a motherboard combo. I think I'm going to go with the Abit
NF7-S... we'll see what kind of video card I end up with.