Building a system around a...

[kittcg]

I'm thinking of building my new system around an Athlon 2700xp and ATI 9800 pro, what would you recommend for a mobo, mem, hd's, etc? I'm planning to oc. It will primarily be for gaming.


One question I have about the 9800 pro is whether it's worth it. Will lower cards run the new dx9 games? Can they handle UT2004, HL2, Doom 3? If they'll be okay, I can downgrade the video card. Any recommendations?

Tia!
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by kittcg on 05/06/04 12:29 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Coyote]

You objectives and choice of cpu are very mainstream now with many good choices at reasonable costs. See my sig cuz that's what I'm going to recommend.

As far as the vid card, I'd recommend the 9800 pro. The new products from ATI and nVidia recently unvieled w/b hitting the market soon. So prices on the 9800 pro now at about $200-250, depending on OEM or retail, should drop a little more. When I can find a retail card (I want the three year warranty, and a BBA-Built By ATI- or Saphire card) for $200 I'll buy. Some think they could fall to $150, but only a sucker holds out for the absolutely best price-I'm afraid the supply will dry up.

Good luck with your project

Barton 2500+
Abit NF7-S v 2.0
Maxtor 60GB ATA 133 7200RPM
512MB Corsair Twinx 3200LL
9600 Pro
Enermax Noisetaker 420 watts
Win98SE

 

[SidVicious]

Try to get at least two identical HDDs to build a RAID array.

RAID-0 will speed up your file system a great deal, making your OS and games load much faster. If you want to err on the safe side, a RAID-1 array provide an extremely reliable storage system that can survive a critical HDD failure.

I personally run a 80GB RAID-0 array made with two Maxtor 40GB 7200RPM HDDs for my OS and games and a single Maxtor 40GB 5400RPM for storing my audio, video and driver archive.





Fok Speling Misstake

 

[endyen]

I am really happy with my xp-m2500+ running at 2.4 on an Abit NF-7S board. Pc 3700 seems like a good idea.
The 9600pro and the 5900XT are okay, but the 9800pro is better price/performance.

 

[TheRod]

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.html?i=2021&p=9" target="_new">Buy this!</A> At least, read this article which is pretty interesting!

--
Lookin' to fill that <font color=blue>GOD</font color=blue> shape hole!

 

[upec]

I also have great experience with Abit NF-7S.