rookie Needs Advice Pls!

[Guest]

Greetings.

I'm in the planning stages of building a gaming system. I DO NOT overclock, so those options are not important to me.
I am going to get a Duron or TBird....what is a great bang for your buck stable board that I should look at?

Thanks!

 

[Guest]

As a word of advice. I would wait a little while before building you system. Because DDR ram chipsets are more than likely going to be released soon and you want a motherboard that will support this. As far as motherboards go I suggested gigabyte. I use there boards and have no issues. Make sure the board you get regardless supports ATA 100 and PC133 memory. As far as other equipment goes I suggest Western Digital or IBM hard drives. Stay away from Maxtor. Make sure you get one thats ATA 100 captabile. I suggested the Geforce for a video card. Sound cards are pretty much all the same. Creative makes a good card, but there a bit pricey. For better pricing I suggest www.pricewatch.com. Other than that the rest is up to you. I suggested atleast 128MB of memory. Monitor size, mouse, keyboard, and joysticks all depends on your prefrence. Internet depends on your service, but again modems and NICs are all about the same. Some brands are just high priced but off no true performance increase or stability. Hope this helps you build a better gaming machine.

 

[igottaknife]

wait pleeeez wait for the 760 chipset I'm sick of this VIA bullshit!!!

This new forum sucks

 

[Guest]

First, realize that "great bang for the buck" and "I do not overclock" are contradictory statements. That said...

Let's talk about the technologies available...

ATA/100 = Very Fast IDE (IDE = inexpensive) Altima (altima2000.com) is selling an IBM (excellent hard drives) 46.1GB Ultra-ATA/100 7200RPM Hard Drive w/2MB Cache for $179.

DDR (Double Density Rate) RAM - Very expensive and only a moderate (10%) performance increase. If you're concerned about "bang for the buck", pass on this.

VIA KT133 chipset - I disagree with the previous post. Just as AMD is the state-of-the-art (albeit underdog) processor, VIA is state-of-the-art in chipsets. Best bang for the buck.

Gigabyte makes great boards, but I'd go with an Asus A7V - even if you don't plan to overclock. It's rock-solid-stable and a real screamer. It has ATA/100, AGP Pro (a must for serious 3D graphics) and uses jumperless configuration.

If you want to go Gigabyte, check out the GA-7ZX. It also has ATA/100 and comes with built-in Creative CT5880 (Soundblaster Live) sound for only $110 or so.