New Comp

[SgtJeff]

Ok, upgrade time again. Looking at an Athlon 64 bit XP 3500. Could use some help choosing a good motherboard, vid card and anything else anyone can think of. My budget is $1500.00 thanks to insurance. I'm going to let PCClub build it since they will put in the 'legal' software for me. Im too lazy this time. Please throw any ideas at me. Thanks..

[LA_MERC_LaTech]

Get a socket 939 chip, no matter what. Also, look for a board that you'll be able to upgrade to dual core later on with. SLI would also be a good idea to upgrade to later (then again, with 1500 to spend, you can afford it now). Get 1GB of GOOD RAM...DDR2 or something.

I know this isn't specific, but I'm still at work...can't think

[Biggs]

i would run 2 gigs of ram. i run 2 gigs and for gameplay......its sweet!

[SgtJeff]

Im planning on 2 gigs now. Was looking at dual core. Seems AMD has it, but not quite on par with intel yet. At least that what the comp store guys said. I'll look for something upgradeable there. Thanks so far. keep em comin.

[LA_MERC_eX1|eS' ch1|d]

I was just pricing stuff about a week ago at Newegg so I'll throw out what I picked.

AMD 3700 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103539
2X1GIG RAM http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820146575
ASUS mobo http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131517

There's your base, now it depends on if you are going to take anything from your present setup and if you are an ATI guy or an Nvidia guy. For video cards I haven't read up on any benchmarks recently so I'm not sure which is the best but price gets you in the right direction. So something that's $300 or more should be a real nice video card for you. Hard drives depend on how much stuff you have to store but for your main drive I'd get this one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144160. Ideally you would set that drive up in RAID with 2 of those bad boys, but that's $400 for only 140 Gigs of memory. So if you have a lot to store than get one with your OS and all on it and another bigger hard drive for storage.

[SgtJeff]

THanks for the assist. Im gonna pass that on and see what my builder thinks...