what is a decent video card for around $100-$150? doesnt matter if its a geforce or ati. also. whats a good amd motherboard/cpu combo for $150-$200?i would like to keep it fairly upgradable. also im running an abit kv7 mother board that is only about 2 months old with a amd 1700xp cpu and a gainward gefore3 200ti 64 meg video card, so i really need an upgrade. i play a few games, but my son plays more then i do. COD, metal of honor etc. i use photoshop and browse alot. thanks.
As for the video card... Here's a couple of cheaper ones on the spectrum, and pretty good cards ATI 9600 w/ 256 megs of DDR $109? nVidia 6200 w/ 128 of GDDR3 $112 It is my personal opinion that the nVidia card is the better bang for the buck in this case, but i know that several other people on the forums think pretty highly of the 9600 and it has done them well. As for a higher cost one: ATI 9600XT w/256 DDR $145 And if you're going to get a PCI-Express board: nVidia 6600 w/ 256 DDR Motherboard/CPU Gigabyte mobo KT600 Chipset $46 Athlon xp 2800 w/ 512 L2 cache $104 Hope this helps!
yep, it helps. thank you. i am looking at the 6600gt video card and will probally just move up to a 939 board and an amd 64 cpu. ill have to save up a little longer, but might be best thing to do. thanks again.
Exactly, you wont regret it mate, save up and get that S939 board, you might aswell go with Pci-Express if you're taking that route aswell. How's this: S939 PCIe and 3000+ Venice and maybe ATI X800XL
I always heard they made fine products, maybe not as innovative as some of the big boys Max listed but I suggest staying away form MSI's products, they sound great and work fine every so often but there have been many cases where people have had complete system screw-ups becuase of their boards, on this forum too.
Yes those damn cheap MSI boards. Made in Malaysia or wherever... Probably the same factory that makes those McDonalds toys, haha.
chaintech has really bad customer support -------yet the k8t Neo4SLI is one of the fastest 939 boards available
So there's a exception or two Well I'm sure the chaintech boards are so good you don't even need customer support
you wanna start ex haha well not many people have problems with chaintech mobos, but for those who do, i've heard enough bad things about their service, its a cheap, good way to build a computer, but not good if you encounter problems
Yeah gigabyte are awesme from what i hear, having never used any of their products i wouldn't know, but i know people who have them. I have an MSI motherboard, no problems with it (touchwood) and i have had it almost 2 years now. :good:
gigabyte falls under what I call a technology packer, they try to squeeze as many things into their motherboards as they can (good thing) obviously
That's true, they have some pretty clever ideas too, like the dual bios for example. MSI isn't all bad, I'm sure they make plenty of nice products, just many of their recent boards have proven to be occasionally flacky, but then again you only hear about a few bad incidents while I'm willing to bet there are still loads of satisfied customers.
I've only had one problem with MSI. My old K7N2 L was excellant, just that I didn't know it was the PSU that went bad and replaced it with a Kt6V which has some graphics problems.
Ah, that sucks, gotta hate it when you don't know dude. That's why I'm contemplateing keeping my old components around after I upgrade or just sellling them to fund the upgrade.
Keep them for a bit, unless you really need the money or you know your not going to need them. They come very useful for diagnosis or spare parts for any new boxes you aquire.
Agreed. Having extra parts around is a boon for troubleshooting. I'm not suggesting you keep every part you're not using, but keep some basic stuff on hand: spare PSU, PCI video card, an extra heatsink (nothing fancy, just something that offers sufficient cooling), some jumpers, an extra CMOS battery, various cables...nothing really expensive, but enough to swap out stuff to help eliminate possible culprits. Brands. Depending on what you want to do with the rig, you're going to want to look at some vendors over others. For systems that will be doing little to no overclocking, Asus and Gigabyte would be my personal picks. Asus boards are awesome. I still have my A7V that I got back in fall of 2000...although I think it may be on the downward spiral. I have run it for several years pretty much 24/7. For overclocking, Abit or DFI. Abit is a safe bet for overclocking. They pretty much made overclocking mainstream---need I say more? DFI seemed to have some problems with their first set of LanParty series motherboards, but it looks like they've really gotten a handle on it. The only problem with them is that they have a ton of tweaks and that may be rather confusing for n00bs. Middle of the road: -Soyo. Boards that work right out of the box, but the packaging, manuals and BIOS leave something to be desired, except for the high-end motherboards -ECS. For all the knocks they get, they're fine motherboards with decent performance. The packaging is on the weak side, but the manuals are okay. -MSI. They should swing with the big boys, but I think they've gotten a little loose on quality as of late, but nothing that I think will be long-term. On-board features are right up their with Asus and Gigabyte. Brands I would not recommend: -Epox: I don't trust companies who's products haven't worked for me past 2-3 weeks. -PC Chips: very, very low budget. ECS is one PCChips-owned company, but those aren't as bad as you might think.
