What board and chip combo for £250?

[shiato storm]

i'm thinking of ditching the idea of trying to get replacement parts for my un-used mobo cause i'm not sure its reliable enough (asus a7n8x dlx) though I like nforce2- in similar situation as poindextermatic here, only I basically need a WHOLE NEW COMPUTER...
I've found the upgrade/mobo+cpu+mem kits on Komplett - they the best bet, as I assume if i get it all in one hit it'll be easier too.
thinking amd64 - how do the later versions of nforce shape up? the one at komplett (here) seems to be an nforce3 one - MSI K8N Neo...looks ok to me - anyone have experience of this one?
also would a 300w cover that along with hdd, 2x dvd/cd drives, 1 x drive and a couple USB things? better with 400-450?


***Edit-a-mundo: just found out that there's also the option of a pretty good system already built here, what you you reckon? it has, for those that don't follow the link, the msi neo board, 512 corsair valueS 3200, athlon64 3200+, case, dvdrw (i don't have one and plan to get one, 160 western digital caviar,powercolor ati9600 (yet another upgrade I had planned over my current gf2mx400 powerhouse of a card, all 64megs of it!).
I was thinking of the seagate barracuda cause they're quiet but might the system from komplett be just as good and quiet? obvious tweaking may be inevitable...found panaflo link on daveham's site



as a side note - anyone got the lowdown on the ati xpress 200 mobos at all? sort of ati's fight back to nvidia's nforce - only with pci-express graphics that it appears you can increase to 128mb using memory modules...nifty!

[Rave]

A new graphics card will give you the biggest bang for your buck, BUT if you buy an AGP card now you may find that your choice of motherboards is limited when you come to upgrade the rest of the system. A 6800GT will be fairly severely limited by the rest of your system. What I would do is either:

A) get a 6600GT, much cheaper and still a huge improvement over a ti4200; TBH with an XP2000 the 6800GT will probably be so CPU limited that the improvement over a 6600GT will be small. Save the rest of the money towards a whole new system in the future.

or:

B) wait a month until after the AMD price cut and then buy a S939 3000+, PCI-E motherboard, and a PCI-E graphics card like a 6600 or 6600GT. You'll be able to get all that for £250 or just over, and it'll be a better long term investment.

Rich :¬)

[poindextermatic]

Yeah I think I know what your saying...
Bit of a tough one as PCI express seems the way its going...maybe I should hang on for a 64BIT AMD and a board with PCIExpress, and get a gfx pciexpress card then too........
Hmmmm...

'buy a S939 3000+, PCI-E motherboard, and a PCI-E graphics card like a 6600 or 6600GT. You'll be able to get all that for £250 or just over' - are u sure?? seems a little cheap to me...?? GFX will be at least £200.

[shiato storm]

hmmm...yeah. tricky one to judge really.
I've figured I can get; MSI K8N neo plat, 3000+ (plus fan etc),1gb 3200 (twinmos) , 9600xt,120gb hdd - all for near £400. if you break it down to components its roughly £100 amd64, £70 mobo, £90 agp card, £100 mem, £50hdd (ok so thats 410 but roughly right)
god knows what to expect if I wait a bit longer...would it really be worth waiting? i'm not a desperate speed freak or overclocker, just want something fast that'll last for a few years without mass upgrading all the time. my bro's msi nforce1 board is still silky smooth after all these years so hoping to get similar set up here...

[Rave]

A PCI-E 6600 is £80-95 depending on whether you go for 128 or 256mb memory. It's not a monster card admittedly, but it's still a huge upgrade from a ti4200.

If you want to buy A64, then AFAIK there's a price drop due around the 17th January. It would be daft to buy before then.

Rich :¬)

Edit: the price cut is on the 14th Feb. There should be a better range of PCI-E boards available by then too.

[poindextermatic]

Thanks M8 - will take your word for it, guess I will wait around till then...
Prices are always dropping....
No I'm not rich - well my girlfriend wont let me spend what I want to spend anyway - women they just dont understand!!

[shiato storm]

how do you know about these price cuts?

[Rave]

From the Inquirer. The price drop on the lower end A64s probably won't be huge mind, but the range of motherboards available then will be much better.

Rich :¬)

[shiato storm]

so would it affect the things I selected above

*copy/pasted for the lazy = MSI K8N neo plat, 3000+ (plus fan etc),1gb 3200 (twinmos) , 9600xt,120gb hdd*
cause it never hurts to save a few £, if its changing by not much (£10-20) then really its not much of an issue. if its more the £20-30 then might have to wait!

[shiato storm]

just realised - this'll leave me with loads of cash for valentines if I don't get anything just yet!! oh no i won't have any excuse!

[Timmy!!!]

Dear god what a thought! Get something quick

[Rave]

I reckon out of your list the processor and memory will almost certainly be cheaper, and instead of buying an AGP board and graphics card you should buy PCI-Express. By today's standards the 9600XT is a bit of a dog, it would get easily beaten by a plain 6600 which is about the same price.

Can't see much point getting a 120GB drive either, when 200GB ones are only £10-15 more.

[shiato storm]

oh alright then I'm convinced.
right, now I have to source out a whole load of other stuff all over again!
so how do the pci-e cards compare to the agp ones, is there a table around for a rough comparison?
e.g. radeon's x300, x600 etc and nvidia's 6200, 6600 etc...[all these freakin' numbers!!] i read the blurb on the x300 and i guess i'd class myself as a 'casual gamer' - meaning if my bro gets HL2 I may play it but i didn't with the first so its unlikely! - then again x600 means i needn't worry about much...
ah choices choices!

- oh and the 6600 is roughly £20 more than the 9600xt so I would hope it is faster!

[poindextermatic]

I've finally made my mind up!!

I am gonna go for the first suggestion - the AMD 64 3200 and the Abit board.
Why? Coz:
a) its cheap and fast enough for what I need (lots of gaming - but i'm not bothered about super speed/graphics- just good)
b)It will also last a long time with 64bit tech
c) I can use all my current equipment in it and later upgrade the AGP GFX card (to one that is currently £300 but in 3/4 months will be cheaper) and possibly go to serial ATA also....and maybe upgrade RAM agin to faster / more.

In 2 years time I'll still have a good system but can THEN swap to a PCI-E motherboard....

Makes sense yeah???

Cheers for the help Rave!!

[shiato storm]

i guess being a light/mid user I'd have to see the sense of what you're saying poindex - I'm only looking for something suitable to manage pictures (I want to get a digital camera but there's no point yet as I simply don't have the hardware. a P3 500mhz dell running win98 won't hack it i'm afraid!), the odd PS edit here and there...and a few games :devil: also want it to last a good while as I mentioned. but its a slow process, i need the computer first, then get the camera...total cost will eventually be around £2000 i guess (its a dSLR - includes lenses- which means I need a good comp for the quality of pics i expect...)

yeah, i never worked out how that ata stuff works...if I bought a hard drive i'd normally look at ide one's (for example the seagate barracuda 7200.7 series) but ata is better right? do the ide drives have the capacity to use ata or would I need specific one(s)? i also read you need to do something with the a drive to set it all up...?!! all foreign to me - shame really cause I know its what all teh new boards are being towards.

[shiato storm]

another thing - are PCI-e cards also available as AGP cards or are PCI-e cards compatible with agp slot? as I've seen some user pc's with non-PCIe-motherboards yet the specs have, what I believe, are PCIe cards such as the x800 series ati cards...
so is it 2 versions or a backwards compatible one?