Questions regarding PC upgrade

[naif]

Questions - Part I

Hey everone here. How are you all?

Had a question. I am planning to upgrade my PC which runs with a Intel Celeron 800 MHz, with a Gigabyte M.Board. It has two memory modules, one is a 128 MB mod, the other is 256 MB mod and both of then are SDRAM(PC133) chips.

The question is this. Will any of the P4 motherboards support this particular module? I mean a SDRAM chip.

And if yes, do all of them do or only some of them do? And secondly I would want to point out that as of right now, I am not really updated with the current hardware available and all. So what I want to know is, whats the latest type of RAM chip a P4 motherboard would support.

I have heard about DDR RAM, but dont really know what they are. Are they better then SDRAM? And I was wondering if there are any motherboards which can support both of these modules.

Questions - Part II

Ok, here are the major and the most important questions for which I am looking for some answers :)

1. Which brand of motherboards are best suited for an Intel P4 chip( performance vice), keeping into consideration that I am an average person, with an average amount of Cash. I am not rich, nor am I poor

2. Which harddisks give the best performance.

3. What about some good AGP Graphic cards(Not that costly ones!)

Thats basically all of the questions I really have as of now. Ok anyways, I really hope you guys help me out. I am feeling really nervous. I really want to upgrade my current PC to something quite cool, and I wish I wont have nightmares after I end up buying everything ;) THANKS to everyone who replies in Advance

[nerdlogic]

Hmmm...DDR ram is basically SDRAM at Dual Data Rate...basically they send information on both the up and down clock cycles. Therefore a PC2100 chip runs at 266DDR (2x133). Most boards support only 184-pin DDR RAM. However, you should be able to find a board that takes both 164-pin SDRAM and 184-pin DDR. If you are planning to overclock, then ASUS boards are great for P4s. I can't give you much information about P4s or their motherboards as I'm an AMD person. How big of HDDs do you want? Get one with 8MB cache at least. I'm soon going to be getting an 80GB WD drive (8MB cache, 7200RPM) for $90 from newegg. BTW, newegg.com (http://www.newegg.com) has VERY good prices. I'm personally an ATi fan and would suggest either a Radeon 9500Pro (somewhere around $150, at the most), or if you can't go that high, an 8500LE(Built by ATi or Sapphire would be the best). If you want to go with nVidia, a GeForce4 Ti4200 would be a good buy...Gainward is the best manufacturer of nVidia cards. I have answered all that I can. I only have one more question...are you planning to overclock now or in the near future?

[naif]

I dont think I will be buying a new HDD, cuz I already have a 40 GB HDD which only occupies around an overall space of 4 GB.

Ok about overclocking, I dont really have plans to overclock anything now. And 150$ is something totally out of my budget. The maximum amount I can afford for a Graphics card would be around 50$-60$. Thats it.. So any idea's what sort of a graphics card I can afford for that money. I do like really like nVidia cards, cuz I remember a friend of mine bought an NVidia Vanta(16MB Video Memory) once and it wasnt that much costly also. And it really showed good performance... Anyways, I think ASUS boards are quite costly right? And if so, how much do you think an average ASUS board would cost(An approx. cost will be more then enough).

And how about the Gigabyte motherboards for P4. Are they good in performance?

[YviE]

Maybe you could find a Radeon 9000Pro card. I don't know if you can get them at 60$, i think they're a bit more expensive, but it is a pretty good card.

I know that Gigabyte AMD mobos are pretty good (performance wise, not overclocking), so i guess the P4 boards will deliver the same performance.

Asus is a bit more expensive than Gigabyte, i think you'll find a decent board for around 90-100$.

[naif]

Originally posted by YviE
Asus is a bit more expensive than Gigabyte, i think you'll find a decent board for around 90-100$. [/B]

Hmm, you mean I can get an Asus MB for 90-100$ or a Gigabyte mother board? I think I will be able to afford a 90-100$ motherboard. Anyways, like I said earlier, I really dont have any plans to overclock the new products I will be buying, so I guess I will be buying a motherboard, keeping in mind only its performance.