AMD vs INTEL

I've heard that for gaming the AMD processors have a much better performance, although i have no experience with them myself. I'm currently browsing for a new mother board, processor and RAM for my pc which i bought at a computer fayre last summer. It's currently got an intel celeron inside (Forgive me I didn't know what i was doing) but it does have an NVIDIA TNT 2 which is adequate for my gaming purposes at the moment im told.

I just want to know, for gaming purposes whether i should go down the AMD route and get an appropriate mother board as well.

Yeffoc

well, yes that would be FPS type games like Counter strike Q3 and whatever anyone is playing at a lan.

Additionally would you (or anyone) suggest A-bit over Asus or vica versa? I do have a fair bit of cash, well to me it is about
£3-400 for mother board processor and ram.

I have lots of questions now that i think about it:

where can i find out about ddr ram?
how do i find out whether a motherboard is stable or not before i buy it?
And infact which motherboard would be ideal for the athlon and ddr ram?


Yeffoc

A great source of information is from all of us on here

If you're switching to First-Person Shooters, then you're going to want to upgrade your video card muscle. A Radeon LE (32mb DDR version) would be just fine. You can hack it to enable the missing Hyper-Z and raise the clockspeed back to normal levels, and it's cheaper. They also are supposedly beautiful - especially compared to the nVidia series of cards. ( I have a GeForce3 though, and have never seen a Radeon in action so I can neither verify nor discount this information)

Secondly, let's get into the motherboard decision. Right now, your best choice would be something with the AMD761 chipset. AMD760 northbridge, VIA686B southbridge. The KT266A is an awesome chipset, sure. But there are no motherboards out with it, yet. The nForce will (should) be great, but again - it's not slated for release in the near future. The SiS735 might be something to look for if you're not making your decision right away. Currently there is only 1 board commercially available, and it's not as overclockable as the AMD761 offerings.

ABit and ASUS are great manufacturers. I hear the KG7 from ABit is great. I'm not sure about ASUS' latest offerings. However, my personal preference is with the EPoX boards. I have the 8K7A, but many people swear by the 8KHA (which uses the KT266 - not KT266A (yet) chipset). They're some of the most overclockable boards you can get, and they're stable.

For RAM, you can go to crucial.com . They're great. Cheap RAM, cheap shipping. In addition, they have a script online which shows you what kind of RAM you need given your motherboard. Other choices include Corsair or Mushkin. I've only got experience with the Crucial RAM. All in all, I'm satisfied with the performance, but you do need to give them a little more voltage to get them to perform.

Sorry if I droned on, but there is really no one answer to your question. There are lots of great choices out there today.

Asus in my opionion are overpriced and really not the way to go...some people swear by them...but most people I know swear at them...The Abit KG7 is a great board and uses the AMD 761 northbridge with the VIA soutbridge...I just put a system together with the KG7-RAID and have had no problems with it what so ever...The ECS board based on the SiS 735 chip is a really great board if you are not looking to overclock and just want a cheap stable board...

www.crucial.com/evguide

Go there before you shop at crucial for a discount.


I have an Asus A7A266 board. STAY AWAY FROM IT! How do I hate this board? Let me count the ways . . . well...i dunno if i can count that high

FYI: I play CS with the system in my sig and I get around 98 fps (diff rates for diff maps) running 800*600 res. And I don't lag thru smoke nades (aka lag-in-a-can )