Is this a nice setup?

What do you guys think of this? Any changes you would make, please let me know. This is what I think my next system should be:

AMD Athlon XP 2600 (with Thermaltake VOLCANO 9 fan)
ASUS A7V8X (Serial ATA and 8X AGP)
WD 100GB 7200RPM 8MB buffer hard drive
256MB PC2700 or higher DDR RAM (maybe 512MB)
Lite On 48x12x48 CDRW
Chieftec Server tower DX-01SLD (would get the Antec 430W Power Supply TRUE430)
Already have a GF3 Ti 500 video card

This new computer will be used for gaming/internet. Basically, it will be my computer. The wife can have the one below...Please reply with suggestions/opinions

Sounds good to me. Definitely get 512 mb of memory. And keep us updated on how it goes.

And Welcome to the Forums.

I will. Thanks for the quick reply...

DO NOT get an asus board! that is all i am saying. i have a a7v333 and i hate it. asus wants too much for thier boards. soltek and abit have some nice looking boards with everything that you want.

hope that helps.

~Will

stinger you should wait for kt400 and nforce2 motherboards. they will be here in like a month if you can just wait. nforce2 is gonna be great i have a feeling... other stuff looks good that will be a monster computer.

512MB RAM is a must

Also, if you can afford it a GeForce 4 Ti4200/4400/4600 may be better than a GeForce3 Ti500, if you want the best possible gaming rig.

U might consider of buying the TT vulcano 7+ couse the HSF is muceh better than the TT 9. The TT 7+ is made out of Cu. Or if u go into OC u might consider to buy a thermalright AX-7 with a good fan on it about 50 cfm. The HS is excelent. It is the 2 best HS in the world. And the price is amazing about 35 $ with a good fan on it.


WELCOME TO THE FORUMS

nForce 2, without a doubt. Basicallyn nVidia nForce 2 = VIA Apollo KT400 + PCI-X + Dual Channel DDR.

welcome to the madhouse!!!!

also I must say WELCOME TO THE FOURMS or madhouse

I think the 512MB of RAM is a must for current games/OS these days...

Also go with an Abit board...they are VERY good....I ahve never had a problem and are great for OCing...VERY many options in the BIOS

Also if you can try to get a gf4 ti4200! they are the BEST bang for the buck nowadays...very fast and at 160 for the 128MB version and 135 for the 64MB version ( www.newegg.com ) you cannot go wrong...and it will blow a gf3 ti500 away

Otherwise kick *** system...AMD all the way


Spec

nforce 2? Is this going to be a processor or a chipset? I have seen motherboards with the KT400 chipset already. Now, I'm really confused. AMD or P4? Which will it be? I did post that I liked the AMD XP better, but after thinking about this all day at work, I feel the P4 2.53Ghz with the ASUS P4S8X motherboard and 512MB DDR PC2700 RAM will do me fine. Motherboards.org gave an ASUS board a 92 and wrote a good review on it.

The ASUS is the only one that I have found that has both the Serial ATA and 8X AGP. Something I definately want in a motherboard. This will make it easier for me to upgrade in the future (hard drives/video cards). It also has the SIS 648 chipset and I believe that the 648 chipset is the only one out that can support 8X AGP. Can someone clear this up for me?

The Nforce 2 is a chipset that will support Dual DDR memory(runs twice as fast)...and will have onboard gf3 graphics I believe...

From what I have heard a LOT of people did not like their Asus motherboards...I see a lot of reviews saying they are bad OCers or whatnot...although I can't see why...I guess their are good boards and bad ones...

As for AGP 8x...it is pretty unclear...no one knows how good or not good it will be...if it is like comparing 2x to 4x then it will not be very good and the increase will be minimal...we will see when it coems out...

And Serial ATA....I would say go RAID 0 and you will kill serial ATA....not very many HDDs even support serial and a lot of people do not see a big future for it...I know I don't see a future...I think ATA xxx will stay around for a long time



Spec

Thanks Spec_Ops. Do you know of any motherboards that have the nforce 2 or the SiS 648 chipset? Will the nforce 2 chipset be for Pentium CPU's, AMD or both? Am I right in saying that the KT400 chipset will be for AMD? If I do get the GF4 video card or maybe later something "bigger", having the onboard GF3 graphics will not be needed, right?

I'm just hearing and reading that the Pentium's are faster, but the AMD's are geared more to performance. I'm not that knowledgeable with computers, maybe you could already tell, but I basically want a setup that will kick a$$ for years to come for my gaming/surfing hobbies. I'm still unsure which to get; a motherboard for AMD or Pentium. Plus, I probably will not even try to overclock it. Hell, I haven't even tried to overclock my GF3 Ti500 and it seems really easy to do.

I figured I might try and find answers/suggestions here. My friend is getting sick of me asking him questions...hehe

May have found the motherboard I am looking for. It has everything I need (KT400, 8X AGP, DDR400). The ABIT AT7-MAX2. Check it out at www.abit-usa.com and tell me what you think. Should I go for this?

Throroughbred 'b' XP2600+ and a good AMD mobo will kick butt

Generally:
- AMD processors do better at tasks that are FPU intensive
- Intel CPUs do better when high CPU/RAM bandwidth is needed.

David