OK,
Suzy needs, nay, <I>requires</I> http://bbs.scoobynet.co.uk/biggrin.gif a pc, so it looks like little ol' me will have to build her one.

The building is the easy bit (can do it in 15 mins, eyes closed, beer in one hands, magnetic phillips screwdriver in the other http://bbs.scoobynet.co.uk/biggrin.gif)

the hard bit is the spec.

She's (well, me and kids as well) going to use it mainly for internet, but I will *ahem* borrow it, for some recreation, which will mean Unreal Tourney (ready for ass kicking Dom and Mark http://bbs.scoobynet.co.uk/wink.gif) Black and White, Quake, and a few other games, probably using MAME http://bbs.scoobynet.co.uk/biggrin.gif which is cool.

so, what graphics card should I get?

ATi Raedon? Voodoo something or other?

What about rest of specs? 1ghz + processor (intel or AMD??)

I've got an asus a7v with a 1gig thunderbird athlon on it, 256 megs of 133 SDRAM, IBM 30gig UDMA 100 drive and a 64meg hercules GeForce 2 GTS gfx card. In quake 3 in 1024x768 res 32 bit colour, it doesn't dip below 90fps.

I imagine it's quite cheap now - I've had it a year now. It's a yardstick, if anything!

Best Bang per Buck means AMD.

The Athlon 1Ghz CPU has gone under 90GBP on our trade price list this morning.

Personally, I would chose an Asus or Abit motherboard but horses for courses.

256MB RAM is now under 30 GBP trade (madness), so it would be rude not to have 512MB. http://bbs.scoobynet.co.uk/smile.gif I'd pay a bit more for some top notch Crucial PC133 CAS2 stuff from

cheers guys,
knew you lot would be able to give me the lowdown.

the guy I work with is a computer consultant, so can get the bits for me.

Think I'll go for AMD chip and gigabyte mainboard, then ooh 512mb ram, 50gb HD and then a nice 56k modem. That should do nicely!

don't need DVD as we have a wharfedale player. Oh, will get a CDRW drive though (or maybe CD drive and seperate CD-RW) as we'd like to burn our own compilation cd's, not music pirates of course http://bbs.scoobynet.co.uk/wink.gif I use iTunes at work for that http://bbs.scoobynet.co.uk/biggrin.gif http://bbs.scoobynet.co.uk/biggrin.gif (joking, or am i http://bbs.scoobynet.co.uk/wink.gif ?)

Are you running Win98?

If so 256mb ram should be fine, no gain having 512 - techies opinion?

David

There is a point where Win 9x doesn't what hit and does bugger all with the extra RAM.

I'd take Win 2000 any day though - plays all my games and is far more stable than I can ever remember 9x being. My Win 2000 rig at work usually goes for a couple of weeks between reboots (including UT twice a day).

ChrisB.

No gain over 256mb unless you are running server applications, doing video editing or CAD. If you intend to do any of these you should be on Win 2k (or *nix ) anyway. PC133 and get a single stick in case you want to upgrade later.

I'd take an abit motherboard given the choice, as I like the softmenu, so would go in that direction.

Can't comment on video cards for gaming - I've only ever bought Matrox cards as they are better for normal apps.

Agree on athlon's as the processor of choice.

HDD's are cheap. Buy a big one ( or two ). Watch for udma 66 support on motherboard & disc for best performance. If you are going to do a lot of CD burning, I still like SCSI devices - but there is the extra cost of the adaptor card.

SteveM

These huge bolt on 256 lumps of RAM - are they worth adding to an AMD 350 K23D running at overclocked 400 MHz with 2 x 64 Mb RAM already? http://bbs.scoobynet.co.uk/biggrin.gif

Cheers

Mick

I'm just investigating spec's for a 'gaming rig' type box;

If you can afford it, build it with a PC2100 DDR ram optioned motherboard.

I'm looking at;
Motherboard: MSI K7 Master or ASUS A7M266 or Gbyte GA-7DXR or Epox EP-8K7A (help - which one?!).
Processor: AMD Athlon 1.4Ghz
Memory: 512Mb PC2100 DDR SDRAM (from Corsiar, Crucial or Mushkin)
Hard Drive: IBM Deskstar 60GXP 60Gb
Graphics: GeForce3 variant
Sound: Sound Blaster Live!

While 512 of memory is a contentious issue, my current 98 PC definitely noticed the difference between 256 & 384 (not using swap file http://bbs.scoobynet.co.uk/smile.gif). And yep, I'm gonna' go for the GeForce3....even if there's no games to take full advantage yet...and by the time there is there'll probably be a bigger, better variant...

Question is, where can I get a good deal on this kit? As I'm in Switzerland I'd like to get all the big bits from a single source to reduce shipping costs - any suggestions?

Thanks
Richard

OK,
Anyone got any sites that will allow me to spec up a system to get a rought price?

Just building one myself, so here's my 2'peneth.

Gigabyte 7DX Motherboard (DXR has RAID & 3 DIMM slots)
Athlon 1GHz 266 Mhz FSB (a little cheaper than 200Mhz chips & faster)
256Mb PC2100 DDR (same price as PC133 @ Dabs.com!!!!)
ATI Rage Fury 32Mb VIVO (not too bothered about 'cutting edge' graphics)
Toshiba CDRW/DVD-ROM

Chris

Thanks All

I found somewhere locally and got a good deal. Ordered the DDR RAM from crucial.co.uk - cheaper than US site with shipping.

Now, where's that anti-static strip http://bbs.scoobynet.co.uk/smile.gif

Richard

As some will testify, I had nothing but problems with the Gigabyte board http://bbs.scoobynet.co.uk/frown.gif

Ended up with an ABit Kt7A Raid - MUCH happier

Running Athlon 1Ghz, 256Meg Ram and my trusty old ATI Rage128 card..... http://bbs.scoobynet.co.uk/biggrin.gif

If you can afford it, go for the ABIT http://bbs.scoobynet.co.uk/smile.gif

Dan

Do any of you know...

I bought the ASUS A7M266 mobo in the end - needs surgery to do serious overclocking, but has the (IMHO) better AMD northbridge.

Richard