The application doesnt care weather you have pci express or agp. Btw current graphic cards dont use the bandwidth of pci express, a 8 lane pci express is as fast as the 16 used for graphic boards and an agp graphic card gives the same framerate than an pci express one.
Personally im not eaven sure if the chipsets and ram could effectively deliver enogh data to fill up pci express x16 when any card would take the data, anyone know the numbers? Wouldnt surprise me when in 2 years motherboards with real pci express x16 will totally own todays motherboards speedwise.
I think its a total waste the motherboards use 16lanes pci express for the graphic board and squeeze all the rest on the remaining 4 lanes, but thats just me.
PCI express promises to be upgrade able for future graphic cards, but when you look at all the other stuff in computer industry you will notice that there is no guarantee, maybe in 3 years there is a new standard and no one uses pci express because its outdated.
PCI Express is nice but Pentium CPU deliver less power for what you pay than AMD xp64. Actually DDR2 memory is double expensive and has the same performance than DDR. On the other side i think the intel stuff is a bit less dificult on the ram compatibility.
As long as you stay away from integrated graphics, shared memory and agp-express your fine.
You can read in other threads, to make it short your system would work fine but eaven a top notch system cant run ah2 at full framerate with 1600 x 1200 and full detail.
1GB ram is good, more wont give enogh improovement in ah2 to justify it.
3.2GHz Pentium is cheap and fast, good choice. Stay away from the 3.6 and 3.8 GHz Pentiums, running verry hot.
Pentium motherboards i have no idea which one to take. Only thing i can say is that asus got a good reputation for motherboards but i am not sure if they are dropping quality for speed at the moment, would be a loss of a good brand.
Stay away from elitegroup, have them blow up in work on a regular basis.
Graphic card i would go for 256MB ram, make sure to install the old style drivers (newest version) and NOT the .net ones.
All i posted above is just my own opinion, and its nothing prooved or what i messured out myself.
ciao schutt
