If you had 1000$ to build a new sys,

[Ghosth]

What would you put into it?
Duron? Athlon? Mboard?
Video card?

Most likely looking at something in the 800mhz range, 128mb ram, have good 17" monitor already.

Please try to explain why you'd pick what you pick.  

(Income tax refund is looking good this year.)

[1776]

Don't forget you are prolly going to have less wihheld from your current paychek as well  (Tax Cut!!!)

Ok, would go for 1.5GHZ, hottest Video card. Oops, $1000.00 all gone

[Gunthr]

As of today, I'd go with the Athlon/ASUS board combo for the biggest bang, although if the Penitium 3's continue to go down in price... that could change  

Gunthr

[SOB]

PIII 1GHz - $269! (pricewatch)
Asus CUSL2-C - $109 (pricewatch)
PC133 128MB Dimm - $63 (cruicial technologies)
About $500 left for whatever video card ya want  

I may be a retard, but I prefer to just buy Intel CPUs.  PIII 1GHz, because that's where the price break is right now.  Asus makes nice motherboards...Abit is another way to go.  You can get cheaper RAM, but for $63 ya might as well get it from a reputable company...if you want to overclock, you might want to get PC150.  Video card is all personal preference, but $500 leaves your options pretty open  


SOB

[Sancho]

Abit KT7 w/ 1.1GHz Athlon: $360
256MB PC-133 SDRAM: $80
GeForce2 GTS: $180
sound, 8x DVD, floppy: $110
(you can find these on PriceWatch)

That leaves you with $270 for a hard drive and case.  I'd recommend you maybe spend half of that on the hard drive and use the rest to get a *really* nice case w/ at least a 300W P/S, since you will probably have the case the longest time of all your components.  Here's a good link about cases with a few case reviews:
 http://arstechnica.com/guide/cases.html  http://arstechnica.com/reviews/cases.html

[MrBill]

 http://www.pcnut.com/cool/combo3.htm
1 gzh duron combo + shipping leaves you $500
for vid card, case, hdd, cd, etc, and a hundred bucks left over to take the wife out to a nice dinner

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OhNooo
smile awhile

[Ghosth]

Thanks for the quick replies guys  
Refund will likely be a month or so down the road. But it really helps to have a place to start researching.

Ohh and the wife's getting a grand also for her wish list, think the fancy suppers comeing out of that side  

[MrSiD]

Cheapo, taking the wife out for lunch with her own money...  

OTOH thats pretty cost efficient WTG!  

[bloom25]

If you buy a P3 system thinking you are getting a good bang for the buck, someone lobotimized you without your knowledge!  

By FAR the best value right now is around the Thunderbird 800 - 900 range.  (Duron 850 is the same price as the Thunderbird 850.)  IMO the best board for Socket A is still the Asus A7v.  (For future upgradability, try to get the A7V133.  This will allow you to use the brand new 133 Mhz FSB Athlons.)

Check out Tom's Hardware guide.  www.tomshardware.com   About a month ago they posted an article about building your own system for under a grand.



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bloom25
THUNDERBIRDS

[Ghosth]

Bloom, thanks for the info, just read the article at tomshardware.

Lots more reading & researching to do. But I have time yet.

[black]

Arstechnica.com also has a sub-k suggested sys, though a bit less game-specific.

[Ghosth]

Well after doing lots of reading the last few days the following is what I'm tenitively looking at.

Abit KT7 Socket A motherboard (125$)
800Mhz Duron (100$)
128mb pc 133 SDram (51)
32mb 4x agp Geforce MX (119$)
PCI 128 Sound card (35$) (SB value almost as cheap, but has irq shareing issues.)
Case (64$)
3.25 floppy drive (8$)

For a total of 499$

Doing it this way while takeing me down a step in the proc, & 3d card. Will allow me to build two matching systems. (running two P266's now, one for me one for the girls)
HD's will swap from existing machines to the new ones for the time being, as will monitors.

Will be watching prices over the next month or so while I anxiously await Tax refund. (filed elec this morning)

Anyone disagree with the choices I'm looking at & if so why??

[PakRat]

Ghosth,

Looks good but I'd say go ahead and get the Athlon T-Bird - more cache. I'm running a 900 MHz TB (overclocked to 950 right now), the Abit KT7, and 100 MHz SDRAM and getting between 30 and 75 FPS with a TNT2 Ultra and Shift F1 scene with clutter. Generally 40 and over FPS unless the scene is very complex. I can fly through smoke at a burning field to get away from chasers. Performance could be even better once I get 133 SDRAM.

As for the sound card, I'd go with the SB Live Value or the 512. I'm running the 512 with no IRQ or address issues whatsoever and my system also sports an Adaptec SCSI card, Linksys network card, Hauppage TV tuner card, and USRobotics internal voice/fax/modem. Full house and again, no trouble at all (with anything) or tricky install. The sound effects with reverb and such make AH sound amazingly real. Once you try it, you won't want to go back.

If you can spare it, I'd also recommend a PC Power and Cooling power supply. It has a strong and quiet fan plus delivers exceptionally clean power. I had a string of crap no-name supplies cause all sorts of hell a number of years ago and it's been PCP&C ever since with not even a hint of trouble.

Also, the KT7 has an ISA slot if that is important, plus it is very well configured with jumperless overclocking in very small steps so you can take your system to the max if that is an issue. The ASUS doesn't have the same capabilities OC-wise.

Abit left off built-in modem and sound crud that ASUS has, but I don't use that anyway - it would be a SB knock-off and a winmodem otherwise and they both are weak sisters to the real thing. I consider that a strong plus on the Abit - they could spend more time putting in the OC capabilities instead of adding chips you'll probably disable in BIOS anyway.

Can't comment on H2H comparison of setup of Abit vs. ASUS, but this KT7 with Athlon TB went together perfectly the first time. I had one (old) program tell me it couldn't identify the processor and thought it wasn't up to the task of running the software, but it let me override and continue the install.

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Rape, pillage, then burn...

[This message has been edited by PakRat (edited 02-03-2001).]

[Ghosth]

Thanks pakrat.

T-bird vs Duron comes down to pure price. Yes I know the T-bird has 4 times as much L2 cache, but on a 800 mhz system running 133 fsb how much will it really show?

Is it really worth the extra cost?

As to the sound card, I know the SB Live has issues, I also currently have a PCI 128 that has worked flawlessly for 2.5 years. Performance difference between the 2 is minor.

Not sure on Price of the 512, will have to check on that.

Considering that I'm used to running AH on a P266 with 8mb AGP card, I doubt I'll even OC the new one.

[snafu]

Not sure how the prices equate in the US but for what it's worth I settled for a Videologic Sonic Fury Sound card & an ATI Radeon 64mb DDR Video card & 1 gig Athlon + ABIT KT7A-Raid mobo + 256mb 133 SDRAM.

BTW It's Awsome  

TTFN
snafu