Bloom...New Computer, Part Deux! (A New Begining)

[LePaul]

Ok, I took your advice, here are the pieces I bought and am getting ready to assemble this weekend

Motherboard:  Gigabyte GA-7VRXP
RAM:  Crucial 512mb 2100 DDR ECC
CPU:  AMD XP 2000+ (1.666 ghz)
HDD:  Maxtor 80gb 7200 RPM ATA133
VID:  VisionTek GeForce 4 4600 w/128 mb

OS:  Windows 2000 Pro (found a OEM copy for $150)

Per Tom's Hardware, that motherboard is supposed to kick ass, with the Promise controller on the board, supports ATA133 and has built in Sound and Ethernet.  I called Gigabyte about any issues with the GeForce 4 cards and they said I should be good to go.

RAM is surprisingly cheap again...I expected to pay big bucks, but only spent $157 for the ECC RAM  (Non ECC was $17 less...)

I'm *really* looking forward to seeing how this baby scores on the 3DMark 2001 stuff.  My current PC133 RAM XP 2000 system scores just under 3,000.

Course now I have 2 Athlon XP 2000+ systems    Dunno what I'll do with the other PC yet...perhaps a nice anniversary gift for the parents....and...hehe....a way to play Aces High when stuck doing those family get togethers  

[bloom25]

Looks good, but why ECC ram?  (You do know it is slower than regular memory if you turn on ECC right?)  That board supports PC2700 DDR Sdram, which would give a small performance boost over PC2100.  (Not more than 5%.)

Tom's Hardware did really like that board.  I hope it works out good for you.