Was planning on 1 system, now need to build 2.

[Ghosth]

Once again its income tax refund time.
However my wifes system that I built 4 years ago is starting to show its age.

Basicly I need to replace my AMD 800
and her P2 266 for the price of a single high end system.

Whats the most bang for the buck???
How fast can I go for dirt cheap??

Whats the best most stable MB for say Athlon XP 16- 1800's?

Looking hard at a several ATI boards, will probably pick one of the cheaper ones for both systems.  Anyone know anything about the ATI Radeon 9000 128 mb card?

I'd like to have both systems as close to the same as possible.  I'm only going to have about a 1,000$ available to spend.

On the plus side we both have good 17" monitors, & both have good sound cards that would move over.
Same for floppy's & CD roms & Rw.

Hence Id rather stay away from onboard sound/video. Althought onboard lan would be an option.


Ohh and the 800 suitibly refreshed with printer & new monitor will likely be given to my daughter whos been struggling with a P133.

[lord dolf vader]

is the amd 800 maxed out ? if its not gonna be a gaming machine just upgrade to a xp 1700 and for cheap and spend the extra on the other machine.

i have the radeon the the ati 9000 is about as fast as the old 8500 ( the card i have ) never had any difficulty in any game with the 8500. 9000 is newer tech so read up.


the 9500 pro 128 can be altered software or hardware to be a 9700 i believe and its like 150 usd  so  get her a 7500 for 50 bucks and get you the 9500pro

[CavemanJ]

Build your box, do an upgrade or two your old box (the 800 machine) and pass it on the wife, pass the wife's old machine the kid, turn the kid's old machine into a file server on the LAN

That's how I'm workin things around here.

[qts]

Don't neglect the possibility of simply upgrading the CPU in the P2 machine.

[bloom25]

What motherboard is the Athlon 800 system using?  You might consider upgrading with an XP processor to replace the P2 if it has a board new enough to take an XP.  Then just build one system.

The most stable (and highest performing) boards for the Athlon XPs are without a doubt the nForce 2 chipset based boards.  My favorite would be the Asus A7N8X Deluxe.  I'd also recommend you use it's onboard sound.  The ONLY card that even matches it is the Audigy 2.  (Even that card lacks some of its features.)  The sound quality, especially if you use the SPDIF interface, is at least on par with a good standalone card.  It is definately better than a Sound Blaster Live! series card.  If you use an nForce 2 based board you will also be able to take any Athlon XP currently available and the 3000+ and up later on.

(BTW:  It's the 9500 non-pro that can be modified, NOT the pro version.)

[bloom25]

Your P2 system may be somewhat upgradable as well.  Depending on the board once again, you may be able to take that system to a 466 Celeron, a 600 MHz P3 (Katami core), or maybe even a 1 GHz P3 (Coppermine core).  

One last thing, Asus makes both a Deluxe and non-Deluxe A7N8X board.  The Deluxe version adds much superior on-board audio, dual lan, firewire, serial ATA, and extra USB 2.0 ports.  It is most definately worth the additional $20 over the non-Deluxe version should you choose to go with an nForce 2 Asus board.

[Ghosth]

The P2 can only upgrade to 450,.

The 800 could I think go to a 1.4 133 with no problem.

Bloom good points on the A7N8x will research it some.

Thanks all for suggestions.