Well, after nearly four years of being well served by my i850/P4-1.9 system (a 4 year old system playing AoE3 at 1600x1200 decently isn't too shabby...), I think it's going to be time to upgrade...
The "local" (well, at the other end of the country, but us people living in the Great White North don't get Newegg and the like) shop is selling an Abit AL8-V with a Mushkin PC2-4200 1GB dual channel kit for a ridiculously cheap price... so cheap that I'm wondering if it's a horribly bad idea.
My experience with Abit is somewhat limited to an IS7 I stuck in a Linux/mythtv kinda-HDTV box, and it's been running 24/7 for 10 months superbly... so I'm inclined to consider it based on that alone (otherwise it'd be an Intel board, but those are more money).
As far as I can tell, the only limitations on that board are the lack of RAID, lack of 1394 (but what things actually USE 1394?), and only two conventional PCI slots. Not sure any of those would be a problem... I don't OC, so OC features are irrelevant.
Thoughts?
I'd probably be using it with a Pentium D 820 (or 830), a SATA2 HD, maybe a SB X-Fi, and the fanciest video card I can afford (hopefully a 7800GT? or something ATI).
Also, would the upcoming 9xx Pentium Ds be supported? I've read they don't use new chipsets... but there could still be a compatibility problem somewhere? (e.g. my current Intel socket 478 i850 board won't take the Northwood P4s, apparently, but a newer revision does...)
(Oh, and BTW, while I'm somewhat open to arguments from AMD fans about switching, I'm generally an Intel loyalist..)
The "local" (well, at the other end of the country, but us people living in the Great White North don't get Newegg and the like) shop is selling an Abit AL8-V with a Mushkin PC2-4200 1GB dual channel kit for a ridiculously cheap price... so cheap that I'm wondering if it's a horribly bad idea.
My experience with Abit is somewhat limited to an IS7 I stuck in a Linux/mythtv kinda-HDTV box, and it's been running 24/7 for 10 months superbly... so I'm inclined to consider it based on that alone (otherwise it'd be an Intel board, but those are more money).
As far as I can tell, the only limitations on that board are the lack of RAID, lack of 1394 (but what things actually USE 1394?), and only two conventional PCI slots. Not sure any of those would be a problem... I don't OC, so OC features are irrelevant.
Thoughts?
I'd probably be using it with a Pentium D 820 (or 830), a SATA2 HD, maybe a SB X-Fi, and the fanciest video card I can afford (hopefully a 7800GT? or something ATI).
Also, would the upcoming 9xx Pentium Ds be supported? I've read they don't use new chipsets... but there could still be a compatibility problem somewhere? (e.g. my current Intel socket 478 i850 board won't take the Northwood P4s, apparently, but a newer revision does...)
(Oh, and BTW, while I'm somewhat open to arguments from AMD fans about switching, I'm generally an Intel loyalist..)
