bang for buck MB suggestions please

[desy]

So I have an Epox 8kha+ or what ever, I upgraded a yr and a half ago the 1.2 Athlon to the MB max of XP2400. But I'm getting itchy again, I don't have a good gaming video card so I'll start fresh with a PCI-X slot and I'm not interested in Raid. Clearly I have nothing against AMD but I'll do Intel if it justifies it. OH and I have a gig of quality dual channel PC2700 333 Ram.

So cheaper the better of course, I do want speed/stability not bleeding edge
or is there enough new stuff coming down the stream I should hang on a bit, say 6 to 12 months?

 

[joelslaw]

nows a pretty good time to upgrade, because of some pricing oddities (6600gt pcie cheaper than 9800pro agp.....crazy) . honestly unless something huge (new socket type, card bus, etc.) is on the verge (1 or 2 months) of changing I would go ahead. regaurdless of when you upgrade the latest and greatest is just around the corner.

For budget I would go with A64 3000+ or so. And an nForce 4 mobo. nF4 because pcie vid cards are tending to be cheaper than their agp equals. Your ram should be fine, check this out:
http://forums.anandtech.com/me...5190&enterthread=y

btw, pci-x and pci-e are 2 different things. I assumed you meant pci-e (cuz nearly noone uses pci-x )

 

[joelslaw]

I checked newegg real quick, and these are all the nForce4 boards they have:

vanilla:
http://www.newegg.com/app/view...=13-128-268&depa=1
ultra:
http://www.newegg.com/app/view...=13-152-049&depa=1
SLI:
http://www.newegg.com/app/View...=13-131-517&depa=1
http://www.newegg.com/app/View...=13-128-269&depa=1

Of corse these aren't all the nf4 boards out, just the ones I found on newegg. As far as the 3 diff kinds: SLI gives you the option of dual vid cards. But I don't remember the diff between the "plain jane" and the ultra. I'm sure it's been posted about (most likely more than once )

Hope this help!

 

[desy]

Hmm I like the gigerbyter, and yeah I meant PCI X-press

I think I've got somebody to sell off my old stuff too as well
I'll see if he's interested still.
Looks like the 64 is gonna kick the crap outa my ole setup from the benchmarks I see anyway

Thanx

 

[joelslaw]

Originally posted by: desy
Looks like the 64 is gonna kick the crap outa my ole setup from the benchmarks I see anyway

heh heh heh, you have no idea! (I went straight from an Athlon 1.3 to my 3200+ and ....... well you'll see)