Building a CPU? AMD?

[freezedesigner]

Hi everyone,
I am building my 2nd pc right now. Unfortunetly I have not been following the hardware market lately.

I am planing on building a pc for graphics works.

So far I have bought number of items except few which I need some help with.

I am missing:

Motherboard
CPU
Hard Drive
RAM


I know Abit makes best motherboards, is that still true?
if so what is the best motherboard at the moment?
I was recomended this motherboard:
MB-60XM7E


I am planing on getting AMD 1Ghz
Can someone please tell me the difference between:

AMD Thunderbird 1Ghz
AMD Athlon 1Ghz 3D now
the price seems around the same but which has better performance?

Can someone help me out with few advises on which motherboard would go best with AMD cpu?

also for RAM
is SDRAM still the best option? I was thinking 2chips 256sdram each

and I am not that familiar with the hard drives. I was looking atleast 20gigs. Any sugestions?

Any advises and sugestions apreciated alot.

you can just reply here or please e-mail me at
bugcafe@earthlink.net

thank you

Danny

 

[Dark4ng3l]

The thuderbird is faster(on die cache) and the asus A7v and abit kt7 seem to be the best motherboards out there. I also heard the microstar mobo is good(that might be a better option price wise since the other two are more for overclocking)

 

[Dark4ng3l]

also I would get 1 chip of 256 megs of ram 512 is way overkill. that 20 gig hard drive is a bit small for what you plan on getting(I would get at least 45 gigs)

 

[Henry Kuo]

I would go for Tbird. Athlon is like the last generation. Tbird is better and faster.

For mobo, I would say get either the ASUS A7V or the ABIT KT7. Depends on your preference.

For RAM, SDRAM is the way to go. Careful on RAM for AMD systems. Not all PC100 or PC133 RAM works on AMD systems.

For hdd, IBM 75GXP sounds good to me.

 

[freezedesigner]

the ASUS A7V or the ABIT KT7
are they same performance?

 

[EMAN]

Asus has a slight edge.

Asus has No ISA
Abit has 1 Isa

I've got the abit board it's quite stable and my duron @ 1000mhz is loving life.

 

[brennan]

IMO, the Abit KT7 is a wonder to behold; just a really really good motherboard. No experience with the Asus, but the Kt7 is the best mobo I've personally worked with.

The IBM 75gxp series is AFAIK the fastest, best IDE hard drive out there right now. I have a 30gig version and I'm in love with it.

Ditto what everyone else said about the Thunderbirds.

Just make sure you get Athlon-compastible RAM with that. I've had fine luck with Athlon-compatible generic sticks, but some people swear by name brands.

-brennan

 

[HellRaven]

Actually Brennen according to www.storagereview.com the Quantum's are the fastest, but the IBM's are close and the IBM's are quieter.

As far as mobo's I would probably go with an abit KT7. You won't probably be overclocking but the Abit is very solid and has some nice extras if you ever decide to overclock. If you want another mobo you can check out AMD's approved motherboard list over at the AMD Homepage

 

[freezedesigner]

thx for all tips
what is duron btw?

 

[freezedesigner]

Is this the right motherboard?
http://www.motherboards.com/catalog...mp;PHPSESSID=8c490d5a90ccf1fd64ec30bdf85dd47b

I have seen somewhere Abit KT7PRO and KT7MASTER, do those mean anything?

or this
http://www.motherboards.com/catalog...mp;PHPSESSID=8c490d5a90ccf1fd64ec30bdf85dd47b
is the right one?

thanks

 

[ColdTech]

Freeze designer Just look about 2.5 inches below this wrighting

 

[Howard]

For graphics work 512MB of RAM is definitely NOT overkill.

The Duron is a relatively new processor designed and manufactured by AMD, released at about the same time as the Thunderbird. The only difference that I remember is that it's only in Socket A format, and has less ondie cache.

Microstar makes the K7T Pro and K7T Master. The Pro looks stabler (bigger capacitors), but I guess the Master is geared toward workstation/server market.

 

[Doggiedog]

One thing I may recommend is possibly getting an overclocked CPU.

I have a 1Ghz Athlon Classic and just bought a Duron 650 OCed to 950 from ocz.safeshopper and it's fantastic.

It is just slightly slower on some benchmarks than my gigger but cost me $99 vs. probably over $1K for the the Athlon (bought it the week it came out). I know they sell guaranteed over 1Ghz T-birds on their site for a lot less than a true 1Ghz.

Just a thought

 

[Mem]

KT7 PRO and KT7 MASTER are MSI boards infact the MSI K7T PRO is a great board(if you are not going to overclock)& should definetly be considered,btw I`m using one right now & it has great stability,ram wise Crucial works great with this board ,definetly buy CAS2 for what you are going to use it for.

 

[prontospyder]

I second what Mem said...the MSI K7T Pro motherboard is a great Athlon/Duron board if you're not into overclocking.