I built my own system back in high school and did extensive research at the time. But now with college, work, and new hobbies (photography), I have been sorely behind the hardware scene. I don't know what the latest offerings of AMD and Intel are, so definitely don't know how they compare with each other. Since I've been so out of it for so long, it's a bit tough to do a lot research in a short time.
My desktop was a nice Asus K7V with Athlon 700mhz (Slot A) back in the days, but now, as you know, is worthless. I do have an intermediate laptop that's much more powerful, but because of the X-Brite LCD, I can''t get good color accuracy for my pictures.
I'm asking you guys to recommend me a good motherboard + CPU combination, and I would be buying it on blind faith. I have about $500 to spend, where part of that will go to a 1GB RAM, and maybe a decent videocard. So that will probably leave me $350 to spend on the motherboard/Cpu combo. Is this a realistic budget?
I mainly run Office programs, Photoshop, a little gaming. I don't have a preference for either Intel or AMD, and I obviously don't need the best and the fastest..just enough to keep up for the next 2 years (excluding games).
I'm looking for a good workhorse of a system, that is stable, and that is versatile towards future upgrades (such as 64-bit Windows, or upgrading CPU without having to buy new motherboards, etc).
My desktop was a nice Asus K7V with Athlon 700mhz (Slot A) back in the days, but now, as you know, is worthless. I do have an intermediate laptop that's much more powerful, but because of the X-Brite LCD, I can''t get good color accuracy for my pictures.
I'm asking you guys to recommend me a good motherboard + CPU combination, and I would be buying it on blind faith. I have about $500 to spend, where part of that will go to a 1GB RAM, and maybe a decent videocard. So that will probably leave me $350 to spend on the motherboard/Cpu combo. Is this a realistic budget?
I mainly run Office programs, Photoshop, a little gaming. I don't have a preference for either Intel or AMD, and I obviously don't need the best and the fastest..just enough to keep up for the next 2 years (excluding games).
I'm looking for a good workhorse of a system, that is stable, and that is versatile towards future upgrades (such as 64-bit Windows, or upgrading CPU without having to buy new motherboards, etc).
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