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System re-vamp for less than $800??

S

Skaven

Senior member
My brother's significant other needs a hardware upgrade. The old motherboard in her computer is fried. He wants to build her a new one using as many components she already has as possible. Here are the constraints:

Total must not exceed $800 (the cheaper the better)
Must be 100% stable! (not overclocked, but maybe the option to do so?)
Must be upgradeable to future Pentium III models (1.4gig etc..)
DVD-rom (hardware decoding a plus)

I was thinking of one of the i815e boards with built-in audio/video. 256mb PC133 ram, IBM 75GXP, Celermine 600... maybe a Radeon 32mb DDR?

Her max is $800, but the cheaper the system the better. The one problem is that we don't know if its an ATX case or not. So we may have to either throw in the case or find an AT board.

What do you guys think?
 


<< Must be upgradeable to future Pentium III models (1.4gig etc..) >>



Ok...in all likely hood the P3 1.4Ghz is not going to exist...Intel had major issues with the P3 1.13Ghz...

I think you should consider AMD, much better bang for the buck right now, and current boards *will* go up to 1.5Ghz+



<< Must be 100% stable! (not overclocked, but maybe the option to do so?) >>

Check out Anand's A7V133 review...board ran without a crash for his 48hour torture test, AFAIK it's only the second Consumer class board to do so.

A 1Ghz TBird will run you about $200
An Asus A7V133 is under $200
256MB of PC133 top notch PC133 (Micron, Mushkin, etc) will be under $150
DVDRom and Hardware Decoder should be easy to get for udner $150 as well

So that's $700 or less

Oops forgot the video card Radeon DDR should be gettable for $100...at least on pricewatch. Those prices are all rough estimates you could do better on pricewatch.

Wanna save some..TBird 800 is about $100...
Durons are even cheaper and will still smack a &quot;SillyRon&quot; around.

Anything from a Duron 600 up to TBird 1200 and beyond will all fit into SocketA...so that same board (Asus A7V133)
 
D'OH! I meant upgradeable to the Pentium 4... 😱

The other problem is that we didn't want any VIA drivers to deal with. Just a basic package. Easy to install, and easy to troubleshoot.
 
Pentium3 and Pentium4 are incompatible.
In fact the current Pentium4s are incompatible with future pentium4s.

There is no board you can buy that will take a Celeron 600 now and upgrade to a P4 1.4Ghz later, sorry man.

If you don't want to deal with Via chipsets that's your choice...but the Via Athlon chipsets work great. I wouldn't use a Via chipset on the Intel side, but the KT133(A) is a great chipset. And the drivers is a single install for all the newest AGP, IDE, and everything drivers. Via Athlon chipsets don't cause many problems.

Anand's webservers are Thunderbirds on KT133 boards, that's stable enough for me.

But if you would rather Intel that's your choice, and there is certainly nothing wrong with Intel. But there is no way to have the upgradability you want sorry.
 
I used to always think VIA was crap. I finally got my system working good (Abit KT7-RAID) and I'm now willing to say that VIA is &quot;alright&quot; 😉

BTW: I've used a variety of MSI boards as well, not just Abit.
 
I know.. I use an A7V at home for my 900mhz duron... 🙂 I love it!

But I have had a few problems troubleshooting lockups, game instability etc.. because of the VIA drivers.

I was thinking that there would be less to troubleshoot with a board that didn't have those kinds of drivers...
 
There is no way a p3 can go to a p4and vice versa. That is like saying I want a k6-3 mb to work with my athlon.

Heres what id get

MSI K7t-pro2a (110)
Duron 800 (85)
Case/300 w ps (50)
128 mb cheapo PC133 ram (50)
Radeon 32 DDR (91)
Thermaltake Chrome orb (11)
Sony 12x DVD (70)

total 467+ 30 for shipping = ~500 buks total

EDIT: I probably should add where i found all this stuff AllStarShop
 
basically what they said. You're better off using the AMD setups [the one just above me is a great setup for ~500], and letting the VIA grudge go 😉
 
Yeah definitly go AMD. The via boards are fine. I have one with no problems at all. This is EXACTLY what AMD is geared toward right now. Not ONLY performance but VALUE! 🙂
 
Just put togeather a system for a friend.

MSI K7T Pro2A
Duron 800 @ 1000MHz
FOP-32
256 Meg VCM
Quantum Fireball Plus AS 30 Gig Drive
Radeon 32 Meg DDR
Delta 52x CD-Rom
Enlight case w/300 Watt PS &amp; 2 case fans
Floppy
MS Optical mouse
Multi-media keyboard
Used the onboard sound.
Bought a copy of Win98SE also.

This system is very stable and a good value for $717.00 shipped searching for good prices on the net.

AMD is the most bang for the buck!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
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