Time to upgrade.....need some advice please.

[PJ]

When I first built my pc a couple of years ago I came to Anandtech forums for advice. It's now time to upgrade my system and I'm back!

Current System:-

Abit BE6-II
Diamond Viper II Savage 2000 (410) 32MB
640mb 168pin DIMM SDRAM

I've just recently gone from a dual boot WME/W2K set-up to just W2K and I'm having no end of trouble with my my old Diamond Viper II graphics card not working with any games, driver support is now non-existent!

I can't upgrade my graphics card as I'm presuming my mobo only has AGP1.0 support. So I'm looking for a new mobo and graphics card.

Can anybody recommend a good reliable motherboard (Intel processor) that doesn't cost the earth? My Abit has been very reliable so another Abit would be good but I'm open to all suggestions. Also will my memory become redundant?

I'm also looking for something that will allow me to expand on the standard 2xUSB ports. Do motherboards offer more now, although I intend to use my old case which only has provision for two.


Thanks in advance.

PJ

 

[o1die]

Abit makes the Be7 and be7-raid with Intel's 845pe chipset. Make sure your old video card is 1.5 volts. Most new boards won't work with agp 2x (3.3 volt) cards.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Since you've already had a great experience with Abit the BE7 would be a fine pick indeed, and for the vid card the ATI RADEON 8500LE 64MB DDR CRT/DVI/TV ,Dual Monitor support DVIS+CRT only and Radeon9000 both go for right@70$ shipped from newegg. I have the 8500LE 64mb@285/315 and it plays everything just fine@1024x768x32 even with some of the eye candy turned on and scores close to 110003Dmark so it'll be a great budget card.