What is best for my needs?

[Kaadg]

I wasn?t? sure where to ask this question, so if this isn?t the place please point me the right direction.

I was going to purchase a steal-of-a-deal from HP, but for various reasons I decided to have a computer built for me from either Cyberpower or ABS (and if you know of a better company please let me know).

The problem is trying to find the right motherboard, memory, video card combo that gives me the most for my money; but I don?t want to buy what I don?t need. There are so many variables out there its mind boggling.

I already figured to get 512 MB of memory and an AMD 2500 or 2800 Barton processor

I am not a gamer, but my son does play games occasionally.
I do occasional video editing so I need a 1394 port
I play around with photos.

A lot of things run through my mind when considering what to get; like perhaps integrated video (like the HP I was thinking about getting) would be fine, and a separate video card would be overkill. And I hear a lot of people talking about overclocking the 2500. Is there a certain ?best? Motherboard used for that, is it even worth thinking about (do you really gain any noticeable speed)?

Any help would be appreciated.

Kaad_g

 

[Ant001]

Any ABIT NF7 would prolly be best. The NF7-S is the most popular, but also the most expensive. It has SATA and some other features, including firewire. The NF7-M has onboard GForce4 MX-440. The regular NF7 has neither, and I don't remember if either it or the NF7-M have firewire. If you get a seperate vid card, a Ti4200 is about 100-140 dollars, and can play anything out there right now, though not necessarily with high settings. Any 60-100 dollar card would prolly be fine, though I don't know what kind of games you'd be running.

Recent bartons are multi-locked, which means it's harder to overclock them. However, you can still increase the FSB. They should be able to do 200x11 easily, but you should make sure to get name-brand PC3200 ram (Crucial, Kingston, Corsair, Mushkin, Buffalo).

 

[Ant001]

I poked around on New Egg a bit, and found out that the NF7-S is the only NF7 with firewire. An NF7-S and Barton 2500 would cost about $200, plus whatever you decide on for a vid card.

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Originally posted by: Kaadg
I wasn?t? sure where to ask this question, so if this isn?t the place please point me the right direction.

I was going to purchase a steal-of-a-deal from HP, but for various reasons I decided to have a computer built for me from either Cyberpower or ABS (and if you know of a better company please let me know).

The problem is trying to find the right motherboard, memory, video card combo that gives me the most for my money; but I don?t want to buy what I don?t need. There are so many variables out there its mind boggling.

I already figured to get 512 MB of memory and an AMD 2500 or 2800 Barton processor

I am not a gamer, but my son does play games occasionally.
I do occasional video editing so I need a 1394 port
I play around with photos.

A lot of things run through my mind when considering what to get; like perhaps integrated video (like the HP I was thinking about getting) would be fine, and a separate video card would be overkill. And I hear a lot of people talking about overclocking the 2500. Is there a certain ?best? Motherboard used for that, is it even worth thinking about (do you really gain any noticeable speed)?

Any help would be appreciated.

Kaad_g

Unless you know a decent amount and have experience overclocking, as a home user, I'd stay away from it.

The 2500 will do just fine for you and probably more than you need. As for the video card, don't get anything very expensive, either integrated or possibly the card one step up because honestly, they can handle lower end games decently UNLESS your son plans on playing newer games such as Unreal Tournament 2003, NFS: Underground, etc.

The 1394 port is not directly related to the video card, so don't count that in. As for the motherboard, I'm not really familiar with AMD's side of motherboards, but the Asus A7N8X is a board I've heard most who've bought have been happy with.

Any reason for not buying the Gateway? As a normal home user, there really isn't a need for a custom built computer or something of that sort. With the gateway, you won't have to worry about motherboard, chipset, etc. problems. They choose nice parts that will work with least trouble, not to mention a warranty they provide so if there is a problem, they will give better support most likely.

But don't get me wrong about buying prebuilt computers, there is a market for building and custom built ones, but it seems like in your needs, the best will be to get something already built like a gateway.