Yes..another advice post. Your opinion...

[Vis]

First, I'd like to thank those of you who respond to messages like mine. Your basically offering consulting services for fee, and there are those of us who really appreciate it! (and need it)

I'm looking at the following:
AMD K7 ATHLON 1.2GHZ TBIRD
ASUS A7V133 SOCKET A ATX
Some flavor of GeForce 2 GTS card
256 megs of memory (And here's my 1st question: What kind of RAM would you recommend with this mobo/processor combination?)
40 Gig hard drive (7200 and probably western digital)


Anyone opposed to the above component/combination for any reason?

My big problem is matching the RAM to the mobo/processor combo. Frankly, there appears to be a million different types of memory and I'm almost sure I'd buy the wrong kind if left to my own devices.

2nd Question, with this kind of motherboard, would I need an ATA controller to run the HD at higher speeds or is the controller included on the card. I've looked for information regarding this but probably wouldn't recognize it if it jumped up and bit me. Once installed, would running win2k require any bios tweaking to get the best speed available?

3d and final question: I checked pricewatch for pricing, but does anyone have a specific vendor they've done business with before that you would recommend for my purchase.

Again, the advice is greatly appreciated.

 

[Noriaki]

With an A7V133 your only choice for RAM is PC133, and with the prices it is currently at I don't think that's a bad thing

The Athlon does benefit some from DDR, but the KT133A chipset (A7V133) seems to perform nearly as well as the DDR chipsets. And with the price of PC133 I'd stick to that chipset.

Just get good brand name PC133 2-2-2 (aka CAS2 or CL2) SDRAM.
I like Crucial (Micron's DIMM sales division) myself. They have excellent RAM and very good prices.

If you are into insane overclocking you should look into Mushkin Rev3, KingMax PC150 or Mosel Vitalec, but at standard 133Mhz 2-2-2 timings they don't hold any advantage on Crucial, and Crucial is soo cheap

For the ATA question, the A7V133's regular IDE channels are ATA100, and it has a RAID0 chip in it as well so it has 2 more ATA100 channels, so that board will support up to 8 ATA100 drives No need for an addin card there.

Can't field the 3rd question really...RAM go direct from Crucial.com. But for the rest I can't really recommend I'm in Canada so my selection of online Vendors is very different than yours.

 

[NOS440]

I don't know what part of the country your in But I have always had good luck with Micro Pro. If your in the midwest like I am they ship UPS ground but you get it the next day. I have done a RMA with them on a motherboard before and they even pay the shipping back of the old part. thouht that was nice.