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"Graphics Cards"

Building up a pc from a kinda grant, what's good for graphics?

The last pc I built up was a P3 450, so I'm a little out of touch here.. :)

Any other recommendations for building up anyway, especially memory, confused me with that. I'll edit this in a bit to show what bits I've chosen so far.

Asus K8V-SE Deluxe Motherboard
AMD (Newcastle) Athlon 64bit 3200
2 x Corsair 512 Memory
Connect 3D ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB
Seagate 120GB Hard Drive
NEC ND-3500 Double Layer Dual 16x DVD R/RW
Mitsumi OEM Black Internal Floppy Drive

[URL]http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=2956071471&action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=77869[/URL]

[URL]http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=62704[/URL]

Clearer?

Really not bothered about overclocking though... argh, should never have come in here, it's just making it harder :D

Hate to keep asking questions a-la, but what memory type does the Athlon motherboards take?

Grix Thraves wrote:

> Abit AI7 Motherboard
> Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz Prescott <- If you could get a 2.6 or 3.0 GHz
Northwood, that board would overclock - guaranteed to ~3.4 - 3.6...

> 2 x Corsair 512 Memory
> Connect 3D ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB
> Seagate 120GB Hard Drive

I hate to say this, but yeah I would go for an AMD processor at the moment, the prescott is horrendously inefficient and really designed to shine at VERY high clockspeeds, +3.8GHz but Intel themselves have given up on it.

If Northwoods were around I would be recommending that to you, but to really get the Intel platform to fly you need fairly specialist stuff like DDR500 RAM.

I would say go with the advice of the AMD crew for now :-( I hate saying that... Biggle's and Cookie's words of wisdom in this department are safe.

The Athlon 64 proccessors run in such a way that they give better results than the pentiums in gaming scenarios.

If you wanted to go down the Athlon 64 route you would have to choose between socket 754 and socket 939. Socket 754 has the advantage that the processors are cheaper and there are better motherboards available (the DFI Lanparty UT), but they don't support dual channel memory (about a 5%ish performance loss) and they are also a "redundant" technology. Socket 754 was replaced by 939 you see, though you wouldnt really notice this until you went to upgrade.

17" monitor = £80
9800 pro = £140
Motherboard = £70
AMD 64 Bit 3200+ (with fan) = £140
512 corsair memory = £60
120 Gb hard drive = £50
Case and decent PSU = £50
DVD Drive = £15
Floppy = £5
Mouse and Keyboard = £15
Speakers = £15
Cables etc = £10

Total = £650

I've probably missed something. I always do.

Annd if I'm to get an Athlon, what motherboards, and even what processor?

Isn't it just as good to make sure I get decent cooling and stick with the Pentium?

Ah, ta... was about to ask for help with cooling too, for the Pentium. It seems mostly cooling for Athlons available but not much for socket 478.

Why's it important to have an Athlon for gaming, or am I about to start a rather large arguement here? :)

And erm, yeah, I need all parts, building from scratch