What's the best cost to performance mb out there?

mikapc

Distinguished
Apr 2, 2003
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18,510
I'm looking to upgrade my abit bx6 o/c 450mhz, 164meg ram, geforce 1 and I'm looking to get the best bang for my buck. My whole goal in upgrading is find an as cost effective way as possible to maximize the time before I feel the need to upgrade again. My criteria for upgrading is when the system no longer performs new games at a tolerable level which is for me say around no less then 15fps at 800x600. So then my first question for upgrading the motherboard video card etc is is now the optimal time to do this or should I wait for some next generation card to come out so the prices go down on the current generation cards. I'm planning on spending at tops $400 upgrading ram/motherboard/cpu/video card so any advice on best combo and preventing any needless bottlenecking would be appreciated as well. thanks
 

jankphil

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May 17, 2002
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18,780
that's a tough one, i'd suggest a nForce 2 or KT400A chipset, a athlon 1700+B core, and some pc2700 ram. As far as particuar brands, anything goes, but go for the deals (check newegg's refurbrished section) www.newegg.com. I would suggest the 1700+b because they overclock easily and you can probably hit 2ghz+ so a 2400+. Genaric PC2700 ram should work, try for 3200 ram though so you have some overhead. As far as a video card, i suggest a Radeon 9500 non pro with the L shaped ram. You can soft modify it into a 9700 pro without much trouble and again, best bang for the buck. If your playing games, i'd suggest upgrading the video card first.

Abit NF7 Refurbrished (nforce 2) $69.00
AMD Athlon 1700+ $51.00
Thermaltake VOLCANO 9 $25.00+6 S&H
Sapphire OEM RADEON 9500 128MB $169.00
CORSAIR MEMORY 512MB PC2700 $79.00

Ram sugestions
KINGSTON HyperX Series 512 megs $85.00
CORSAIR MEMORY XMS 256 megs $79.00

Video Card Suggestions
Radeon 9700 non pro (refurbished)$170.00 Guess
ATI OEM RADEON 9500 64MB DDR 8X AGP (refurbrished) !$99.00
Gigabyte GV-R9700PRO RADEON 9700 PRO 128MB (refurbrished) !$199.00

I gave you some listings under 400, and i think that would give you the most bang for your buck, you can switch some items, and the mobo you probably won't find boxed for under 85, but that's my suggestion ^_^

I usually buy refurbrished for a lot of things, if you don't feel safe, then go for boxed stuff, but as you can see, you get a lot more stuff just going for refurb'ed. The only problem is they stay up for about 10 min and the site refreshes it's refurb'ed section once a day. So check back often ^_^

"What kind of idiot are you?"
"I don't know, what kinds are there?"<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by jankphil on 04/01/03 09:06 PM.</EM></FONT></P>