Need smart person!

[Guest]

Would like your valuable opinion IRT upcoming motherboard and cpu purchase. I'm considering two combinations, 1.) Gigagyte GA-7ZX MB with a Athlon T-bird 1GHz CPU or 2.) Gigabyte GA-7ZXR rev 2.2 MB with a Athlon C 1GHz CPU. I also was looking at 256MB PC 133 CAS-2 SDRAM or 256MB 266 (depending on which MB / CPU I choose). Though my job is highly technical, I do not have the significant knowledge that most of you folks possess. I would greatly appreciate you taking a moment of your time to provide me with some guidance. I don't have to have the very latest hardware available nor am I real keen on overclocking. I thank you in advance for your wisdom.

 

[FLINTSTONE]

If I were you, and I know that this is tough, I would wait until the ddr platforms like abit's and some others are out before i make a choice. If you simply have to have it now, I would go with the sdram platform. They're pretty much known comodities where as ddr is not. VIA hasn't gotten their drivers up to snuff yet and AMD's chipset is too hard to get, ALI's chipset doesn't perform as well as a KT133a with good sdram so......
On the otherhand, If the future and upgrades are important to you, I'd wait for the ddr.

 

[ejsmith2]

I'd go with a motherboard that will run a 133 FSB, and some PC133/150 memory. If you're using win98/ME, don't bother with more than 512meg. If you're using Linux or Win2k, stack up 768meg or higher.

The beauty of this system is: you can buy a brand new computer for $2000, and it's outdated/obsolete in one year; you can buy a brand new computer for $1000 and it's outdated/obsolete in one year.

Whether $1k or $2k, the difference in performance is minimal (<5%).

 

[tartarhus]

I agree, right now is a bad time to buy a new system. I would wait a month or two if you can. You'll be way happier if you do.

 

[Guest]

As prices are low right now I disagree that now is a bad time to buy/build a new system. You can build a monster with current hardware for much less than if you wait and go with "cutting edge" technology. You can even build a dual system now for what most high end workstations use to cost or less. If you are set on AMD then I guess thats out of the question for now. To wait for DDR I think your looking more along the lines of 6 months or more if you are like me and wait for at least the first BIOS revision is released. Just my 2 cents.

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