Hi all,
Last month I decided my Pentium III 500 MHz did not cut it anymore. I have spent four weeks reading articles and guides on cpus, graphic cards, mobos and memory. Unfortunately the decision-making has only gotten harder.

Any help, advice or suggestions from you is greatly appreciated.

I have managed to assemble three systems (below) and noted what I consider to be there major weaknesses. Am I correct?

A:
- XP 2500+
- Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe
- Corsair TWINX1024-3200C2PRO
Life left: 12 months
(-) No upgrade beyond 3200+ and not the best choice when considering performance.

B:
- 64 3000+
- ASUS K8V Deluxe
- 2 x Corsair CMX512-3200LL
Life left: 24 months
(-) Mobos on the market have lagging memory support (tomshardware) and no pci/agp lock. Best chipset SIS755 is not available on any mobo (at least in sweden).

C:
- P4 2.60C
- Abit IC7-MAX3
- Corsair TWINX1024-4000PRO
Life left: 18 months
(-) Will current mobos support the Prescott?

Since my cash reserves are limited (got around $900 to spend on CPU/Memory/Mobo) the most important factors affecting my purchase is a clear, and hopefully, affordable upgrade path.
I have been leaning towards an Athlon 64 system until the lagging memory support on the mobos was discovered. As I need 1 GB of memory this does not seem to be the best choice. But at the same time the upgrade path seems to be good on Athlon 64.
Various sites have mentioned that Intel is talking about a new form factor than the ATX after Prescott, which means additional costs when upgrading a Pentium system. I simply don't know.
All I want is a fast and stable system for at least 18 months, which will also be upgradable without having to replace all the parts. At least at the same time.

Which system would you choose?

Thank you.

Best regards,
Tony Kiiskinen
Stockholm, Sweden

Welcome to the forum Tony!

My .02 worth. I just recently chose option #1 because 1. I'll wait for the 64 bit to mature a little before taking that path. At my the time of my decision the memory problem was not known. So, in hindsight I feel good about not choosing at this time the 64 bit path.

2. I use my system mostly (99.99%) for gaming and I feel that the AMD Barton gives the most performance for the money (up the FSB on the Barton to get it to 3200+ speeds and it only cost about $ 90)

3. I think with my system at FSB 400 (200 x 2) with 3200+ cpu will last (hopefull) longer than 12 months. I hope it will serve me till the new BTX form factor has been out a while - maybe second generation BTX. In other words, I'm hoping the Barton system can hold out till upgrade to the BTX form factor comes out

XP 2000+
MSI KT3 ULTRA-2 KT333
Maxtor 60GB ATA 133 7200RPM
512MB PC2700
9600 Pro
Win98SE

since you're planning long term,I would wait until the 4th quarter of this year for the socket 939 and the 90nm tech winchester,all amd's cpu will be based on socket 939 and all using dual channel ram-this includes the budget amd athlon 64 4000 and 4200.Read this article http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/d [...] 25451.html

i would get P4 2.6 setup, you can upgrade to prescott. the IC7 supports prescott. This setup should last for 2 years, until Tejas comes around.

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<b><font color=blue>Intel P4 2ghz ATI Radeon 9500 pro</b></font color=blue>

For a long term system i would definately just wait awhile. Too many new chipsets are coming out for both AMD and Intel.
I almost don't think we'll see the day anymore where our computers will be able to last longer than 2 years without major upgrade.



p4 2.8 533fsb
intel mobo
1gb rdram pc 800
radeon9800 pro
120gb seagate s-ata

Buy A64 3000+

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You are using a P3-500, and think an xp2500 will only last 12 months? Three years from now, you would be in the same boat.

Save money and go with the xp 2500+ overclock like said above or maybe 2800+ for like 50 bucks. Take the extra from the cpu and get a good video card as thats more important right now than a really fast cpu, if your a gamer. Once the 64 bit market matures more (full 64 bit XP) you can build a 64 bit machine.

I vote for option C, from what I've heard about Abit IC7-Max3 it'll support Scotty.

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