hardware ???

That fairly much leaves you open. The top performers are going to use PC1066 RDRAM right now, but soon (days) there will be improved DDR boards that will match RDRAM, saving you money to buy better parts for the rest of the system. So the question is, how quickly do you need this thing?

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I agree with Crashman. I built a PC1066 RDRAM system and now I wish I waited for the nForce2 boards with DDR2. Sure my system is fast but the price of RDRAM is becoming very pricey. There aren't many boards with the 850E chipset either, although there will be a plethora of nForce2 boards to choose from once they come out. You have a pretty good budget but I would wait just a little while longer. Also this <A HREF="http://www6.tomshardware.com/howto/02q3/020928/index.ht..." target="_new">article</A> may help you some. But remember this was written when DDR2 was not available.

<font color=blue>Can anyone help me overclock my girlfriend's love toy?<font color=blue><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by groth2757 on 11/21/02 04:22 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

i looking to get this done in the next two - three weeks

Well, my suggestion would be the Gigabyte GA-8IHXP, 512MB of PC1066, a Chieftec case/power supply from Newegg, three Western Digital 80MB drives (8MB cache) with two in RAID0 for storage and one by itself for OS/programs, a Radeon 8500DV, a CDRW, a DVD-ROM, and any external peripherals you need (mouse, keyboard, speakers, monitor). That should be around $1200, you can get the fastest P4 available with what's left.

Of course a Dual Channel DDR board (one with the Granit Bay or SiS 655 chipset) would give you the same performance for less money. In fact, 1GB of RAM might then fit into your budget.

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or a nicer vid card if he wants to game. and 3 hard drives is a bit excessive to me, it's kinda all up to what you want though

I recommended three because I think he should have a separate drive for video, but if that separate drive is a RAID0 cluster it will perform better.

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