Tom's Hardware > Forum > Motherboards & Memory > General Motherboard > Building a new system and need help!
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hamoncules   11-01-2002 at 02:37:45 AM

I have about $1000 canadian to spend.
I am looking to buy MoBo, CPU and Ram (Have other components)
I was initially really stuck on a P4 processor but I am not quite sure anymore. Should I wait for a little while for new technology or buy now? If I wait what should i be looking for? If i buy now what should i be looking for?

Thx in advance

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Scout   11-01-2002 at 04:42:10 AM
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Buy now if you have a limited budget... new technology will cost more. Lets see... you've got about equivalent of 650 USD. Hummm... that'll buy a nice CPU/Mobo/Memory combo!

You need to decide on Intel vs AMD, but the AMD stuff is getting a little "stale" right now in my opinion, and everyone is waiting to see what the Hammer does. On the bright side... things have never been cheaper for the kind of computing power an Athlon XP gives!

What to look for is really the features on the motherboard. You'd like certainly to see USB 2.0 and Firewire. Lots of debate on whether ATA 133 is worth anything until the chipsets start supporting it. RAID is kinda nice, but that all depends on if you ever plan to use it.

Scout
700 Mflops in SETI!

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Oracle   11-01-2002 at 07:55:37 PM
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I'm in the same situation as you.
I'm looking to upgrade my platform (CPU/mobo/RAM) and also have about CA$1000 available.
Like the other guy said, the set of options on the mobo is what will make you go for one instead of another. RAID is always good to have, because even if you don't plan on using it in an actual RAID configuration, you could use it as a regular IDE channel and leave open the regular IDE ports to other devices that can't be plugged into a RAID port.
Integrated audio is so good nowadays that it's a good feature to have onboard. You may also want to look for integrated LAN, IEEE1394 and USB2. It's a bit too soon to tell whether S-ATA or ATA133 will win the race, but I lean towards Serial ATA. Definitively forget about integrated graphics if you play games or 3D apps.
With 1000$, you could probably buy whatever platform you like, be it Pentium or Athlon. In either case, never go for less than 256Mb of RAM. Since, Intel is divorcing Rambus, it would be best you go for a DDR platform if you decide to go for an Intel platform.
Personnally, I'm waiting a bit to see some reviews when nForce2 will finally be available.
So, if you're in no hurry, just wait a bit.
Prices are bound to fall a great deal anyways on current technology when new tech finally arrives.


<font color=red>That was my two cents!</font color=red>
<font color=blue>Now I'm broke!</font color=blue>

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