[JayJ]

Alright here we go...first day and I think this is already my 3rd post...ha! So, I am looking to spend a good portion of my financial aid check on a new computer and one of the questions is what mobo do I buy? I have been reading for almost a month now trying to learn as much as I can before I spend my money...I have check out this site http://www.anandtech.com/ and tom's hardware. Building a system using an amd processor like xp 1800-2000...I get the feeling from some of the hardware reviews that the mobos with kt266 are more "reliable" than the newer ones with kt333. Is there a better choice here? Is there something better than both of these that I dont know about...something say in the under 120 price range? There is just so much to know....bah....better to buy it "custom built" than to build it myself since this is my first attempt?
I dont need any fancy stuff like raid...I simply want to upgrade from my amd 600 to something that is faster, that I can use to play games (counter-strike) and that will be viable for the next 2 years....so yea thats a mouth full. Hope I didnt over do it with 5 posts in one or something...

PS...burn in? what is this, do I need to do it, help me help me!

 

[techiechick]

Hi JayJ!!
I don't know how computer savy you are. But I'd build one, but that is just me.

I just built a system for 250 clams, but I already had parts from another system to intergrate into this new PC. I just bought a new case, cpu and some extra memory.

Hey!! I live in Sacto too, well Auburn actually but I work in Rancho!! wOOt!!

I check for systems at http://www.pricewatch.com

They always have good prices there, then that gives me an idea of what things are going for.

TC
:winkgrin:

 

[Pseudocyber]

Welcome!

Dude, you need to go to the newstand and buy the latest copy of CPU Magazine. AMD is about to come out with "Hyper Transport" and Intel with "Hyperthreading" so you might want to wait.

Q: What is HyperTransport™ technology?

A: HyperTransport™ technology is a new high speed, high performance point-to-point link for interconnecting integrated circuits on a motherboard. It can be significantly faster than a PCI bus for an equivalent number of pins. HyperTransport was previously codenamed Lightning Data Transport, or LDT. HyperTransport technology was invented by AMD and perfected with the help of several partners throughout the industry. It is primarily targeted for the IT and Telecomm industries, but any application where high speed, low latency and scalability is necessary can potentially take advantage of HyperTransport technology. HyperTransport technology was invented in order to unleash the tremendous power of the AMD microprocessors. HyperTransport is planned to bring the computation experience to a new level.

Hyper-Threading Technology is a groundbreaking innovation from Intel® Corporation that enables multi-threaded software applications to execute threads in parallel within each processor. This level of threading technology has never been seen before in a general-purpose microprocessor. Internet, e-Business, and enterprise software applications continue to put higher demands on processors. To improve performance in the past, threading was enabled in the software by splitting instructions into multiple streams so that multiple processors could act upon them. Today with Hyper-Threading Technology, processor-level threading can be utilized which offers more efficient use of processor resources for greater parallelism and improved performance on today's multi-threaded software.

I highly recommend this forum for very in depth discussions and answers about mother boards.

HTH!

 

[techiechick]

oooh!! I subscribe to CPU, I LOVE that Mag!!

TC