michaelab
desafinado
Right, decided I'm going to build myself a new PC as it's about time I upgraded from my 4yr old Dell 933Mhz PIII. So, I thought I knew a thing or two about PCs and paid a visit to Tom's Hardware to check out the latest info on motherboards and CPUs.... :yikes:
There are so many bloody variations it's impossible to make any kind of decisions at all. Tom's Hardware is a good site but it's a little lacking if you haven't followed a particular arena of hardware for, ohh, the last 2 weeks
. Lots of reviews but not much general info.
So, what do people here reckon is a good MB and CPU combo to go for? Obviously I want something pretty fast that isn't going to go out of date next week. I don't really want onboard gfx (I've got a decent gfx card, or I'll get a new one). My existing 80Gb drive is quite new but it's IDE so if I want to use it in the new machine I'd need an IDE not a SATA controller allthough I'd consider going SATA and buying a new drive if it was worth it.
So, AMD or Intel I guess is the first question? All other things being equal, I'd like to go with AMD, just because they're not Intel
If someone could give me the lowdown on AMD vs Intel and the various chipsets and CPU sockets and types that would be a great help. Things certainly have got a LOT more complicated since the days of the PIII
Michael.
There are so many bloody variations it's impossible to make any kind of decisions at all. Tom's Hardware is a good site but it's a little lacking if you haven't followed a particular arena of hardware for, ohh, the last 2 weeks

So, what do people here reckon is a good MB and CPU combo to go for? Obviously I want something pretty fast that isn't going to go out of date next week. I don't really want onboard gfx (I've got a decent gfx card, or I'll get a new one). My existing 80Gb drive is quite new but it's IDE so if I want to use it in the new machine I'd need an IDE not a SATA controller allthough I'd consider going SATA and buying a new drive if it was worth it.
So, AMD or Intel I guess is the first question? All other things being equal, I'd like to go with AMD, just because they're not Intel

If someone could give me the lowdown on AMD vs Intel and the various chipsets and CPU sockets and types that would be a great help. Things certainly have got a LOT more complicated since the days of the PIII

Michael.