Hardware Questions

[fugjostle]

Whats the best motherboard to get for a P4 2.8Gb chip? I'm looking for one that offers the best speed but won't limit me if I choose to upgrade to a 3Gb chip. My current P4 motherboard won't support chips over 1.5 Gb :-(

Also, do these prices sound OK?

Western 180 Gb Hard Drive = £219.00
ASUS GeForce 4 Ti 4600 (128Mb) = £211.10
Creative Audigy2 Platinum = £128.00

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fug

[Myk]

Im having one of my very few evenings off work m8, but soon as I get in on Monday Ill look into it for ya and let you have some comparison points for prices etc.


What I will say though is that if youre going for a 4600, you would be better off getting a Leadtek card over that Asus, Ive been running one since they hit the shelves and its a beauty not to mention its has the "BEST" cooling system of all the 4600's.


Best P4 mobo on the market...hmmm a toughy but Id say it was the Gigabyte GA-8PE667 ULTRA . <--click me




The HDD sounds good but again a little pricey, Newegg have that drive on offer at only $165 having said that they have a similar spec'd IBM drive for only $81. Again Ill get back to you with "our" price on that drive which is probably a better comparison point.


Myk

[JAZ]

If your gonna splash that much on a G4 I'd spend the little extra for the radeon 9700, I have a G4ti200 clocked at ti4600 speeds and it aint really that special.
Abit make the best boards imo, and thats what I'd get as they overclock so good especially with those P4s.
My last two boards have been Abit and I wouldnt buy anything else but thats just my opinion, take a look at http://www.icronticforums.com/ for mad FSBs with Abits P4 board.
I dunno why you would wanna pay out so much for a huge hard drive when you could get 2 or more resonable sized ones and consider using them in Raid for super performance, now that would be a beast of a PC.
I dunno how you feel about it but I allways buy to overclock and the Abit gives you all the options you need

[Myk]

Yeah I also like Abit boards but their current P4 offerings are no longer on par with the competition, if it was for an AMD platform Id say yes go with Abit, but just checkout the reviews on the Gigabyte board :

http://www.ocworkbench.com/2002/giga...7/8pe667p9.htm

They just dont get much better than this and Gigabytes price tags are usually much more reasonable than Asus or Abit.

Its just an opinion, at the end of the day choosing eaither of Abits or Gigabyte's or even Asus's boards you cant go far wrong

[wildpitch]

I'm not really a hardware buff or a gamer so my PC never gets hammered but I did pick up a Ti - 4600 the other day for about £160 I think, although I suckered someone else into paying for it so it cost me nowt other than flexing my brain cells on Netware. It was the Creative version. As for mobos I've used nothing but Abit for about 3 years, never had a duff one either. The Raid system works a treat, I've got 6 hard discs hanging inside my PC, which is nice. 4 on the Raid channel and 2 on the IDE ports.

I did read a review for the Gigabyte board the other day and it did make it sound top dog so if I were to replace mine tomorrow I'd be tempted, and at work we've just got one of those Radeon's for a high end graphics workstation and it seems to be doing the business. If I could of stretched to getting a Radeon the other day I'd of probably gone for one of them, but as I could make do with an 8MB PCI card in my PC for what I use it for, I went for the next best thing!

BTW - Does anyone know if you can use an existing Audigy Live Drive thing with the cheapo Audigy2? I'm wanting to get one but don't know whether I need to go for the full monty again as I've already got the 1st Audigy with drive bay kit.

[fugjostle]

Some sound advice there fella's.... think I'll do the two cheaper hard drives. I can get two IBM 120Gb's cheaper than the western 180Gb. Didn't think about doing that.. much more reliable for my storage needs

Going to check out some of the other you've suggested now.

Cheers,
fug

[JAZ]

Originally posted by wildpitch
BTW - Does anyone know if you can use an existing Audigy Live Drive thing with the cheapo Audigy2? I'm wanting to get one but don't know whether I need to go for the full monty again as I've already got the 1st Audigy with drive bay kit.

I wouldnt have thought so but if u find out u deffo cant and u wanna sell on your old audigy to help fund getting the new one I might be interested...

Originally posted by Myk
Yeah I also like Abit boards but their current P4 offerings are no longer on par with the competition, if it was for an AMD platform Id say yes go with Abit

I'll bow to your superior P4 knowledge there Myk