Good spec PC buy?

[Iroquois]

Another thing, AMD cpu's require an NForce chipset to be a reliable & stable platform thats not my view, its the considered opinion of just about every motherboard review I've read.

I know that's not true. From every review I've read, It doesn't matter what chipset your using with the Athlon64. VIA and SiS are both good and stable platforms for AMDs. My current board has a SiS 735 chipset on it and its rock stable. In fact I've heard quite the opposite. The nForce 3 150 hasn't been making the cut. It's not unleashing the full power of the Athlon64. That's why nVidia had to release the nForce 3 250 chipset to replace it.

[4_Series_Scania]

I know that's not true. From every review I've read, It doesn't matter what chipset your using with the Athlon64. VIA and SiS are both good and stable platforms for AMDs. My current board has a SiS 735 chipset on it and its rock stable. In fact I've heard quite the opposite. The nForce 3 150 hasn't been making the cut. It's not unleashing the full power of the Athlon64. That's why nVidia had to release the nForce 3 250 chipset to replace it.

Sorry, I was thinking of the XP chips rather than the FX's.....  ::)  I suppose I'm just some Intel fan slating AMD by pure instinct.....  ::)  :-/

Either way, I still say that deal isn't as good as it seems....

Buy the whole lot from Overclockers, I guarantee you'll get excellent support if you run into problems (no matter how obscure!) Try getting a hardware diagnosis from Doris behind the checkout at Lidl.....  ;D  ;D  ;D

[Delta_]

I am using the VIA KT333 chipset and that runs rock solid with my Athlon XP.  I have not had one problem since i got it about 1 year ago.

[Gixer]

Hi-D I think its been wordere a bit funny.  But what they are trying to say is to get the 'Best' out of an XP cpu then you want an nForce chipset.  When I was lookin for mobo's I read lots of stuff comparing the Via to the nForce.  Near enough ever review said that the nForce produced far greater bandwidth for summin thus makin it faster.  Plus my nForce2 comes with a good sound chip onboard so I didn't need to buy a good sound card.

I dont think it was a compatability issue and I totally believe that you wouldn't have had any probles with Via as I used to use their chipsets until this mobo and never had a single problem wither. Just the Via's werent cuttin the mustard when i brought my mobo!

[Dan]

I gonna have to look at this overclockers place in more detail. You say they are very reputable for their after sales support? I would have built my own, I must have read hundreds of 'Build your own PC' turorials and books by now, but I was scared of bu*gering some small and crucial and EXPENSIVE part in the build.
Dan G

[Daz]

if your looking for a new monitor i would strongly suggest this baby for gaming its crystal clear believe me its awesome clarity and

[Gixer]

It depend on the res you wanna use in your games. I used to have a 17" TFT and it was very very nice to use. Thing was it had a max res of 1280x1024.  When I ordered my 6800ultra I knew the monitor was gonna be holdin that beast back so I gave it to my g/friend and brought a top notch CRT. I got a Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 930sb.  This is an awsome CRT. Picture quality is the best I have seen  ;D and it does silly high resoultions 1920x1440  ;D

I would have liked another TFT which would do 1600x1200 but the smallest size is 20.1" and costs about

[Iroquois]

Hi-D I think its been wordere a bit funny.  But what they are trying to say is to get the 'Best' out of an XP cpu then you want an nForce chipset.  When I was lookin for mobo's I read lots of stuff comparing the Via to the nForce.  Near enough ever review said that the nForce produced far greater bandwidth for summin thus makin it faster.  Plus my nForce2 comes with a good sound chip onboard so I didn't need to buy a good sound card.

I dont think it was a compatability issue and I totally believe that you wouldn't have had any probles with Via as I used to use their chipsets until this mobo and never had a single problem wither. Just the Via's werent cuttin the mustard when i brought my mobo!

The nForce is a good mobo. By far it's the best. Especially if you pop an nVidia graphics card in it. I should note that I read somewhere that nForce chipsets don't like ATI cards.

You guys are way to obsessed about the screens. All I know about mine is that it's a 15'' CRT screen that came with my old computer.  ;D

[Gixer]

Not sure about the 'not liking' ati. For sure the board will probably work best with Nvidia g/cards, my brother has same mobo as me with an ATI9800pro. Runs superb and fs9 looks great on it  ;D

Monitors are very important.  A 15" monitor will restrict your max resolution a lot, in fact your max is probably 1024x768 which is why your game runs quite well.  As we spend more on g/cards you need a good monitor to show off its effects  ;D  

[Iroquois]

The max is 1600x1200. After that the image is very distorted. I run mine at 1024x768 mainly because it's a good res for doing other work like word processing and viewing web pages.

[Gixer]

R u sure your monitor does that higher res? Your graphics card is capable of 1600x1200 but I don't know of any 15"crt that goes above 1280x1024.

17" good quality CRT is the smallest CRT I know that hits 1600x1200.  

Even at 1280x1024 on a 15" everything would be really small I dont think it would be readable at 1600x1200 lol.  Be careful if you try to det it at 1600x1200 I did this once on a 17" crt that didn't support above 1280x1024 and the screen went black, and stayed black  :-[ Had to boot into safe mode to sort it out.

[Iroquois]

Yep, looks fine on that res. The text looks very small though. It's an Acer AcerView 76e.