here are some good hardware for a good gaming pc.
amd athlon 64 3000+ / $150
abit av8 / $ 116
evga 6600gt / $ 190
corsair value select 1gb ram / $110
80gb hd / $65
which comes out to be $630. you can usethe extra 70 for a case and psu.
That seems good, but you could spend an extra 20$ and get a DFI Lanparty Nforce 4 and get a PCI-E 6600GT for a few dollars less (their that way in Canada)
Than you can SLI 6600GT's later on when $$$ comes around.
Amd 64 3200 939 winchester
Gigabyte k8nxp-sli
antec 1040
antec true 430
1x 6600 gt
1x 80gb 7200rpm 8mb cache
you want 2x 512 so you get dual channel going
I don't care what anyone says.. AC97 is good enough for anyone.
Obviously an ac97 card isnt good enough for audio mastering.. He's playing video games, he won't notice the difference between the zs 2 and onboard 6 channel ac97. I mean, not everyone needs a fireface 800 to play counterstrike, you know?
People with trained ears are in the 1 or 2 percentile... Obviously those people are musicians and DJS. For any of the normal tone deaf people, ac97 is awesome.