What could I build for $900?

[TicTac2]

Hi all, I am new to these forums. I am in the UK and would have about 500 pounds to build a desktop computer. I have the following questions:

1) How good of a machine could I build for these specs. I would only play games like Tiger Woods 2005 and stuff. Could i get a hardrive of around 200gb, 1gb of RAM, a powerful P4, and a very nice large screen for this? Does anyone know of places on the internet or off in the UK to buy?

2) Is a TFT the same as a LCD? I'm confused.

3) I don't think I am confident enough to build the seperate mother board and stuff, rather just the processor and all the stuff in that part and the screen. How much would I gain in price for building the motherboard and hard drive seperately? rather then just getting the screen with the main proccessing and hard drive bit?

4) What exactly does 64 bit mean in regards to my software I have already got and transferring data often to my laptop?

5) For me, the screen is very important, I would probably want a really big nice one. Any review sites or suggestions anywhere?

6) Do I have to buy XP Media Center and other OSs totally seperately? Surely they cost loads?

There seem some very good auctions on eBay like:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/3200-MHZ-INTE...732285926QQcategoryZ14294QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

All advice welcome

 

[Nitestick]

do you have any particular reason that you want a p4? i would always suggest an athlon64 unless you are going to be doing a lot of multitasking. 64 bit cpu's still run 32 bit software but have many advantages that i won't go into. but yous should be able to fit those specs in in that budget

 

[TicTac2]

no particular reason, no. By multi tasking, if I know what you mean I normally will have around 6-7 programs running.

Do you mean an athlon 64 would not be good at multitaksing?

Thanks for the help

 

[pandahater]

You could buy a
Nice Dell
for around $725 or $750
and a 21" monitor CRT flat screen for around $150 off of Ebay..
I wouldnt build my own if your not experienced and want to play games..

 

[Nitestick]

its not that athlon64's are bad at multi-tasking its just that if you are running several cpu intensive applications at once a p4 will outperform an athlon64. but for gaming and just about all other purposes athlon64's are far better value for money.

 

[FghtinIrshNvrDi]

eh, for a big monitor, you're killing your budget pretty bad. A good LCD is like $300 bucks since you want a big one. That only leaves $600 for a computer. I mean, that's what mine costs, but it's kinda starving for a video card, and now I'm stuck with a stupid X700.

Ryan