Got a CPU, now what?

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GBeZeFromNAPeZe

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I just bought a brand new P4 3.2 Northwood for $245.

I'm want to go with the i875P chipset and am thinking about the Asus P4C800-E Deluxe Motherboard. I'm not sure about the graphics card.

Any comments or suggestions?
 
Depends on your budget. I would stick with ATI until Nvidia can get there act togeather with those excuses they call the FX line. I personally enjoy my 9600XT as it gets the job done very well for 150 dollars. I have heard good things about the sapphire Radeon 9800 pro for 220 dollars on www.newegg.com If you have an unlimited budget then the 9800XT is the only way to go. If you dont plan much on gamming then you can spend like 70 bucks on a 9200. Its all in how much gamming you will be doing in relation to how much you have to spend. I would say the best bang for the buck has to be the sapphire radeon 9800 pro, had I seen that I would have gotten it over the 9600XT, oh well. Good luck man, looks like you have a killer system in the making :cool:
 
I like your choice on the mobo. I agree with ThirtySixBelow about the graphics card. I have a Radeon 9200 and I can still play most new games without any problems.
 
A fine setup you have so far, truely top notch, so I'd go with either a Sapphire 9800 Pro, or if you can find one a Hercules 9800 Pro(cause the Hercules is blue;) :cool: ), or if you have a uber budget go with the 9800XT, though you won't be sorry or heckled for choicing the 9800 Pro;)
 
I don't really do a lot of gaming. But I might now, it's just my current PC couldn't handle it. I got GTA 3 and it was like super slow and choppy with a 600 mhz Celeron.

I mostly want speedy loading of stuff like Photoshop. I also like to do a lot of multitasking.

Do i definitely want a AGP video card or can I get by with a PCI. I don't know a lot about that subject.
 
Defiantly don't get a PCI card, AGP is the way to go and thats why all the fast cards are AGP;)

What are you looking to spend? You can get a 9800 Pro on newegg for $215 and that will run GTA3 with everything on high quite nicely I assume:cool: ;)
 
I would go with the Asus motherboard, and as far as memory, video cards, and hard drives, it all depends on what you need to get done.

With that processor and motherboard you already have a very nice start. If you have the money, I would suggest you go SATA (Serial ATA) on the hard drives. You can get two 80GB drives for around $160, which would give you 160GB, running in RAID 0 that would be very fast. You should get atleast 512MB PC3200 RAM. If you are only going to have 512MB of ram you need to go dual channel, which means you would have two sticks of PC3200 256MB. It's much faster. Imagine you are driving school busses to take children to school. Could you take more kids at once using 2 busses at the same time, or using one bus and making two trips?

The video card is up to you. Anything higher then the 9600 XT will do you fine for the next couple of years. The only big difference between the 9600's and the 9700+ is that once you hit the 9700 mark you go into 256 bit. The 9700, 9700 Pro, 9800, 9800 Pro, and 9800 XT are all 256 bit cards. While the 9600 XT is only 128 bit, that doesn't mean much as of right now. So you will be fine with the 9600 XT.

It all depends on how much you're willing to spend.
 
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