Nothing about that store is tempting. Unfortunately my lack of disposable income limits my options to the least expensive equipment. I have read conflicting reports re: those boards for general desktop usage, some say they are rubbish, others say that they offer the best value. I figured I'd ask the list for some linux audio specific info. I guess I should have mentioned that I am not building a DAW for a home studio or anything. I mentioned that my current machine is a PIII-550 without room for any significant upgrades. It is more or less sufficient for most of what I am doing (word processing, telecommunicating, web development, etc.) but for the bits of audio that I am doing it is a little slow. E.g., remastering field recordings with Jamin is a big hassle and completely ties up the computer. I am not doing any 24 bit recording on this box or anything, no analog signals being recorded at all really so RFI or whatever causes the noisyness shouldn't be that relevant (or should it?). Okay, so the VIA chipset is problematic re: audio? Could someone who has experienced this briefly outline the problem or maybe point me toward some documentation? === message truncated === [that's what I get for using my backup webmail interface w/ lau in digest mode I guess] So the upshot is that the nVIDIA chipset is significantly better than the VIA board? Because it is also 40% more expensive as well. But if it really offers a better value then I might go for it. Any informed opinions? Thanks, Barton __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! - Internet access at a great low price. http://promo.yahoo.com/sbc/