not really. in fact, the VIA Unichrome in a $250 (total) Sempron64 shuttle i just built for someone actually runs faster than my ATI. due to ATI sucking so bad and only being able to use it via software rendering since their fglrx driver causes a kernel panic when running GLXgears... everything has SATA by now, unles your vendor is pawning off discontinued crap.. well its faster, cheaper, and 64bit. you decide.. im pretty sure Intel fixed this a few steppings ago.. i would say this Sempron feels a touch slower than my Turion and A64 desktop chip, all of which are 2.0ghz. probably due to the slower cache, and the fact that i put some old 266DDR RAM i had sitting around in it.. since everything except the high end FX series are pretty close in price, id go for the ones with larger cache.. anything should be fine. id be dictating my choice based on the case (eg something small and with a heatpipe instead of a fan for the CPU, and a passively-cooled video card) if noise is a concern, and if you want to 'vote with your dollars', go with Nvidia, or preferaby someone like SiS or VIA, who are much more open about hardware specs than either Nvidia or ATI..

BJaY wrote: if you are running your 17/19" TFT at 1280x1024@ 32bit and 60Hz, this will eat up approximately 300MB/s 1280x1024x32x60/8 = 314572800bytes/sec = aprox. 314MB/sec where MB = 10^6 Byte. the dualchannel DDR400 interface of the A64 can carry 6400MB/sec (MB=10^6..), so this will eat 5% of your raw memory bandwith. that doesn't hurt that much, if you also take into account that the integrated graphics uses large bursts on the main memory, this should decrease your cpu performance by only 3% or so. back in the days where there was PC133 Memory, integrated graphics really sucked, cause it would eat 30% of the avail mem bandwith. But integrated grafics still sucks when you want to play 3D games, etc. Also, i have geared there were driver issues with the 8178 driver dunno if they are fixed in the 8756. if you are using an CRT with 100Hz, a tft that can do 1920x1200, or any other wired display device, i would go for a discrete graphics card, as these might decrease the performance more then 3% every mainboard comes w/ sata. sata hdd's are only 0-3€ more exepensive than then pata, so go for sata. not because sata is any faster, butbecause you still can uses this disk in the future when there are no pata connectors on the mainboards any more. sata2 over sata ... i don't think this will give you any performance increase. but its only minimal more expensive, so you should get it. dunno dunno i think it is ok, but on most mobo's there is a fan on this chipset, this (imho) sucks. gigabyte is an exception. i would get the new uli chipset, as the board is cheap (and has no fans). but i also oly have a 3000+. an 3700+ is expensive enough to combine it with an better board ... all new agp 4X/8X boards for the A64 i know of support only 1.5V and 0.8V signal levels. IIRC the Rage Pro is an old AGP2x card with 3.3V signal levels. if you manage to stick this card in such a board, this will kill the board. luckily there is a key on the agp connector. there is a notch inside the agp connector of the card. if it is on the right side, it is a 3.3V only card. if it is on the left side, it's a 1.5/0.8V only card. if it has 2 notches, it does support 3.3, 1.5 and possibly 0.8V. on the board's connector, there is a "bridge". no bridge=> 3.3 and 1.5, left bridge 1.5/0.8, right bridge =>3.3

BJaY escribe: I'd stick to Asus, whichever model you take you can't get a better mobo IMHO. Well, I'm a kind of a late adopter guy who always looks for more or less old Matrox MGA adapters when building a computer. Their display quality and stability can't be beaten. I'm not a fellowed 3D user. Well, the faster the disk I/O the better, I guess... AMD mobos are right now good enough for audio, which didn't use to be. I'd stick to AMD for a homebuilt system. Better prices, very high performance. Yes it's as far as I know but I never have a look at that spec! I don't know and also would like to know. Yes you can. As far as AGP is a separate PCI bus you shouldn't notice. You can even in most cases disable IRQ for your AGP bus and save it for a PCI card. Of course I'd like to be corrected if I'm misunderstanding something. Cordially, Ismael -- PLEASE CALL +27 83-510-3637 ( Auditor of NEDBANK) http://lamediahostia.blogspot.com/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/ivalladt/