» 
Just not sure what to get
Ok, here's the deal. My PC is the media system...It's a dual athlon-2100MP+ w/ 1.5 GB registered (and really slow) memory with some scsi drives, parhelia, etc. It's not a gaming machine.
My wife is the gamer (though usually adventure games, so pushing the envelope is rare in terms of gaming needs...still, I want her to have something worthwhile and I may swap out my Parhelia anyway since it doesn't work well with Avid Xpress Pro either). Were I able to give her one of my 512 MB sticks I would, but again, it's 266 Mhz memory and registered....it's slow.
The box is pretty useless...for that matter, so is everything else in her current system. She's going to take over my 1600 x 1200 LCD (native) from Viewsonic, so she WILL need at least a 9800 or 5900 video card to drive it at good frame rates so we don't have to accept scaling on the monitor.
Now, for the guts...we really don't need another DVD burner, but could take one. We already have the cd/rw and the DVD drive itself. If they're practically free, I'll throw them in as convenience anyway, but it isn't priority. And I have WinXP Pro, so I hate to pay for it again when I've already got it ready to install already.
So I'm thinking....Athlon 64 (3000+) or one of the HT processors? I'd consider dual CPU for her also, but that would likely price us out for her needs. Yeah, I could go with a 2800+ or so, but I'm not sure I'd really save much....
1 GB memory would be ideal...likely 400 DDR. Mobo, if the Athlon 64, would likely be the KT8 NEO. I really don't care about the case, as long as it can accommodate what I stated above. It doesn't need to look cool. Firewire/USB would be minor pluses, but since I have that on the dual CPU machine, it isn't too important. For the drive, 160 MB or dual 80/120 RAID/SATA 0 would be ideal.
I have no interest in overclocking...just want to pay 3 digits and get her upgraded to a good gaming machine without spending a lot of time on it. A tweak of 5% simply isn't worth 10 or 20 hours of time and instability to me.
I've checked a number of configurators, but most price in the high 3 digits...more than I'd like to spend...I figure I'm looking in the wrong place.
I'd appreciate any insight/thoughts.
| 
Linear Mode
