The Athlon will definitely give you more bang for your buck, especially if
you factor in the cost of an i850 motherboard.  (The i845 SDRAM solution is
too crippling to the P4 to be a viable option, in my view.)

I recently built up a system for a friend using the MSI K7T Turbo Limited
Edition.  This motherboard seems to offer excellent stability at a
reasonable price.  A minor drawback is that it only has two fan headers on
the board, whereas most motherboards have three these days.  The BIOS isn't
especially tweakable when it comes to memory timings.  I found that setting
the memory manually to CAS2 at 133mhz resulted in 2-3-3 timings.
Fortunately the memory I bought was rated as PC-133 CAS2, so by letting the
motherboard automatically set the timings, they were picked up at 2-2-2.
Again, this shouldn't be a big issue for most folks, unless you are seeking
to tweak the system for maximum frames per second.

I went with a MX400 video card (found a Jaton model for $49 at Essential
Computer), which seems to provide excellent 3D rendering abilities for the
cost.  It will only be a bit slower than a Geforce2 GTS at low resolutions
like 640x16; however,  it will be left behind at higher resolutions, such as
1024x32.  I tried it out in a game of Battlezone II at 800x16 with moderate
in-game graphic settings, and it was very solid.  But if you have a big
monitor and play 3D rendered games a lot, the Geforce2 might be the better
option.

A few more thoughts on upgrades you might want to consider, depending on how
serious you are about this being a computer gaming machine.  AMD has
recently released their Athlon XP line of processors, and these appear to be
significantly faster than their prior "Thunderbird" Athlons.  Note that they
have a performance rating, which is not the same as their actual clock speed
(eg, the PR-1800 is actually a 1.5ghz processor).

It looks like some of the motherboards that support DDR memory are finally
showing some muscle, and this should become more apparent as processor
speeds continue to increase.  SiS has a DDR solution that ECS has built a
very inexpensive motherboard around, ECS K7S5A, and this system has been a
surprisingly good performer for the reviewers.  VIA has countered with an
update to their own DDR solution, which they are labeling the KT266A chipset
(note the A at the end).  These motherboards are just now showing up for
purchase.  I'd probably favor a KT266A board from someone like MSI, though
the reviews aren't in yet.  :-)

My reasoning on going with the DDR is that it looks like it has more future
than SDRAM at this point, but costs about the same, so if I was buying
memory at this point, why not make it DDR memory.  Plus, it is finally
showing a reasonable performance advantage, even with processors not
particularly designed to use DDR memory.

Finally, make sure to check whether the power supply in your system is rated
by AMD to handle the Athlon you purchase.  AMD's site has a list of power
supplies and the processors AMD believes they are best capable of
supporting.

Sorry for getting carried away.  I hope this his helpful.

John

----- Original Message -----
From: "SatPrem Reddy" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2001 3:50 AM
Subject: motherboard for Athlon1.4


 I am planning to build a new system for my home. I've got a few decisions
to make.

    1)Athlon1.4 vs P4
    2)ASUS A7V133 vs MSI K7T Turbo (SDRAM boards)
    3)GeForce2 MX 200 vs GeForce2 MX 400 vs GeForce2 GTS

<the above quotation is condensed>

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