Hi,

We live in the UK and successfully built a P200MMX box when that
was current technology, and now wish to build one based on the
AMD Athlon Palamino XP 1800+

Everything has changed so much while I wasn't looking that I
wanted to begin with a good faq and help to understand the merits,
capabilities and limitations of current components and their
compatabilities.  Unfortunately I haven't so far been able to find
such information, so would be appreciative if anyone can direct me
to sources which would assist me to make rational choices based
on understandable information.

For eg. we read somewhere that the Athlon processor needs a big
power supply of the order of 300W.  We found a motherboard we
liked, but it was a micro board.  The only micro case we could find
from the trade supplier we are lucky enough to have access to
through someone in the trade, was 160W, which left me wondering
why someone was manufacturing a motherboard for a case unlikely
to deliver enough power for the processor it was supposedly
designed for.

Another thing I would like to understand is the relationship between
video card RAM and the computer's RAM.  For eg. if we go for
256MB of DDR RAM then buy a GeForce2 MX400 with 64 MB of
SDRAM are we then wasting the DDR RAM or is the relationship
such that the slower RAM doesn't drag the faster down?  I may be
worrying about nothing of course, but would like to find answers to
such Q's anyway.

Personal recommendation on a suitable MB and video card for this
CPU from anyone who understands the issues would be much
appreciated.

It will be used by my kids for gaming as well as hopefully being able
to play reasonable quality video, so the best performance for
reasonable money is the goal, avoiding the high top end priced
stuff, but not aiming so cheap as to render the machine obsolete
quickly.

Thanks in advance,

Best wishes,  Neil Taylor

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