ur_droll wrote:
[...]
Sorry.... I should have clarified... I "NEED" to spend as little as
possible
on my initial upgrade of Case, m/b, cpu (low budget), 512mb ddr & hdd.

and the considered specs are as follows;

Gigabyte GA-7N400-L nForce Chipset 400 FSB Dual channel
Triplex 128Mb DDR GeForceFX 5200 8X w/TV-Out & DVI
Samsung 512MB PC3200 DDR RAM
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80Gb Serial ATA150 7200rpm 8MB Cache

Topped off with the el cheapo AMD Athlon XP1600+ Socket 462....
Which will get swapped out in about 6 to 12 months (hopefully to a
nice big fat XP4000+ socket 462.

Socket A is effectively dead ... there's no more roadmapped CPUs above the
XP3200, so I wouldn't be counting on being able to upgrade the CPU (except
to a mobile then overclocking it ). Socket 754 is looking like a bad
investment at the moment (high prices now then being relegated to "budget"
ie: low performance in 2005). Socket 939 is looking even worse givin the
current pricing on the things. Out of the lot, socket 478 (P4) is looking
about the best future-wise, but then you're banking on Intel getting
Prescott sorted out, plus you may need a new motherboard for the 266MHz FSB
CPUs that are going to be coming out later.

Given that you're got very limited upgradablilty no matter where you go, I'd
say go for what you've got above with the intention of getting a mobile
later on. The only thing to watch out for is if AMD start locking the
mobiles, which will cramp your style a bit on the nVidia chipsets (no
PowerNow support so you're stuck with only the default multiplier).

[...]

--
Michael Brown
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