need help buying new mobo and cpu

lagerter · June 17th, 2004, 08:52 PM

I have around $150 for a new motherboard, cpu and graphics card. This will be used by a 14 year old who is a moderate gamer. I've tried to research this out but am completely confused. Any suggestions (or just tell me what to buy) would be greatly appreciated!

washe · June 17th, 2004, 08:55 PM

what games he has on mind?

JPMiller · June 17th, 2004, 09:57 PM

what memory do you have?
What version of windows?
I can suggest a good All-In-One board with built in GeForce 4 video and an AGP slot for future upgrades. If he is truly a moderate gamer, that would more than suffice... You would want at least 512Mg of DDR memory though

lagerter · June 17th, 2004, 10:38 PM

It will be xp home and I haven't purchased the memory yet. I thought I needed to get the board before the memory. There's a separate budget set aside for memory.
He's basically into starcraft right now and wants to try jedi academy. Doesn't think he'd be interested in halflife 2 - if it ever comes out

Bizkitkid2001 · June 17th, 2004, 11:12 PM

What video card do you currently have?

lagerter · June 18th, 2004, 01:04 AM

No video card now. The computer we're upgrading is an old 450 gateway. We're keeping the drives (20 gig hd for now, cdrw,dvd, etc...) and replacing everything else. that's why I'm confused. I find a motherboard on sale that sounds good but then don't know which cpu should go with it or vice versa. That's why I'm asking the experts out there

Bizkitkid2001 · June 18th, 2004, 01:36 AM

delted from confusion(sadly it happens a lot to me

)

PresterJohn · June 18th, 2004, 01:39 AM

>I have around $150 for a new motherboard, cpu and graphics card

$150 is awfully tight to buy all three components, but a starting point would be to read this:

http://www.anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.html?i=2077

Anandtech's reviews are very trustworthy and have a lot more objectiveness than other 'review' sites.

fpantovich · June 18th, 2004, 01:58 AM

Well, when you get a chance, go ahead and post it all right here, what you have to spend max combining RAM, Motherboard, CPU, and Video costs....from the price, you can't do much, but I went ahead and got a board with pretty good onboard video and a pretty good retail CPU, all from Newegg, ofcourse, heh...total price shipped is $141...good luck..

BIOSTAR "M7NCG 400" nForce2 IGP Motherboard for AMD Socket A CPU -RETAIL
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProduc...factory=BROWSE

AMD Athlon XP 2500+ "Barton", 333 FSB, 512K Cache Processor - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProduc...factory=BROWSE

Sixpac_XP · June 18th, 2004, 02:05 AM

The Geforce4 MX video is near close to useless of a card (can't play many games at all).. the board it good though.. but I would rather see a ATI 8500 or 9000 as a graphics option.. though $141.00 is very tight indeed.

Well I just did a seach through Neweg and couldn't find anything better then what fpantovich found for you.. I think in your budget that would be a decent deal. The CPU isn't lacking thats for sure.. and in the future you can always upgrade the onboard video to a AGP card.. (maybe for X-mas)