I just want to say thanks first of all for your comments; I’m fairly computer savvy, but my knowledge ceiling on nitty-gritty component stuff is pretty low
. I think my head started to spin a bit after subsequently looking at some more mobo’s (talk about having too many choices – quite apart from not necessarily understanding everything 100%) – and of course, every product has +/- aspects and reviews - but that’s computing). So make it simpler, I’m kind of starting over here, or at least summarizing where I seem to be. Some or even a lot of the comments below are yours; apologies if for convenience I’m not quoting directly.
I’ve got two options now, let’s say Option A is a GeForce card and related mobo and Option B is the ATI card and related mobo.
Option A
I was looking at XFX nForce 680i LT SLI Motherboard CPU Bundle …
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...-680ILT-Q6600A … looks good, but there was a concern here about the active cooling on the mobo. I checked with TigerDirect today and the chipset fans are replaceable with third party cooling products. So I would go with this if not for hesitation about GeForce cards.
The consensus (I asked TigerDirect about it as well) is that its preferable not to put an ATI card on this GeForce-optimized (my expression) mobo. The suggestion is that eVGA and XFX GeForce 8800 series or 9600GT would be best. So I’ve looked eg at XFX GeForce 9600 GT Video Card - XXX Edition
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...550&CatId=1826 and XFX GeForce 8800 GT Video Card - Alpha Dog Edition
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...124&CatId=1826 , just to take two. There seem to be six kazillion kinds of 8800 card, so I’m having a hard time figuring this out. Could use some advice here.
However, the basic problem here is that I’m hesitant about GeForce cards. I have no bias against them, just that I’ve read various things on subsim that suggest that GeForce cards may be problematic or not as good out of the box as ATI cards, and need at least some tweaking, eg Rubini’s thread
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=128517 . Tweaking as such doesn’t bother me, at least up to a point; what makes me hesitate is end-quality between GeForce and ATI cards. :hmm:
My hesitation may well be overdone, of course. As we all know, every product has pluses and minuses in the reviews (not to mention what review do you believe as ultimate truth).
Option B
I’ve looked at Abit IP35 Pro which was mentioned …
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...080&CatId=1533 . That gets a nice review and I guess I would go for that .
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3142 . And I’ve looked at Intel Core 2 quad and Core 2 Duo processors. Would go for either one I suppose. I’ve also looked at other mobos including Intel, Asus, MSI, but I’m having trouble differentiating (beyond a certain point) between them and don’t know in terms of quality generally whether eg I should avoid Asus (or any other brand) period.
For the vidcard, I would have gone with ATI Radeon X1650 Pro Video Card
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...838&CatId=1826 , but it’s said this may be an older card/technology now. (I have the AGP version and it’s been great). I wouldn’t be sure what to go to with ATI (or Diamond??) … the X1950Pro?
Waiting a week or two ‘cause Intel prices may come down has also been mentioned (although the mobo bundle pricing in option A will expire 04/30).
So If I could be a pain and ask for a bit more comment still, maybe I can get my head around this.
Thanks again everyone
. Sorry for the too-long post.