As stated before: dont get anything less than a Geforce 3 ti 500. the Geforce 3 ti 200 may be easier to find and easier on the wallet but the frames it puts out are far inferior to the ti 500.
They are trying to phase out the Geforce 3 line in favour of the Geforce 4.
the Geforce 4 MX 440 and MX 460 put out about a quarter of the fame rates than the Geforce 3 ti 500. If you want to truly Future Proof your system you will want to go for the Geforce 4 ti 4600. Its the meanest most feature rich card on the market. It has dual diplay support and more features than I can list.
Read this to learn more.
http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic...522/index.html
If youre going to buy a Geforce 2 get an ULTRA or GTS. They both compare favourably as far as frame rates go with the Geforce 3 cards though with fewer features and older technology. You wont be Future Proofing your system with one of these cards though. Pay more for the Geforce 4 ti 4600 and know that youve got the best card on the market, and one that wont be obsolete in 5 years.
In answer to slackerboys question: NO, the Geforce 2 mx is an old moldy piece of crap compared to the newer cards. Dont waste your time or money on it unless youre looking for a really cheap solution for a video card. Its not much better than the TNT2 M64 (which is what the large majority of gamers play online with, very surprising but true, thats why its really the standard for 32 meg cards or better).
DDR ram isnt as fast as PC800 but its one hell of a lot less expensive. I cant see the logic of paying through the nose for Rambus RAM
PC2100 233mhz FSB ram works just fine for me for a hell of a lot less cash. Learn more here :
http://www.pcmech.com/memory.htm
I havent really looked at the difference between the 845 and the 850 chipsets. Personally I would never but an Intel CPU. AMD makes faster processors at half of the price. Why is AMD so much cheaper??? Because they dont spend billions of dollars on TV advertising. When you buy Intel you arent paying fora better processor--you're paying for the commercials. AMD Architicture is much quicker even if the actual clock speed is a little slower. Its what is done during the clock cycles that count. AMD does more per clock cycle.
My AMD 1600+xp (1.4 Ghz) has been side by side with an Intel 1.8 Ghz and smoked it in several tests and benchmarks. Its not even funny considering my sucker of a friend paid 3 times as much for his CPU. I tried to tell him, and he wouldnt listen. He went by the commercials and reputation and now that hes actually seen how big the performance difference is he swears he will never buy Intel again. He knows now that he got robbed. BTW its for sale [img]smile.gif[/img]
Oh yeah one more thing along those lines. Dont bother buying a P4 that supports SDRAM. It works but it defeats the purpose of buying a superfast CPU. Get Ram that can keep up with the FSB speed to processor was intended for. RAMBUS ram is extremely fast:super duper fast. But I dont think its worth the price. Like 4 to 8 times the price of DDR SDRAM. If you have a buttload of money to blow, go for it. Otherwise.... dont bother.
theres my 2c [img]smile.gif[/img]