I'm about at my wit's end here!  I'd love to build something new, but every time I come up with something, someone has a reason - which is usually valid - that I shouldn't go with that one!

It's so frustrating!  I've spent 95% of my waking hours this past week looking into this, and it seems I'm still on the starting block...

Okay, rant over.

Well sorry Hyperion fr making things so complicated but I and I am shure otheer forum members would hate to see you buy parts that will be obsolete in the near futre. It seems you are having problems deciding on the motherboard... if I were you here are the things to look for in terms of motherboads, Socket LGA775, PCI-E. Look at brands like ASUS, Abit, DFI, Gigabyte, MSI
If you want me to recomend a few ask....
Don't get frusterated whatever you do,  like Dan said make a table that has all the man compnents and list some optons for each like in CPUs you could put CPUs: Intel 640 3.2Ghz 2Mb cache 64bit:::::AMD Athlon 3200+ Venice 2.4 Ghz 1 Mb cache::::::Intel 540 3.4 Ghz 1 mb cache.

You will be rewarded fr all of this reasearch, and you have not given us a reall budget besides "loose wallet" so if I were you I would get Intel P4 640 3.2 2 Mb cache cpu or better, Nvidia 6800 or 6600GT PCI-E video card or better, Western Digital 10,000 RPM Raptor SATA Hard drive, 450W PSU or better, and a CD/DVD burner combo. Motherboards for you I would need to do reasearch but off hand I can say ASUS, Abit, and DFI are quite hot. Other board companies like MSI, Gigabyte and even Epox are good too

Hey, well if you want I could e-mail the excel I made when I was in your position. Its a bit of a mess now that I have what I want  but if it will help you your welcome!! My tower (In siggy) is worth about £650.
Dan 

gunnerman,

Why do you recommenf the 640 cpu instead of and amd.  I thought it was agreed that amd is better for gaming?  just wondering.

gotcha.

Hey Hyper I found you some mobos Check out MSI also...

FS2004 is more dependent on the video card than the cpu. I doubt you'll see much difference between a athlon 64 3200, and the above mentioned Intel offering (the 3.2 htt P4). Just get a decent video card.make sure you get the right processor for the right motherboard. There are 2 versions, socket 478, and lga 775.(but alas, a square peg won't fit in a round hole )

Quote:


Actually, you need both CPU and Video Card to be as good as possible, and they need to be on a platform which will compliment their performance.

Hyperion, I know that you might be overwhelmed at the moment with your newfound knowlwedge, but hang in there a bit longer, as things will soon become clear.

Here is an important article, and it contains some insights into the current hardware situation. Read it carefully and you will see that there really isn't much difference between the mainstream Intel / AMD offerings.

Both camps produce excellent performers in their Top of the Range gear (read Expensive!), but the affordable stuff is similar in performance, even in Video Editing!

http://www20.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050221/index.html

So...... You can now safely consider the other half of current technology, the AMD compatible half that is.  (Here we go again......)

It's up to you now to choose a chipset/cpu from each camp and see how they stack up against each other in a price/performance comparison. Consider the Mainboard and CPU only, as the rest of the components will be similar for either system.

Any money that can be saved in the purchase should be spent on a CPU or video card upgrade. I would look for a PCIe Radeon X800/850 XL graphics card..... (the XL model  represents great performance at a moderate price)..... and then try to upgrade the CPU to the next best model.

If you choose an AMD based system, go for a fully featured, budget board such as the Asus A8N-E (nForce 4) with an Athlon 64 XP3800+ .
It's better to get a more potent CPU, than a fancy or gimmicky mainboard.

This is an Intel link explaining the differences in their current chipsets.

http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/express_flyer.htm

For an Intel based system, my current choice would be an Intel 915P chipset board such as this....

http://www.rbmods.com/Articles/Gigabyte/GA-8I915P_Duo_Pro/1.php

The reason I chose this chipset for an P4 based system is because it supports the non-extreme edition CPU's yet offers the option of DDR2 memory installation. It also has PCIe graphics and has high definition onboard audio among many other features.