> At 10:57 AM 4/13/02 -0400 Kevin Tarr wrote: > > Take this with a grain of salt. I remember a chipset a few years ago > >that looked great but turned out to be horrible. > > Ok, how do you know that it was horrible? What would you look for going > back? > > JDG
It wasn't my opinion, I don't buy that many motherboards! I just remember there was the TX and VX and MX and BX. One of them was not a good buy. They still made it. It was more like a Yugo than a Pinto, you bought it if you had to because it became so cheap. Of course many prepackaged systems started to ship with this chipset because it was cheap. Again: it worked but severly limited the system. Check this out: http://www.aselabs.com/articles.php?articleid=16&page=23 It compares motherboards. here is one for all the hardware: http://www.anandtech.com/reviewguide.html Remember you are buying the motherbaord WITH the chipset, not the otherway around. Let's say there is a new chipset out there, but so far no motherboard is that great yet. It's better to buy an older chipset on a time tested motherboard. You are buying the motherboard now for what you need now. There is nothing out there that will take you down a bad path, like VESA did a few years ago. Now to come from a completely different direction: I bought a Compaq 3 years ago and it was a year old then. It has been bulletproof. I've added a video card, memory and a hard drive but other then that it's just fine. Until last month it was my main copmuter. The only thing I hate about name brand computers is all the prepackaged stuff that they come with. I've helped three people, one bought a Dell and the others were Gateways. They were FULL of stuff that just cluttered the screen and runtime memory. If you are just using it for what you said then you would be fine buying a prepackaged, in the long run it will be better. All the componets are tested to work together. The only other problem with prepackaged is the video card may be weak. (Make sure everything is componets! Instead of all embeded on the motherboard, so, you can replace things if they break or to upgrade.) You can run Civ III fine now but in the future you MAY have to upgrade. If I didn't like mucking around so much I'd buy a Dell myself, or a similar prepackaged system. (Not never no way gateway). Kevin T. Too much fun for a Saturday
