On Tue 27 Feb 2007 22:48:27 NZDT +1300, Phill Coxon wrote: > What is the best recommendation for processors these days? Does Dual > Core or Core 2 Duo have any major performance advantages yet?
That Intel core 2 thing is ahead in performance at the moment. I am waiting for AMD's response (Intel's performance previously wasn't so hot for some time). > Motherboard recommendations? I need good USB / firewire support + up to > 4G memory. Asus, Gigabyte, and apparently Foxconn, dunno about Albatron (which doesn't seem to be sold much outside of NZ?). Go ask a business PC shop what mobos they sell heaps of - they have to fix the problems on their support contracts so they won't sell rubbish. You don't want anything made for *&@#(* overclockers or gamers with a budget for 2 high-end graphics cards but not for a decent mobo. I suspect the higher end mobos are better made. Btw the max you can stick into a 32bit box is approx 3.5GB (sorta obvious when you think about it), above that you need a 64bit box. If you actually need 4GB I recommend you go 64bit. Dual-channel memory is slightly faster (note you will need RAM modules in pairs to make use of this). > What onboard chipsets do I want to avoid, if any? Any which don't have good Linux support. This includes many of the nvidia chipsets, e.g. nforce2 (now dead anyway), the 420/430 were a "do not touch" a year ago, but the nforce4 is good. > My current motherboard has VIA chipset which I (later) read somewhere > can have problems with linux. VIA has made a number of very cr*p chipsets in their time, as has Intel and most others. In general, VIA support for Linux is excellent. Asus made many diabolical mobos for AMD CPUs some while back. > I've certainly noticed that disk > performance has been very sub-standard with the current computer and > frequently causes Quiet likely not a chipset cause. > Good dual head 3D video cards? I might look at something like a Nvidia > Geforce 7300GT. See my recent posting on nvidia chips. Forget about anything 3D not nvidia. Spend money as you wish, but for other than gaming the higher end 3D cards are no advantage over lower end ones as far as I can see, but they're very thirsty and consequently noisy (ever noticed that all the fans are cr*ppy, contrary to the vendor-BS?). Volker -- Volker Kuhlmann is list0570 with the domain in header http://volker.dnsalias.net/ Please do not CC list postings to me.
