motherboards

Some great advice from an ex roomie, Mark: I've found a good board/CPU combination that's excelllent for overclocking and the price is cheap! The Abit motherboard with the Intel Celeron 300A processor allows you to overclock the CPU (and safely, I hear) to 450Mhz. For the board model and details, check with the techies at TC Computers (www.tccomputers.com). The combo is cheap and is a good idea if you want to upgrade to a 100Mhz front-end-bus system. I'll also recommend to you a good sound combo for all applications, including realistic gameplay and audio. The Soundblaster Live! (www.sblive.com) is phenomenal. Ya just have to hear it to believe it. Couple that with the Altec Lansing ADA305 speaker system, and you've got some awesome sound going! Prices are more than reasonable at buycomp.com. For video, I've found that a good all-around video card are the nVidia Riva TNT chip cards (usually 16Mb). In a recent review (I think I saw it at Tom's Hardware), the Hercules card was rated the best b/c of its ability to be overclocked pretty damn well (has it's own heat sink and fan). I have the Diamond Viper 550 (Riva TNT) because I bought it before the review came out. Without details, the ratings were Hercules > Diamond Viper 550 > STB Velocity 4400 for the Riva TNT cards. And if you're buying system(s) I've found that TC Computers is a very good source for motherboards/CPUs/cases/memory. They have a knowledgeable sales staff and good prices. They also carry a good line of cases which are sturdy and easy to manipulate. For all else, Buycomp.com has consistently evidenced the lowest prices. I'm currently running an 350Mhz AMD system (bought it before I learned about the Abit board + Celeron 300 combo) with 128Mhz PC-100 memory, Diamond Viper 550, SoundBlaster Live, and Altec Lansing ADA305 speakers. For a Socket 7, less-than-PII system, it runs pretty damn well.