bodhi said:
Think im gonna get the XP2600 cause its only 70 quid and its for my mate who just really wants to do office stuff. Just want to make sure what i get him is future proof for at least a wee while! Am i better to just get PC3200 RAM? I take it it will run at 333 just now, but will be better if he upgrades in the future. Also, can anyone suggest a good board to go with the XP2600 and a decent place to buy it. Thinking of buying from ebuyer or overclockers. Thanks peeps.
XP2600 it is then. I'm using one of those in my 'video editing' machine, a good chip.
It's OK to use PC3200 RAM for sure, if you don't mind paying the extra, but as far as I can see, right now, the only upgrade that would take advantage of it is the XP3200 CPU.
By the time your mate upgrades, systems will have moved on so if I were you I'd save a few pennies and just go for PC2700 memory.
Which motherboard? there's a lot of good boards out there right now, but as a general rule of thumb I'd say go for an Nvidia-2 chipset based board and one with dual memory facility. And of course one that can handle an XP2600 OK (which, to be honest, is just about all AMD XP boards atm).
Other considerations are on board sound and LAN, dual BIOS, easy Bios update and, of course, the colour of the main PCB
I'd suggest Abit, Gigabyte and Asus.