Jennifer said:
Would a Foxconn 661M03-G motherboard running a Celeron 3.06 Ghz CPU 1 GB Ram
and an x1600 Pro 512 MB Graphics card be a fairly decent setup considering
my budget. Atleast untill I can afford 2 GB Ram and a new CPU it's mainly
going to be a games machine.
Apparently, this user has tried a bunch of stuff with that motherboard,
and is not satisfied with the results.
http://www.pcguide.com/vb/archive/index.php/t-43345.html
Exactly how much hardware have you bought already ? Are you going for
a DDR motherboard, to reuse some RAM ? Current memory technology is
DDR2 and it is pretty cheap right now - cheap enough to buy a decent
quantity. (Buy two matched sticks, to get the benefit of dual channel
memory bandwidth. If you want 1GB total, buy 2x512MB sticks of memory.)
Buying an AGP video card at this point in time, would be a mistake.
You'll soon have no upgrade motherboard to plug it into, so the video
card could well stay married to the motherboard you buy today. And upgrading
to another AGP video card later, only compounds the error. If you don't
own the video card yet, go with a PCI Express x16 card. At least then,
there will be hundreds of upgrade models to fit the motherboard slot
in the future. Or you can move the PCI Express video card to another
motherboard.
The economics of the processor side of things are a little harder to
analyze. If you go with a $50 motherboard, it will have FSB support
for the older Celeron and Pentium4 ptocessors. Some $50 motherboards
claim to have FSB1066, to support Core2 processors, but the chipset
is really overclocked by the manufacturer. If you later decide to
go for a Core2 processor, you may be better off with a new motherboard
to go with it.
I notice an MSI P35 Neo-F Intel Motherboard for $100. P35 was just
released this summer, and is an Intel chipset. It is a pretty basic
board, but it does support FSB1333, which may be handy in a couple
years when you do a processor upgrade. Basically, you spend $100 now,
rather than $50 now and $100 for a second motherboard when you
upgrade the CPU later.
http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggImage/productimage/13-130-095-04.jpg
Specs are listed here. It only has a couple PCI slots, and you might
want at least one PCI slot in the future, for a different sound card.
Not everybody likes the audio built-in to motherboards (I use a $7
PCI sound card on mine). You can test the audio and see if you like it,
and upgrade if it is not suitable.
http://www.msi-computer.ca/product_info.php?cPath=22_35&products_id=193
Note that, as time passes, hard drives and CD/DVD are going to SATA
interfaces. The motherboards are following suit, and you are lucky
now if there is one IDE connector on the motherboard. Since the
chip controlling the IDE connector is not inside the Southbridge,
if you try to install the boot system on an IDE drive, you'll need
to offer a driver to the OS installer, by pressing F6. You may need
a floppy or a USB stick, to offer a driver to the motherboard in that
case. A SATA hard drive connected to the Southbridge, might not need any
driver during the Windows install process. So a SATA hard drive would
be marginally easier to install.
In summary, spend a little more on the motherboard, and try to stick
with mainstream interfaces on the hardware, to improve your upgrade
options down the road. A bargain motherboard is a bargain, because
they are having trouble getting rid of them. If you had absolutely
no intention of ever upgrading the system again in any way, then
stick with your original plan of using a bargain board.
Paul
