this is what ive come up with so far... im looking to make a machine which is going to be for gaming for a long time... ( relitivity speaking, of course )

AMD Athlon 64 3000+
Shuttle nForce3 150 Motherboard Model AN50R
Crucial 184 Pin 512MB DDR PC-3200 x2
ATI RADEON 9800PRO, 128MB DDR (wondering if its worth it to go to 256)
Western Digital 120GB special Ed. 7200 rpm
Lian Li PC-65B mid Tower
...probabilly one of the audigy sound cards.

tell me what you think.

You have lots of meny to spend!!!

I'm not sure for the motherboard. I read a lot of reviews of Athlon64 boards and there is no concensus on chipset. Some reviewers says VIA is best, others says nVidia and recently SiS chipset made good impressions...

REVIEW OF THE SiS CHIPSET FOR Athlon64 :
<A HREF="http://www.ocworkbench.com/2003/sis/sis755/755-1.htm" target="_new">http://www.ocworkbench.com/2003/sis/sis755/755-1.htm</A>

--
Would you buy a GPS enabled soap bar?

Looks like a nice system. I'd have probally been inclined to go with the via chipset but it looks good regardless and I think you'll be quite happy with the performance.

<A HREF="http://www.lochel.com/THGC/html/shadus.html" target="_new">Shadus</A>

Not sure about the mobo.

<font color=blue>If the <font color=yellow>laurel</font color=yellow> is to big for your head, it becomes a hoola-hoop, and you have to keep your butt really busy.</font color=blue>

THG in a recent review declared MSI K8T Neo as the best mobo for A64 CPUs. Othen than that, it looks really good!

thanks, I dont know what im doing for the most part, so I was expecting a "you fool! You'll kill us all!!!" guess I got lucky =) Is the MSI K8T Neo mobo unlocked for overclocking?

nforce boards are top of the line, Nvidia designs those chip-sets obviously and that is saying allot considering they are the word leaders in graphics GPU's.

The fact that the nForce2 chipsets won chipset of the year for 2003 and Tom's hardware guide gave the ASUS A7N8X Deluxe board with the nForce2 chipset Board of the year including putting the Tom's Logo on the Box and in posts they say the nForce motherboards out perform other types of chipsets by nearly 300%.

Nice system you have there I purchased and updated my current system and went to the A7N8X Deluxe board from my A7V8X-X Via chipset board.

The Via Chipset worked fine for me but this new nForce chipset is untouchable and now you have me looking at the new nForce3 chipsets.

Barton 3200+ 400MHz
A7N8X Deluxe
Liquid
2x512 KinstonHyperX PC3200
GeForce FX5900
Maxtor DiamondMaxPlus9@80Gig
SONY CD 52x
SONY RW 52x/24x/52x
SONY DVD 16x/40x

Here's <A HREF="http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/articles.hwz?cid=6&aid=883&page=1" target="_new">another</A> SIS 755 review. Seems like it would be the best A64 chipset. Too bad no manufacturers will have SIS 755 boards out for awhile.

<b>Qui habet aures audiendi audiat</b>

are they giving a date we should expect the SIS 755 to come out?

... the dregs of upgrading, you always want to wait a little bit longer for that one part

I have no idea! Manufacturers are usually kind of slow at releasing SiS based boards; so it may not be worth the wait. The reviews on the retail boards don't exist yet (they're all ref. boards), so it may be awhile.

<b>Qui habet aures audiendi audiat</b>

Looks good;but heres AMD's recommended shuttle mobo for the amd64 3000+

"AMD Athlon™ 64 3000+

ATX Form Factor, Shuttle.

Vendor Model Revision
Form Factor Chipset Bios
No results returned for this motherboard search."

SiS is better than VIA, always has been. And when you buy SiS you're not financing economic terrorism.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

Yeah, they certinly take thier time. Ill oust the shuttle, Perhaps replace it with the MSI K8T Neo board? Did anyone know if that board is unlocked for overclocking?

by the way, sorry if this is moving off the topic of the forum.

Yet another incorrect post for SoD.

The nForce3 is not nearly as good as the VIA chipset, that is publicly known...nVidia is the not necessarily leader in graphics GPUs either, 3Dwise they are second to ATi and 2Dwise everyone is second to Matrox, finacially they are #1; the leader is all from perspective, I spend the majority of my CPU time using it as a workstation, so I would lean toward Matrox as the leader, others lean toward ATi, select few (though more than my fellow Matroxites) lean toward nVidia.

You will need an Athlon 64...which I doubt you knew.


Aziboah: good system!! Gotta love the great buy in the 3000+ A64! I do have to agree with the majority here that the Via chipset is the better way to go, MSI won Tom's latest review in a landslide, too: look for a good deal on it.

Damn Rambus.

Awesome, thanks alot for your reviews. I was probabilly going to switch the memory out for some Mushkin PC3500 Level-II memory, as I was advised it was a better way to go.

I would have felt like an ass if I ordered parts which dident go together. The worst was a few years back when I was still getting into the swing of things, I was putting together two workstations for my dad, and I ordered the wrong socket CPU for the mobo.

" uhh, yeah. I guess they shipped the wrong thing, Dad... "

haha.

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Aziboah on 12/18/03 10:53 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

ya... VIA's falling apart slowly. you have CEOs buying houses by 10s in the US, no doubt the company will fall~~

RIP Block Heater....HELLO P4~~~~~
120% nVidia Fanboy
FX5700Ultra, the next Ti4200? seems so

SiS is making better chipsets than VIA, DFI should have a top notch board with SiS in the near future.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

Where can I find a (p)review of that board??

Damn Rambus.

That Mushkin memory will be better and should come in handy should you decide to overclock...

HAHAHAHA! Good excuse!

Damn Rambus.

I was wondering whats a good heatsink and fan for that cpu? And for Thermal Grease, I was going to go with Arctic Silver 5. I will probabilly overclock in the future, but for the time being, ill just run it at normal speeds.