Ok, don't go nuts now I need some realistic and down to earth input here.

I'm moving to CO next month and I'm going to be staying with my company as a telecommuting employee. Instead of them giving me the computer I use at work to take with me, they're going to upgrade my personal computer and I get to keep the upgrades.

I currently run a KT- 7A Abit MB with 768MB of PC133 Crucial RAM and a 1.2GHZ Thunderbird processor. Finally, I have a Radeon All-in-wonder 7500 with TV/S-Video out. Oh, XP Pro as well.

These are the parts I'd like to upgrade. What motherboards are good now? I want to go with a DDR setup and something around 2.5GHZ. I'd also like a reliable 128MB (+/-) video card that won't conflict with XP like a lot of the Nvidia cards do.

Remember that I can't drop this HUGE list of hardware on them. It needs to be cost effective and realistic.

Thoughts?

Thanks!

 

you get to upgrade your computer and thats all you want? :thinking: you better go wild h:

unless you have some kind of limit.

edit....yea i like to skim. h:

 

I'm respectful toward the gesture. I'm not going to take advantage. These are good people I work for...

 

would you like to stay with amd?

 

I really don't care. I want something that will work well.

I'm a web developer/designer so I need something that will stand up to Photoshop CS, Illustrator CS, Freehand, Flash MX 2004, Dreamweaver MX 2004 and the like.

I'm an on-and-off gamer too. :reechy:

 

I can't believe that no one has input on this...

 

you could always go with the new Athlon 64. Is that too much to ask?

I'm not too "in" with the new computer technology, but if i were you i would just ask for a nice Abit motherboard and like a athlon 2500+ (if that exists?)

 

For less than $500 I'd get an Abit IS7-E2, P4 2.4A, 512mb dual channel PC3200, WDC SATA drive and a Matrox P650.

 

Asus A7N8X Motherboard $78.00
AMD Athlon XP Mobile 2500+ $79.50
Thermaltake Volcano 10+ HS/Fan $28.99
Mushkin 512MB PC3200 DDR $74.74 x 2 if fits budget
Maxtor 80GB ATA133 8MB Hard Drive $68.00

That's only $400 if you go with 2 sticks of 512mb. That leaves you with a good bit for a quality video card. I'm sure your company won't mind you spending around 5-600 if they were going to give you a company PC anyway.

I suck at video cards so I'll let someone else suggest that. h:

 

I do want to keep 1MB of RAM which is what my work computer has.

Thanks for the input! Keep it coming!