My new computer parts! (aka only read this if you want to be bored)

So I finally got my new computer parts in the mail. I had to do a lot of research to get up to date with the new technologies that are available. My four year old socket 753 motherboard is already out of date, as of July 2006 AMD will discontinue their socket 754 cpu line.

For the motherboard I had to make a decision between the socket 939 or the socket AM2. Socket 939 is the older technology, and will soon be discontinued by amd. AM2 is brand newtechnology and will allow for an easy upgrade path to the dual core CPUs in a couple of years.

It was important to me to get a motherboard that was socket AM2 and had PCI express x16. AGP is the old videocard format. Just two years ago AGP x8 was the latest and greatest technology. Today, AGP is an obsolete format. PCI express x16 is far superior to AGP, it allows for much more bandwitch and is actually cheaper to manufacture. So it is hard to complain about a new format that is faster and cheaper than the old format.

Because I went with the socket AM2 motherboard, I had to get DDR2 800 SDRAM (PC 6400) instead of DDR 400 SDRAM (PC3200). It was a little more costly, but I think well worth it for double the bandwitch.

For my video card, I decided to get the ATI x850XT 256mg card. I am not completely up to date with new videocard technologies, but I am an ATI fanboy so I only looked at ATI cards (I ignored the nVidia 6700GT). The other ATI card that I was looking at in the same price range ($125-$175) was the X1600. After reading some benchmarks comparing the two cards I made my decision with the x850xt. Although the x1600 has a faster gpu frequency, the x850xt has double the pipelines available for bandwidth, so it performed better in most benchmarks.

For the cpu I went with the amd Athlon 64 bit 3500+. It was a tough decision to not get a dual core cpu, but I just cant justify the extra money right now. I set my self up so in a couple of years I can easily get a dual core cpu, hopefully for a comparable cpu that I could buy now in the $300 price range I could get for the $150 price range in the future.

I am happy with my new computer. I got a cheap mid to upper range gaming rig that will play all the current games without a hitch while giving myself easy upgrade paths in the near future.