Motherboard/CPU

[jvega08]

As an on-line gamer, I am ready to purchase a powerful and economical motherboard and CPU. From what I have read, the AMD Thunderbird and XP are good choices. Here are my questions:

1. Can you tell me why your rig is a good choice for on-line gaming?

2. Have you overclocked your rig? If yes, what is a good stable frequency?

3. What is the best motherboard and CPU combo deal with excellent performance?

[YeOldeStonecat]

Being a very hard core online gamer for years, the best think you can do for your online experience is get a good ISP. All ISP's are not created equal.

Same with your equipement, you'll find some routers perform much better than others. Nexland ISB SOHO, is marketed as the fastest gaming router, NetGear routers are quite fast also. And your NIC...3COM or Intel, properly installed, not sharing any IRQs.

As for the AMD vs Intel debate...the rig in my below sig is my first AMD system. I've been custom building gaming rigs for a long time, and have stayed away from AMD because of my strong hatred for all chipsets that AMD had. Since they finally had a decent CPU with the second version of the Athlon...the T-Bird...I was wanting to try one, but there was no motherboard I'd want to spend a dime on. Then the Athlon XP came out, and my much beloved nVidia released it's nForce chipset. Hence my computer in the below signature.

The Via 266a chipset is pretty much the fastest performing out there now, with the nForce in second place. The 266a so far has been proven to overclock higher than the nForce, which you can still get moderate overclocking out of.

On the Intel side, my last Intel systems, still going, are PIII systems. The best I ever had, is the Asus CUSL2 series. Many people absolutely love these boards, rock solid, stable, fast, and overclockable. Currently it's still sold, updated as the TUSL2 series. I didn't really research P4 systems, since I was getting into the XP at that time.

I'm not sure if I'm happy with the AMD system, as I'm very perfection driven, and insist on rock stable systems. My Intel systems ran highly overclocked 24/7, perhaps rebooting once or twice a month only to push in antivirus updates or a program install. My current AMD system has locked up on me two or three times over the past couple of months, bugging me.

Motherboard brands...I'm a huge fan of ASUS. Years ago I used to love Abit, but over the past year or so their quality has gone down the crapper, I've never seen so many DOA units. I gave MSI a shot in my current system because they came out with their nForce board before Asus did, so I gave them a shot.

[Ganja]

I've just upgraded my computer, I've always had Intel Processors but after extensive reviews and research I've decided to go the AMD way. I got myself an AthlonXP 1700+, an MSI K7T266a Pro2 motherboard and 256MB DDR ram. All is stable and performance is fast so far. I got all the above from a local computer shop for less than $400. I'm very happy with results so far. I've not even started overclocking yet but people who have the same system have found the 266a chipset a nice way to go.

[Joe]

Find any board using the kt266a chipset and any thunderbird or above cpu.. prefferably an Athlon XP and you will have a sweet rig.