by Mr Pilkington » Mon Feb 24, 2003 12:32 pm
Ram: No less than 512 but perferably 2GB of....
P4 - RD (Rambus)
XP/MP - SDDDR 333
CPU:
P4 - More expencive, but speeds in excess of 2.8GHz out proforms Athlon
MP - Cheeper Daul CPU. Can handle 64 arcitecture.
XP - Cheepest, slowest. Will get the job done.
Duron - For video editing? Why bother?
Celeron - (ditto)
Motherboards:
P4 - Gigabyte. If unafordable, then why are you going p4?
MP - Tyan or Gigabyte.
XP - Asus
HDD:
ATA 133 - Maxor (8MB Cache) or Western Didigtal (8MB Cache) in excess of 120GB. WD is quieter but more expencive, for the budget consious Maxtor might be the HDD of choice.
SATA - Seagate, currently the only SATA HDD worth a shit.
SCSI - Ultra 160/Ultra 320, Seagate or IBM. Go with the 50 or 80GB versions and double/tripple/four-ple them up on a Raid 0 configuration. Anything higher is mondo expencive.
USB/Firewire - Western Digital in excess of 100GB
Video Cards:
Radeon all the way! The 9700's are sweet, but best I can tell the 9500s are just as good and $100 cheeper. I like to stick with "all in wonder," but for those with a desire for more the DV500 comes highly recomeneded.
Sound Cards:
Soundblaster Audigy - For the audiophiles of the world this is THE sound card. If you have no need for the live-drive, don't blow a wad on the Platinum verions. Get a good OEM card. Same exact thing, no live-drive.
Soundblaster Live - Still great, just not as great. And once again if you desire not the live-drive Go OEM.
Soundblaster Exdigy - Good external drive for those of you who have cluttered your PC with cards. But it will eventually get in the way.
Hand Held Perifs:
Razer Boomslang - If you desire the best of the best this is for you. I peronally counld't live without. Faster and far more precise than a traditional ball mouse. But it has a demand on the user, keep thi thing clean or it will make you life a living hell.
Contour Shuttle Pro - this handy little doodad is quite the life AND CLICK saver it works in a ton of programs: Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects, Dreamweaver, and tons more! But at $120 it ain't cheep.
Networking:
10/100 - It really doesn't matter who or what you go with, as long as you spend more than $15 on a card.
Gigabit - Queen bitch of home network cards. A 10/100/1000 ethernet card should cost more than $50, unless you go with something absolutly nuts like fiberoptics. Infact everything for a gigbit ethernet set up will run 2-3 times what a 10/100 would. The best is to go with a fiberoptic card though. Nearly lossless! But at a high price, nearly everything for a fiberotic network weill cost you 5-10 fold what a 10/100 would run.
802.11b - Wireless-licios! Only 11Mbps, as compared to 10/100 topside 100 Mbps. But fun none the less. Some wicked perks however!
802.11g - 54 Mbps and backwards compatable with 802.11b systems! Truly this is the wireless system to have. But costs nearly twice what a 802.11b system would. At 2.4 Ghz fun the enitre neigborhood can share!

<Orwell> WTF are they doing upstairs. Almost sounds like construction
<[Kristyrat]> Orwell, you see / <[Kristyrat]> when a man really likes a woman / <[Kristyrat]> or has a bottle of chloroform
<inthesto> He takes her stuff / <inthesto> And then poops in her vagina