Topic: New commission

[Tony]

My friend from Cumbria, has at long last become sickened of his low resource crashing, freezing bag o s**t, otherwise known as a Patriot  PC running Win 98.
 
Bang for your Bucks in the CPU department, invariably points me in the direction of AMD chips. But as I have not yet weighed up the current price for Mhz, ratio, I'm undeceided on the size. But I will be using an Asrock Mobo and a 8xAGP graphics card.

Though I'm a fan of professional model CRT monitors for my trading [you cannot half wack em when they let the share price fall ] Desk top space is at a premium for my friend. So I would appreciate recommandations for reasonably priced TFT monitors. He does not spend hours glued to the PC like us nuts, so no need to be top of the range overpriced products  

[Robotochan]

well the 2500XP Barton is going for £64.62 and that's basically the highest anyone should need unless they are crazy or need to do a lot of processing  

[Sandra]

E buyer have a few 15 inch TFT ones at around the £250 mark Tony, not sure what they are like but worth a look  
As Robo says the 2500 Barton seems to be as fast as anyone would need, I was most impressed with the one I built just after Xmas using one with an Asus board and 512mbs of 333 DDR  

[Simon]

Well caught Tony!  I haven't had a sniff of any new commissions lately.    In fact, if nothing turns up in a while, I may have to satisfy the urge, and build myself a new one!  

[Tony]

Cheers Playmates,

I think will be going with the 2500+ Barton, as prices have drop a bit since I last built one a few months back. CCL are doing a Barton at £66 including a heatsink and fan. And they are also doing a Samsung TFT at £228

[Sandra]

A word of advice Tony, may save you teh hassle I had  
The 2500 Barton runs at 333, the mobo I put it in accepted DDR ram at 266, 333 and 400.
The friend I was building it for had some 266 so we were going to use that but it didnt work  
Turned out that with a 333 cpu that asus board would only work with 333 DDR, was fine with that in  

[Dack]

Probably worth mentioning that PCWorld have 256M PC3200 (400MHz) DDRam at £21.45 at the moment. It's in their component section and that price is for the next 3 days only (mind you it's been that for the last 3 weeks )

[Tony]

Cheers Sandra,

it's a "new everything" build so I'll be installing PC2700 333Mhz Memory. And I'll be using the same Motherboard I used on my last PC build, the Asrock K7S8X I find these boards exellent value for money.

[Dack]

Might be worth paying the extra few pounds and getting the 8XE - it supports the 400MHz FSB as well. (Just used one in a machine based around Barton 2500)

[Tony]

Dack,

I looked at the XE, but as the X supports the Barton 2500+ and considering my mate will just run this PC for yonks. When he does ask about upgrading, even the XE will be a museum piece, so it would just be £6.50 of his money wasted.

Right now he is running a Patriot 233Mhz Cyrix MII, with 4MB on board graphics on a 32MB Memory, so I think he is in for a suprise  

[Dack]

Its just the overclocking potential of the Barton can usually be realised by simply changing the FSB to 200 from 166

(It then comes up as a 3200).

[Tony]

Bugger now look what you have gone and done Dack.I'm tempted now, does it raise the temp by much ?  

I mean you'll know, so this is for the benefit of others reading the thread. The 3200+ is priced at £157.94, where as the 2500+ Barton is £66.12 [including coolers] So thats a whopping £91.82 price differance.

[Simon]

That sounds almost too good to be true - there must be a catch.  

[Tony]

You mean apart from the void warranty, Simon ?  

Simon I just looked at my pricing spreadsheet, and do you know how much a XP3200+ cost six months ago £362  

[Simon]

Well, it's like everything else, Tony, it's only new for a day.