Generic parts

[SINND3R]

Hey, I'm thinking of getting a GeForce 3 & an Athlon motherboard. I was kinda wondering how important it is to go with name brand stuff, and if so, brands with excellent reputations. I can save quite a bit of money on a generic or VisionTek vid card, as well as a cheap motherboard. However, I'm kind of concerned that a cheap motherboard will create stability issues. I have no inclination to ever overclock anything if that matters.

[Tiretool]

Most of the generic video card manufacturers follow NVidia's reference design. The only drawback is that they sometimes use crappy memory on their cards. Slow, or faulty ram would be the only reason not to go with a name brand video card.

Motherboards on the other hand. Don't skimp here... Spend wise money on the motherboard. This is going to be the heart and soul of your system, so spend your money accordingly.

[HAL9000]

Well, for the motherboard, lets put it this way, it's the foundation of your system. Would you buy a house where the contractor went cheap on the cement of the foundation, nope, so don't do that with your computer because like the cheap house foundation, you'll really regret a cheap motherboard as the foundation of your computer. Stay with name brand, well known, recommended motherboards.

As for the generic video cards. I've used them in systems I've built, they work ok, but may not perform up to the standards of the name brand card. Sometimes the drivers may be a bit different and support may not be as good. If you're looking into a budget performance game card, seriously look at an ATI Radeon LE 32Mb DDR, you won't be disappointed.

[HAL9000]

Dang it Tiretool, you must have been quicker to the click... posted at the same time.

[glc]

Please get a quality motherboard. This is the single most important piece of hardware in a computer.

Generic video cards are fine for general use, but if you are a gamer, stick with the name brands for the reasons already stated. You will have much better driver and technical support with the name brands - you do get what you pay for. Speaking of which - note that ATI does not support the Radeon LE - that's a card made by a 3rd party with surplus Radeon chips. However, you can use the regular ATI Radeon drivers with it just fine - and that's a good idea anyway.

You mentioned Visiontek - I haven't heard any complaints about their products - that might be a good way to get a decent Nvidia based card without breaking the bank. I always have to wonder about components that come in plain white or brown boxes (unless the manufacturer is plainly indicated and it's a "name brand" manufacturer) or boxes with all Chinese writing on them. Some of these Chinese manufacturers just buy graphics processors from Nvidia or whoever, and buy a bunch of generic ram and other chips, solder them all onto a circuit board, and burn CD's with generic reference drivers without doing any development, driver tuning, or compatibility testing. They may work fine doing general work, but have problems when you push them to the limit in games.

[SINND3R]

Well, I play games like there's no tomorrow so I guess I'll have to save up. Luckily I just got a job working full time for $10/hr. Not bad for a first job @ at 16. Right now, I have a K6-2 550 w/ 320mb ram. Would it be worth it to go ahead an get the video card now? I'm thinking bo because my motherboard (Asus P5A Socket 7) is a pile of **** and only supporsts AGP 1x and has weak bus speeds. I have it in my head that my motherboard will hinder the video card so I really won't be getting the results I'm paying for. This makes me want ot buy the computer all at once in case the prices on any components go down.

With the release of the new Athlon chip coming later this year (either I read this somewhere or I dreamed it last night... seriously) should I wait on it?

I think it all comes down to me being a scared little boy and needing the guidance of someone that pretends to know what they're talking about.

[HAL9000]

You probably won't see much of an improvement on your old system with a new video card, so it's probably best to wait and to the vid upgrade with the CPU and motherboard.

[SINND3R]

Is there much of a difference between 2100 Ram and 2600?