Which motherboard/processor to go for

[NikB]

I'm just in the process of updating my home machine and I am very confused about which motherboard/processor to go for as there seems to be a lot of choice. The machine will be for surfing, photoshopping, web site building and storing/viewing photos. Budget is £150-£200 for motherboard/processor and memory. Can anyone give me some advice?

[mr_yogi]

For that money I would say an entry level Athlon 64, nForce 4 motherboard and 1Gb of PC3200 DDR RAM.

However if you plan on using a video card you already have the chances are it'll be AGP in which case you will nead an older nForce 3 motherboard or similar which still has an AGP socket.

To be honest it would make sence to just get a newer PCI express video card and stick with nForce 4 motherboard.

Another thing to look out for is the "system upgrade" bundles offered by the likes of Scan and Komplett. These are a nice way of getting products that you know will work together and often at a little extra discount.

Pentium 4 systems are also worth considering but they tend to require more expensive DDR-2 RAM.

EDIT so add: ATI motherboard chipsets are also quite good but be aware that you may also need a new PSU as Athlon 64s and P4s can be quite power hungry and have quite fine tollerances.

>> Edited by mr_yogi on Monday 3rd April 17:10

[flossythepig]

Unless you want to play the latest 3D intensive games I think a motherboard based on the ATI X200 chipset with on board graphics will fit the bill (it should be Vista compatible as well). Get one with a PCI-x graphics slot which will allow a later upgrade. They cost about £60. Trying to upgrade and retain an existing AGP based card is false economy.

The cheapest Intel or AMD processor will be about £80 AND 1GB of memory is about another £60.

[Zad]

I really wouldn't want to do much Photoshopping on an integrated graphics gard to be honest. Even a relatively modest separate card would show a considerable improvement. Other than that though, what they said

[mr_yogi]

What performance improvement will any consumer level dedicated graphics card bring to Photoshop? As far as i'm aware the integrated solutions from nVidia and ATI (and probably Intel) have the same 2D features as the didicated separate cards that cost hundreds of £s. 2D only requies a tiny amount of RAM and PCI express chipsets are plent fast enough.


IMHO