Need New Spec Advice Please!

[Guest]

HiI'm due for a PC upgrade within the next couple of months. My current spec is:Abit KT7AT-bird 1.2gigGeForce4 Ti4200512MB 133 SDRAMSoundblaster Live!Quite old stuff now. Unfortunately the whole spec has been nothing but trouble since Day 1, when the fan I installed was not powerful enough and the AMD fried. This wasn't my fault. The fan was recommended to me by an internet shop. When I complained, they refused to replace my AMD (www.datorbutiken.com).Next, I had a faulty memory module (took me ages to find that one!!!)Then, I had had trouble with the Motherboard and hard-drives (I had to delay the boot-up time by secs so the hard-drives would detect). Then I had compatibilty probs with the Soundblaster card and had to update my BIOS twice!Now something else is wrong: Freezing mid-game, followed by flashing colured squares during re-boot, right from the first "Award Bios screen".So, my next PC doesn't have to be the fastest, but the most reliable!!! Advice appreciated.Jason

[Guest ccgr]

Sorry about all the PC trouble I memtest all my machines before they go out the door. :(Anyways I would recommend going with DDR on the memory 2700 (333mhz) at leastIntel will be coming out with 800Mhz front side bus processors (soon!) AMD should come out with 400mhz so technically Intel will be the speed champ for now. But if you don't want to pay the premiums or don't want to wait the 3.06 GHz with 533 FSB has goen down a lot!The SB Live! card is decent however the Audigy cards have less CPU usuage so that might be looking into upgrading.The video card you have there is still decent unless you want to spend $300-400 for a sigificantly faster card.

[Guest FPSFREAK]

Jason,A 2400+ coupled w some PC2700 and a nice stable ASUS Dual channel board will suit you just fine. As far as Video Card goes you don't have to spend 3-400 dollars. $180 gets you a 9500 that w very easy mods can perform as well as a stock clocked 9700. Or wait for the new 9600 to come out at around $170 bucks and you'll have yourself a nice, quick stable soultion to your problem.Bobby

[Bert Pieke]

Nice and stable...I'd suggest keeping your video card and buyingAsus P4PE board with LAN and soundP4-2.4 or 2.53 processor512 Meg PC2700 memoryWindows XP homeLess heat/cooling than AMD and nice and fast for FS2002.