My motherboard has apparently gone kaput. Arrrghh! Oh well I guess, such is life. I am not absolutely postive that is what has gone bad, but I am certainly inclined to think that's what it is. I have had my precious for about a year and four months now. It is out of the one year warranty.This all started about a 10 days ago. At first, I had a couple hard lockups(had to power off) while playing BF1942 and when it locked there was a constant loud screech coming out of my speakers. So at first I thought it might be the latest driver patch I installed for my Audigy2 Soundcard from Creative dated 03-29-2004. But then, I got a couple of hard lockups while just browsing the net, and a couple of times my monitor acted like it was resynching all by itself, out of nowhere. Just about everytime one of these hard lockups occured, when I'd turn the system power back on I had no display on my monitor. The monitor didn't come on, just total blackness. Then in the past couple days this happened more often. The last few times were within 10 to 20 minutes of each other. And I noticed that when I powered back up, there was no beep or anything from my computer like there would normally be during bootup upon getting through the BIOS loadup. I forget now what the beep is, I think it's either RAM or Video card acknowledgement. Or is it CPU? I totally forget right now. I'd have have to read a Motherboard manual again. Anyway, no beep... or monitor power up/display when turning the system power on! So, I thought maybe my Video card had gone bad. I took my the GeForce3 Ti500 out of my old computer and put it in. Nothing. Same deal when powering up. Oh no! My precious is gone!Well, the good news is that I have been authorized to get new parts. I was thinking the cheapest way to go of course would be to just get another Asus P4T533-C motherboard(if possible) and use all the parts I already have sitting in the bad P4T533-C. You know, my CPU and all my addon PCI cards. But I have been given the ok to get a different/newer motherboard, processor and ram if I want! Which is of course very nice.I have always been an Intel guy. But the Athlon64's look pretty attractive to me. I have read about how well they perform in my favorite magazine, Maximum PC. They stack up against Intel systems fairly well. Lower integer performance, but beat them in floating point performance. I like the idea of being able to run a 64-bit OS. I am not considering the P4EE(Expensive Edition). So if I get Intel again I think I'll go for a 3.2 GHz on a board that has an Intel 875P Chipset. What do you think? I am also going to stick with my current Hard Drives and not go for any SATA HD's. It would be nice but I am only going to spend so much. My P4T533-C had PC1066 RDRAM in it. Is the DDR RAM available nowadays faster than 1066 RDRAM? I hope so.I'm going to be doing some research and hunting for new parts. I intend to find out what I can about current DDR RAM compared to my old 1066 RDRAM as part of this. If anyone feels like giving some input on what they think is good stuff I'm willing to listen. Of course, in the end I'll come to my own conclusions but I certainly wouldn't mind some input from you good folks on the forum here. :) I also saw that for the upcoming Nvidia 6800U Video card you should have a 480 PSU or higher. My precious currently has an Enermax 430 in it. So I'll probably be ordering a PC Power And Cooling 510, cause I think I'm probably going to want that card towards the end of the summer.If anyone thinks something besides my motherboard might have gone bad I'd be interested in hearing about that too!Cheers, :-waveJimMy Precious(formerly now I guess):Alienware - 3.06 Ghz Intel P4 on Asus P4T533-C, 1 GB 1066 Samsung RDRAM, NEC MultiSync FE2111SB 22" Monitor, ATI Radeon 9700 Pro Videocard w/v4.2 Catalyst driver, Creative Audigy2 Soundcard, 120 GB w/8 MB Cache Western Digital HD, 36 GB Seagate 15,000 RPM SCSI HD, 430W Power Supply, WinXP Pro SP1.Current System(Old faithful):I built/put it together - 800 MHz Intel PIII on Asus P3V4X, 512 MB PC133 ECC Crucial Ram, Nec MultiSync FP1370 22" monitor, VisionTek GeForce3 Ti500 64 MB Video Card w/56.72 Detonator driver, Soundblaster Live! Platinum(v3509.2.0.0 Driver), Maxtor Diamondmax 40 GB and IBM 20 GB ATA66 HDD's, 350W Power Supply, WinXP Pro SP1, Via 4-in-1 Drivers v4.37, Via AGP Driver v4.10. No FS2004. :(

Hi Jim,On a side note... thanks for taking up the task of uploading and managing the enhanced lights files that TV recently modded. They have made a very nice difference in my night time simming.I personally won't be making any major upgrades in the short term future. I recently got a good deal on a 9800Pro, but jumped on it only becuase I had a confirmed buyer for my 9700Pro. The new video cards certainly look nice, but I've been burned enough by nVidia and their marketing the past few years that I will watch the testing and, more importantly, see what my fellow simmers say about the new cards.As an AMD owner and fan, I suggest you stay with Intel for the time being. I'd recommend you replace your board with one of the 800Mhz 865 or 875 chipset flavors, drop a 3Ghz 800 Mhz FSB CPU into it, and buy some nice PC3500 or PC3700 memory into the package. Throw in some top quality aftermarket cooling, and then crank up the FSB.While all this new technology we'll be experiencing in the next year certainly looks exciting, I for one don't wish to be one of the beta testers... especially at a cost of several hundred dollars. I have my system tuned and congiured just about as far as it will go with the current technology, so I'll be sitting and watching for the next few months.Surely there will be folks who flame me because I recommend that you save the $ for what will be available in a few months. So be it. From my perspective there is simply too much unsettled to be spending huge chunks my money right now. I'll let others spend their money and then I'll learn from them.Hope this helps,Greg

the A64 is definiatly the best gaming CPU out there. Especially if you take the price into account. The P 4 has other strong points but for gaming definiatly go A64. It

Hi,I want to thank both of you guys for your input. Like I said I am going to be doing some researching, and I'll probably digest things over the course of a few days. Allright P

Look over at tomshardware for 6800 ULTRA power requirements. It don

"It is interesting Greg that you are an AMD owner and fan but suggest that I stick with Intel. May I ask why that is? P

But the P 4 platform is in no way more future safe then the A64? I don

"But the P 4 platform is in no way more future safe then the A64? I don

No the latest news is that Microsoft won

I really should stop wasting my time with these types of discussions. I was simply trying to assist Jim."The OS you are talking about is named Win XP reloaded. And yes 2010 is the release date for Longhorn scary isn

Hi Guys,Greg and P

Hi Jim,I'm not really distressed... just unwilling to take part in a debate where Par pointed out that I was referring to a different OS. The news about the trimming of Longhorn has been substantial during the past few weeks, and it's clear that MS is having difficulty with it. That's natural... it's new technology, and that brings with it challenges. I don't envy them in meeting those challenges.I was suggesting the 3.0Ghz 800 FSB option only because it's proven, and the costs are not too nasty. That to me would be the best choice at this time. For a pretty conservative outlay you could get by with it for the next few months until we know more about who will be on top with the 64 bit hardware. Cerainly, AMD is at this time but Intel didn't become the biggest chipmaker in the world by sitting on it's hands. They will claerly compete with AMD.But you are leaning toward the A64 FX, and that's fine too. Afterall, it's your money. You're the guy paying the freight here. You should certainly go with what you feel is best for you.Good luck with your choice... I look forward to learning of which you choose. Most important... have fun with it!GregP.S. this one is for Par... :-beerchug

Hi Greg,Well, I was looking at pricing. And it would indeed be pretty expensive to get the 64-bit dream machine. It wasn't all that incredibly long ago I got 'My Precious'... lol. The more I think about it, the more I think that kind of $$$ layout would not be authorized. And the more I think about it, the more I think even if it were authorized, it's just too much. If the big bucks I spent on My Precious was in the more distant past it'd be another story. But, mainly for that reason, I have decided I'm going to go with the less expensive Intel route. I'm sure I'll have fun with it. :) It may be best in the long run as 64-bit OS's are really just something still on the horizon. I'll wait a few years where it'll be more worth it to me to pay out big bucks to jump into that fray with the latest and greatest 64-bit system at that time.Although I already stated pretty much what I would get as far as Intel based system, I'll come back and post here exactly what components I ordered. I am going to be using most of the stuff from the currently broken My Precious, so it's just going to be Motherboard, CPU, new cpu Heatsink and Fan, and RAM.I was looking at Newegg.com and was hoping they had a Chaintec 9CJS Motherboard, but it looks like they don't. I may still go with them and get an MSI or Asus motherboard. Don't know. Not sure about Ausus now though really since that's the brand that just conked out on me, hehe.Cheers,JimEDIT - Doh! Newegg does have that model of Chaintec mobo. So I'm looking at it. ;)

hi Jim,i would kindly suggest that if you can get your hands on an Asus P4T533-C mobo. then grab it and stick with it. mine bit the dust... (as a matter of fact 2 of them) but after seeing fs9 on an Intel 875PBZ mobo. with DDR ram (PC3200 btw) i'm wishing now that i'd told Alienware to send the system back after the 2nd one went "kaput" and took my chances with a 3rd one because my performance in FS9 went downhill with the 875P/DDR setup compared to the 850E/RDRAM setup. the Mobo./Memory being the only differences between the 2 systems. oooppps. almost forgot, the WD 80GB HDD with 8MB cache that came with the system initially bit the dust b4 the 1st mobo. did. however, it was replaced with a Seagate 80GB HDD with 8MB cache - (both 7200RPM drives). i doubt seriously though that the new HD has anything to do with the performance hit. it appears that the current DDR ram just isn't as fast as the ole Rambus ram. i don't think you'll be happy with an 875/DDR setup. i know i'm not. happy flyin, fm

Jim,i forgot to mention this in my previous post. the 875/DDR setup has a P4 3.0/800FSB CPUthe 850E/RDRAM setup had a P4 3.06/533FSB CPU.