Video/Sound Cards

And then they will output something to the equivilent of a GeForce 3. I'm not even sure if you can use SLI with cards that old.

Voodoo 2 cards were the first to use SLI mode.

Audio
This is the exact card I put in a customer's machine last week and it sounded REALLY good hooked up on the store's surround.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16829117108

I mean for the price, it's a great deal, I highly recommend it.

Video
For video, stay away from ATI. It's that simple. NVIDIA whoops their ass every year in card comparison in performance and price. (Kinda like the match between AMD and Intel). I would recommend going with a PCI express card, reason? They Nvidia and ATI are currently working on their last AGP cards and have both announced that they are going to transition completely to PCI X. (PCI express will quickly take AGP's place, so people without PCI express boards are shit out of luck until they get a new board). Which is another perdicament you are in, your 300 dollar machine probably doesn't have a PCI express slot, and you don't want to run a 16x card at 1x (waste of $ + time).

But, here's the card i'd recommend. (guessing everythign is compatible) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814140051

It's the card I had in my old machine 256meg NVIDIA card produced by Apollo, model = FX5500. I mean you get better FPS than you probably have now by a longshot, it's only 75 dollars, so you are getting a good deal and it's 4x/8x (your board probably 4x so it will work nicely ).

Other than that, if your only using it for Diablo2 and Porn you don't need much more. This will be plenty, hell, if you have a decent enough processor and about 512 ram you can play Battlefield: 2 demo and eventually the retail version. (FX5500 the cut for the game).

Asus™ Asrock P4V88 SE chipset Dual Channel Prescott AGP8x (Intel P4 /VIAPT880) Series
1 x Parallel
1 x Serial
1 x PS/2 Keyboard
1 x PS/2 Mouse
1 x 8-channel Audio 1 x RJ45
1 x Optical S/PDIF
1 x Coaxial S/PDIF
8 x USB 2.0

Intel™ Pentium 4 3.0 Ghz Extreme Prescott 1MB CACHE 800Mhz FSB w/Hyper Threading Technology

or ... AMD 64 3000 with/ Chaintech K8T800 (Via K8T800 Chipset - 2 DDR - 10/100 Lan - 4 USB 2.0) Same Cost

ATI Radeon™ 9600 128MB DDR AGP8x w/DVI, VGA, S-Video

*New Quiet Maxtor™ 160GB 7200RPM 8MB

PREMIUM/Samsung 1GB of Fast Dual Channel PC-3200 Platinum Blue Heatsinks @ 400MHz DDR

Lite-On 16X DVD+RW Dual Layer & Dual Format, Model SOHW-1633 Beige
Write Speed: DVD+R 16x, DVD-R 8x, DVD+R9 2.4x, DVD+RW 4x, DVD-RW 4x, Read 16x
Read Speed: 48X CD-ROM, 16X DVD-ROM

Ethernet Port: Broadcom AC101L 10/100. All ready for High-speed Broadband!

Onboard 3D 8-Chanell Digital AC97 5.1 Surround Sound 24-bit + SPDIF


For 700$ plus S/H....

If you are buying a PC for gaming that you want to last a few years at least, you will need at least 1gb of ram, a 256mb video card, at least like a 3.5 ghz proc. All the rest is just fluff. Thats if you want to play the latest and greatest games for a few years to come on at least medium to high graphics settings. I usually buy a new pc every 3-4 years and I spend about 1500 on it so it lasts another 3-4 years.

I'd say 2GB of Ram is actually preferrable if you're looking a few years down the road. Many games nowadays can actually saturate 2GB, and it's just gonna get worse.

Guys you want at least 2 GB of RAM at highest cas possible (higher = faster like more mhz). For video card I recommend the FX5200, that will totally pwn in any games you have now. For CPU I recommend a Pentium 4 2.6 ghz (underclocked to 2.3 for extra stability). For motherboard, any PCChips mobo, they make the best 1337 gamer mobos. For sound card, get a Creative Live 5.1...don't waste your time on the new ones because the 5.1 in it means the chip runs at 510 mhz and most games nowadays don't even use 250 so you're set with a 5.1 card.

I use a 9.1, actually. I needed enough power to play Lil Jon and the Eastside Boyz.

I use a 9.1, actually. I needed enough power to play Lil Jon and the Eastside Boyz.

Did your video card have at least 512 MB of ram for the visualizations? Microsoft adopted Lil Jon as the standard benchmark in media player visualization performance, so you know your vid card needs enough RAM and timings to perform. Mine is liquid cooled so the heat-crunk ratio is under 2.1 when the bass hits. The audio performance staggers when playing Lil Jon, so I'm thinking I'll upgrade to 10.3 soon but for now I can play Usher just fine so I don't need more performance.

Nah, it's cool. I use a professional-grade graphics card (ATI Rage Pro) so I can play Lil Jon and Chingy simultaneously without over-running the crunk buffer. It's pretty poppin. It also has a multiplier effect. When I run it on an 1/8th of dro and with a .20 BAL, it's the equivalent of a 21.3 system.

Nice but if you did an SLI Rage Pro setup your (d)ro would drop to 1/16 and and your BAL would increase to .40, allowing you to play Ying Yang Twins.

That's a good idea, actually. I'll pick another Rage up next time I'm at COMPUSA. (Where America buys technology!)

I get mine at BEST BUY. The employees there are very smart and know their stuff. One employee told me the 9600 non-pro is at the best price point for maximum performance and (pre)teen SL.UT ratio when playing my porn. I bought it and I haven't stopped whacking off since.

You can never tell w/ you mantra.