amd chipsets and mother boards

[t92300]

i am currently building a new computer and am wondering which chipset out of the NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 chipset and the VIA KT400A Chipset or VIA KT400 Chipset
which one should i go for?
the mother board i am currently going for is the Giggabyte GA-7N400 Pro, Socket 462, Duron & Athlon/XP found here http://www.ascent.co.nz/mn-product-spec.asp?pid=113047
the reason i chose this mother board is it has
400mhz fsb
takes ddr ram
firewire, usb2.0
100/100 networking
s ATA
AGP 8X
5 PCI
audio
raid
ata 133

any way what do you think?

also do you think that an AMD Athalon XP 2200 512 mb ram 80gb hard disk 7200rpm and a Gforce 4 MMX 450 is opver kill for running win98 and some sort of linux
also for playing Unreal tournament 2003 and battle field 1942

any feed back will be much appreciated thanks

t92300

 

[HAND]

Treat yourself to a Athlon XP 2500+(512k cache+333 FSB), it won't be that much more than the 2200+(in the UK at least, it's a steal), but it'll mean probably getting more expensive RAM.

On the question of motherboards, the nforce it *appears* to be the better bet, VIA chipset drivers have been twitchy in the past, although they have improved now with they're "4-in-1 drivers" they don't have the more solid record of the nforce 2.
Nforce 2 is clearly better than the KT400, but with the KT 400A its another question. My money is still with the Nforce2 though..
Here is a helpful link.. http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.html?i=1807
and another...
http://www6.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20030523/index.html

Again i could be wrong, you can never do too much research when upgrading...
I think you should get a better graphics card if you want to play UT2003 and BF1942....ive seen a AthlonXP 1800+ and a GeForce3 Ti500(better than GF4 MX by far) struggle with BF1942. I would go for a ATI Radeon 9500/9600(the 9600 is faster and costs more), or a Geforce4 4200(slower).
If your looking to play doom3 at the end of this year then these will probably be better(not so much the Gf4 4200) fot it. John Carmack (the lead guy behind doom3) has already said that the GF4 MX is no good for Doom3...

Hope this helps

 

[HAND]

Originally posted by HAND

If your looking to play doom3 at the end of this year then these will probably be better(not so much the Gf4 4200) fot it. John Carmack (the lead guy behind doom3) has already said that the GF4 MX is no good for Doom3...

Having said that, Doom3 will be beast of a game so to run it at its best, you'll need the latest GFX 5900(although the Radeon 8500 and up will run it) ..thats alot of money!
So you might want to go for the "cheap but very slow" GF4 MX and upgrade in the new year when its clear which is best for Doom3 and Half-life 2 games assuming you want to play those games of courese!

 

[t92300]

thanks for that info HAND
I think I will go for a nforce 2 chipset (now I just need some money)

the reason for the Gforce 4 MMx was it will be my main card for a while till I get enough money to upgrade to some thing better (then it will become my secondry one, its PCI, two screens )

No I probably wont be playing doom3 so hence not worrying to much about the graphic card

once again thanks for your help

t92300