I recently found <A HREF="http://www.overstock.com/cgi-bin/d2.cgi?PAGE=PROFRAME&PROD_ID=9461&fp=T">a deal</A> on a processor/motherboard bundle at overstock.com. With the $25 coupon I can implement, it seems like a good deal. Shipping is also free. What do you guys think? Also, any good hard drive deals out there? I have about $100 to spend on one. ------------------ Nederland 2002 Rocketman95 on board. Check out his latest game recaps.
That's really cheap for a motherboard/ 750 cpu. I've never heard of Andara though. ------------------ "Thirty-seven?" -Randall, Clerks www.clutchtown.com
You can go to www.andaratech.com to check out their products. But they're not really a major mobo manufacturer, so I'd be wary. What's even more fishy is their "retailers" are all auction sites like bid.com, dealdeal.com., ubid.com, or in your case overstock.com. I'll stick to FIC, Soyo, Asus, Abit, AOpen, etc. for my mobos. Anyway, from looking at the specs, that board is an older board. If I remember correctly, the 751 is the old Irongate chipset. It also doesn't support the new Duron or TBird chips, only the older Athlon chips. You may want to ask them if they know what the maximum CPU speed the motherboard will support is. They made Athlons up to 1 GHz in speed. If you have a $25 rebate to bring that $160 price down to $135, it's probably a good deal, but like I said, the scariest thing is that mobo. As for your hard drive, you should be able to get a 20-30 MB HD in the $100 range not including shipping. You can definitely get a 15 GB HD in that range and possibly including shipping. These are for OEM drives, so you won't get the pretty boxes (big deal!). Go to www.pricewatch.com and check out the prices. ------------------ I use smilies and I LOL -- I'm your worst nightmare.
To tell ya the truth, I don't really know about it either way . . . it looks okay, but its got some drawbacks. First, the Andara mobo probably will hold the processor back a bit (never even heard of them) and like DoD said, it's the old AMD Irongate Chipset which passed its time about a year ago (gave way to the Via KX133 chipset). What I find interesting is that it is the Irongate chipset but it has no ISA slots. That will speed it up a bit, but not enough to compete with the Asus, Abit or even the Shuttle boards. It also has a 2x AGP slot, which is another downer, as most mobos have 4x by now and most newer graphics cards (Radeon/GeForce) are 4x compliant. The other reason I'd perhaps shy away from it is because it is a Slot processor. The Slot A K7s have basically fallen by the wayside, as AMD now uses the Socket A for their Thunderbird and Duron series. The era of the Slot processor is pretty much over and this doesn't necessarily offer you the most viable upgrade paths (up to a gighz). It'd also be of note as to which Slot A K7 it is . . . the older ones had 512K off die cache, while the newer ones have 256K on die cache. The newer ones are faster, and have more overclockability (if you're into that ). However, I could see buying this either way. $135 for a 750 Mhz Athlon is fair, and you get a mobo thrown in, which isn't bad. The motherboard is suspect, which is a bit worrisome. I'd wonder about a few other things too: is the IDE1 ATA/66 or not? Will it support 133 Mhz RAM? It may be a good deal, but if you can spend an extra fifty or sixty bucks, I'd see about getting a Thunderbird and a good, but cheap motherboard (Socket A) Check out <a href="http://www.pricewatch.com">Price Watch</a> for some comparable/better deals on "motherboard Combos". You can get a Socket A processor and a MicroStar mobo for about 150. Sorry for rambling, I can go on and on about nothing (obviously ) ------------------ "I am who I am, who I am, well who am I?" -- Dave Matthews Band "Dancing Nancies"
Vengeance, The Irongate chipset supports only PC-100 RAM to my knowledge, so he may be out of luck as far as using PC-133 RAM. Ace, I just noticed that they have a logo under the mobo picture that says "Factory Serviced". From their definition, it's pretty open-ended as to what this could mean. It could mean that somebody just returned the motherboard because they didn't like it, or it could mean the thing was roasted and repaired by the factory. I think this is too risky. If money's the problem, I'd try to save up a bit more and get a good mobo with a more modern CPU. ------------------ I use smilies and I LOL -- I'm your worst nightmare.
Thanks for the help, guys. So, what is the better processor? Athlon, Duron, or the Thunderbird? I thought the Duron was something comparable to the Intel Celeron... Seeing that my old mobo screwed up (and it was an NEC machine), I have to buy a new case, mobo, and processor. I'm also getting a new HD, seeing that my current one is only 3.2 GB (on the old comp). Oh, and TigerDirect has a new deal up for $485: 1GHz Intel Pentium III Processor Intel VC820 Motherboard 128MB 800MHz RDRAM Fan with Heat Sink Seeing that the new PIV have come out, I'm guessing that prices for the PIII 1 Ghz are going to drop like crazy in the coming months. At pricewatch, there is a $145 chasm between the 1 GHz and 933 MHz. However, if you do a search for every component, it definitely seems to be a damn good deal. Specially because of the memory included. ------------------ Nederland 2002 Rocketman95 on board. Check out his latest game recaps.