Motherboard

[dolph]

Sorry to flood this board with questions but have got sign off from the "Missus" for a PC so have got to move quick before she changes her mind.

I have worked my way down to a choice of two PCs - same amount of memory, hard drive, similar price but a couple of big differences

Computer 1. Athlon 2400+, ASUS A7N266-VM/LAN nVIDIA nFORCE with 10/100 Ethernet LAN (2100 memory) and 17" TFT screen

up against

Computer 2. Athlon 2600+,ASUS A7N8X-VM nVIDIA nGeForce4 (sma) with 10/100 Ethernet LAN (2700 memory) and 15" TFT screen

I had set my heart on the 17" TFT but just looking at the motherboard on computer 1 has thrown up some doubts. It appears to only support USB1.1 and not 2.0 - is this a problem?

It only supports up to FSB 266 - what is this?

It only supports IDE up to UltraDMA 100 as opposed to 133, what does this mean also?

Any help will be hugely appreciated!!

[SeaneyC]

If you want a big screen, go for PC 1, if you want a bit more power, and more future upgrade paths, go for PC2.

Do you have any USB 2 peripherals? If not, USB 2 is of no use to you. Can you envisage buying any in the future?

The only downer with the A7N266 is the 266 FSB which limits the max chip it can take, and the fact it only has 3 PCI slots. Oh and the network card is a bit ropey, XP didn't recognise it without the driver (which was on the network of course)

IMHO the difference between 100 and 133 hard drive speeds is negligable for the home user. The difference between ram speeds however is more noticable if you're a hardcore gamer or do mega number crunching work.