First post, by nemesis
As I repair my GA-6OXET motherboard, I am again drawn to the idea of making a series of Best in slot computers, restricted to the year 2001 (for reasons that you probably don't care about).
First would be the Tualatin 1.4GHz, Second would be Athlon 1900+, third would be 2GHz Pentium 4. I think I've done my homework on those and it looks like those are the best CPUs for that era.
I haven't settled on the best motherboards though, which I believe would be my next step. (I understand that a lot of this is speculation and opinion, hence my interest in your thoughts.)
For the Socket 370 build, I'm convinced that the aforementioned GA-6OXET would be my best board but I've heard that Abit and Asus also made excellent boards for the Tualatin chip.
For the Socket 462 build, I'm convinced that I'm going to be looking at a VIA KT266A chipset. The top board I've read about so far is something called a Soltek. Can't seem to find any though.
For the Socket 478 build, I'm clueless... I didn't get to see any Pentium 4 boards back then that impressed me at all. I need all the help I can get on this one. 🤣
Moving onto the video cards, I've been torn between 3 different types of cards... ATi's 8500 64MB card, NVidia's GeForce 3 Ti 500, and a Voodoo 5. I'm fairly certain that I'm going to settle with the ATi, because of the multi monitor support, the performance (very similar to the Ti 500 and even better in some categories), and the fact that I already have one. (Rare for me to choose anything over NVidia). But again, I don't know everything.
I'm led to believe that the Audigy Platinum EX soundcard is the best choice for sound, but due to lack of availability and price for a new one, I'm looking for an excuse to review other contenders.