Celeron or Athlon? FCPGA or Socket-A`?

[Lusse]

I'm about to buy a new motherboard and a new processor. But I just dont know what to choose. I'm a gamer so thats what I want it to be.

Should I buy an Athlon 900mhz or Celeron 800mhz?
FCPGA or Socket-A?

[rider]

it doesn't matter too much what motherboard you get or even the processor

but answering you question, go for what you can afford - and if you can afford the Athlon, you have no choice

what is important most of all, is the graphics card - you can have a 10Ghz Athlon and it would still struggle to do the geometric graphics that an nVidia does in it's spare time with a tenth of the transisors

nVidia is the ONLY choice
DDR versions of the card are a must buy, and therefore, the AGP Geforce MX card is also, a no choice decision

to recap

AMD Athlon 900 socket A [make sure you get the heatsink/fan unit from http://www.dabs.com [under processors:fans/heatsinks and get the COOLERMASTER for a 1.2ghz Socket A Athlon.
Motherboard without a doubt has to be the ASUS A7V [AGPx4 and AGP Pro support] ATA/100 without the audio chip on board

I have an Ultra from nVidia and I can tell you those two components combined with it [AGPx4, PC133, ATA/100 IBM 75GXP] absolutely rock your balls off

Definitely use PC133 as it is clocked at the same rate as the AGPx4 bandwidth. 1000Mhz/1Ghz. The memory and the graphics AGP bandwidth therefore both run at the same speed [PC100 equates to 800Mhz]

[werewolf_bite]

go for the Athlon (thunderbird)
It beats the brown smelly stuff out of the cellery (celeron).

The Celeron is a crippled P2 or P3 (very little on chip cache).

The Athlon out performs a full P3 of similar speed in a fair number of apps/games etc.
A Duron (fits on the same mobos as a Socket A Athlon) is a better budget chip than the celeron, and is only about 10-15% slower than it's big brother in most situations.
If you were to get the Duron you could then upgrade to a Thunderbird/Athlon at a later date just by swopping CPU's.

Motherboard the Abit KT7A is good, takes standard PC133 ram and can take the new 133 FSB (266 DDR FSB) Athlons that are coming out, as well as the older 100 FSP (200 DDR FSB) Athlons/Durons.
The KT7 is good to, as is the ASUS A7V, although both these only take the older 100FSB (200 DDR FSB


Ditto Riders comment about the video card.
Try to get a Geforce DDR as a minimum, or a Geforce 2 (not mx) if possible.

Remember you may need a new PSU if your current one is less than a 250watt unit.

[rider]

not sure if the MX is DDR or not
admittedly, I get confused over A7V and KT7

I do know though that I have a KT133 chipset of an Asus designed motherboard with Promise ATA/100, but not RAID

did you both know that AMD are due to release a 2Ghz Athlon/Thunderbird before the end of the year?
Bloody hell. My 1.2Ghz has become a snail with a house brick attached to it.

A 1.7Ghz is due mid year.

DDR motherboards are highly overrated and not worth bothering with. I should know, I've tested one and the difference between DDR and non-DDR boards is staggeringly small.

AGPx8 is the one thing to wait for and hopefully, the AGPx8 graphics cards follow suit.