whats a good machine these days?

[ECR33]

Hey guys, i've fallen out of the PC scene for...well, abour 2 years.
My computer is getting on a bit now, a Duron 900 with a GeForce2 64mb

So... my question is then, whats a good machine these days?
I just watched the Half Life 2 preview, and...woah, i need to have that when it comes out.

What i'm looking for is, Processor speeds, brands, and things like that. When i stopped reading PC mags and sites AMD were going strong, and nVidia were graphics cards gods. I hear P4s are half decent and now ATi have taken the graphics throne?

Any help appreciated

Cheers

[Darthtanion]

If you can give us a budget you're trying to go by that would help. There are so many options and the prices differ greatly.

[ECR33]

Well...i guess i have around AU$2000 to play with.
Probably not including a monitor, mines fairly decent already.

[Yawgm0th]

I suggest you wait for socket 939 motherboards and processors. Could be a few weeks, maybe a couple months at the most.

An Athlon 64 3500+ would probably be best. Get it with a 400W PSU, a socket-939 dual-channel motherboard with built in SATA/RAID and gigabit ethernet, an 80GB SATA HDD, 1GB of PC3500 dual channel (get two identical 512MB sticks) RAM, a heat sink/fan for your porcessor, and a case with some fans.
You will have to decide on a video card based on how much money you have after that. Radeon currently has the graphics card throne, but that's with the X800XT, which should cost something like $500 U.S.. A Radeon 9800 XT (over $300 U.S.) or even a Radeon 9800 Pro (over $200 U.S.) would be easier to fit in your budget.

[ECR33]

Alright, sweet, thanks for the help mate :)

Anyone in Australia got some reccomended places to buy from?

[Dyck15]

Your likely to get the best prices online from somewhere like newegg.com. Im not sure whether they deal with AU or not, Im not even sure if they deal with canada (my county) but thats your best bet if your willing.

[Len]

If your just checking prices you can use some of the price comparison sites like

http://www.ausprices.com/

Or

http://www.ozpriceguide.com/default.asp

Or

http://razorprices.com/index.php

The first 2 have a lot or most of the on line and retail shops.