Advice: I'm building a new rig soon..

[chuckiechan]

My basic plan is to go with the ultra dma 66 standard, but I'm partial to AMD, either a 450 Mz, or a 475 Mz, (K6-2). There seems to be a limited supply of MB's available for this combo. Also, there seems to be a power war in video cards also, where is a good compromise, 16 Meg known brand?

Fry's advertised a Micro atx w/Tyan Tomcat & dma 66 & a Celeron 400 w/fan for $259.00. Sounds good, but I don't like small cases, and I'm not sure how good Tyan is.
I don't mind paying a little more for a good stability and reliability/performance ratio.

Thanks in advance...

[Harijs]

If I am not mistaken, the only Socket 7 chipset that supports Ultra DMA 66 is the VIA MVP4, and it has integrated video – the Trident Blaze3D. I don’t know if thus the motherboards built on this chipset have or don’t have an AGP slot (a la i810), but I think they don’t – therefore, you won’t be able to put a 16 meg card on it. I think you have two options – either go with Ultra DMA 33, all the reviews that I have read say Ultra DMA 66 isn’t really necessary, or get a Ultra DMA 66 controller that you put in the PCI slot – Abit manufactures such a card, and Promise either does, too, or will do it soon.

[lost1]

If you're willing to go UDMA33 then the Soyo 5EMA+ is a good board. It's an overclockers dream- it has dip switches for fsb, mult., & voltage. I've been running my K6-2 450 on one @ 500MHz 24/7 for 2 months now with no failures.
I run a Voodoo 3 3000 AGP in my machine- does a good job. I'm not about to start a "Voodoo vs TNT" war here by extolling the virtues of one or the other (they're both awesome,) so I recommend you look around at all vid cards & pick whatever YOU like best! :-)
Good luck...

[clough]

Go with this CD-ROM.IT'S A SCREAMER.
Hell it's faster than my Western Digital 10.1 GiG HD.It would be a nice addition to your to your new pc.

http://www.kenwoodtech.com/products.html

Kenwood 52X TrueX™ CD-ROM Drive

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Features | Technical Specifications
The fastest CD-ROM drive on earth just got faster!

Kenwood Technologies, maker of the award winning 42X TrueX™ CD-ROM drive, now boosts performance to 52X. It's the only CD-ROM drive in the world that delivers a transfer rate ranging from 6750 - 7800 KB/sec across the entire disc! This speed is more than 50% faster than the average 50X Max CD-ROM drive available today.

Equivalent to a 75X Max drive - if one existed!*

The Kenwood 52X TrueX™ CD-ROM is made with Zen's TrueX technology and Kenwood's patented 7 Beam pickup, which illuminate multiple tracks simultaneously, read them in parallel, and process the data through a custom ASIC. By reading multiple tracks at once, the 52X TrueX CD-ROM drive actually spins the disc slower than conventional single-beam drives, resulting in extremely precise readability and very quiet operation.

The Kenwood 52X TrueX CD-ROM drive is faster, quieter, and more reliable than the average 50X Max drive. The 52X TrueX CD-ROM drive provides consistent high performance data throughput across the entire disc making it ideal for graphic-intensive applications such as 3D games, multimedia, and other reference content.

Kenwood Corporation, established in December 1946, has always stressed innovation as the means to provide customers with the best possible products. In keeping with this spirit, Kenwood has blended innovation with technology to create Kenwood TrueX CD-ROM drives. Kenwood TrueX drives feature Zen's TrueX technology producing the fastest CD-ROM drives on earth.