AGP vs PCI-E

[snoopy369]

1) For your needs, LotM, AGP is fine.
2) Don't worry about the DVD drive. If you ever find a game that's only DVD that you want to play... shell out $40 for a cheap DVD drive. Or less, by then.
3) Celeron 3GHz is fine for your needs.

All in all, go for it

[Quillan]

Originally posted by Spaced Cowboy
So let me see if I understand your post.

About 4 years ago or so, you bought a mobo with a "new" AGP slot and video card instead of the existing PCI vidoe card solution? Why did you go with the "new" tech then and you wouldn't justify it now. BTW there are still PCI video cards available today.

Were you asking me about this? If so, I've had a motherboard with an AGP slot for more than 7 years now, so it's not new. I upgrade piecemeal, mostly. I don't think I've ever built a new computer completely from scratch; there's always been a component or two that transferred from the old box to the new one. When I upgraded the motherboard to go from my old Athlon XP processor to an Athlon 64, I had a still good AGP video card, so I bought an AGP motherboard (this was when PCI-E was just beginning to come out) as I didn't want to spend an extra $200-300 on a new video card that I didn't need. Less than a year later, I decided to upgrade the video card. Barring some catastrophic component failure, this combo should allow me to run for 3 years before I need to build a new one, and when that happens, I'll do it entirely.

It's not that I don't want to embrace the new technology; if I had needed a new video card as well as CPU I would have gone PCI-E a while back.

My whole point was that a video card that came out 4 1/2 years ago is still available today, so LOTM should not have a problem finding an AGP video card several years from now, if he should choose to go with a board that has an AGP slot on it.

[Spaced Cowboy]

I'm just saying if there is a choice to go with the newer tech, even if it mean a few bucks more. 3 or 4 years from now, you'll wish that you did.

[DrSpike]

If the prices are broadly similar yeah. If not, then it is a trade-off. They seem to me to not be that far off but you have to consider what options are available from the type of budget machine LotM is looking at.

[Kinjiru]

Just a couple comments...

1) Don't really sweat the video card issue. You aren't wanting to play top of line games now, so you probably won't want to do so in the future. If you are always 2-3 years behind the curve, you will be able to get some very good deals, regardless of the route you go. Even if you need to get a new motherboard at the time of the upgrade in the future, so what, they aren't going to be expensive (again, because you are behind the tech curve).

2) Do not go with 256 megs of RAM if you are going to run WinXP. It is just going to be too darn slow. Memory isn't terribly expensive right now, so defintely bump to up to 512.