Boring Video card rant

Unfortunately a friend of my father’s wants to build his computer from components. A little project. This was probably the best way 3 or so years ago, but now I highly recommend you do not build your own computer.

It’s not worth the time or money.

So I sat on dabs.com and ordered some bits on his behalf. I think the budget was 200UKP but we inadvertedly blew that.

Product : Internet Keyboard PS/2
Price inc VAT : £12.99

Product : Athlon XP 2600+ 512Kb SoA
Price inc VAT : £58.98

Product : Barracuda 7200.7 80GB SATA150
Price inc VAT : £46.98

Product : 512MB 184DIMM PC3200 NP CL3
Price inc VAT : £54.99

Product : Silent Boost for XP upto 3400+
Price inc VAT : £15.99

(Tried to get a silent one. Sigh… 16UKP!)

Product : 16xDVD 48xCD Int IDE OEM
Price inc VAT : £15.99

Product : SoA KT600+ ATX A R L 2DDR
Price inc VAT : £40.99

I heard bad things about the Nforce2’s NIC, so I opted for VIA. But then after we made the order I realized I have forgotten about the Video card. Well I hate bundled boards. Argh, the AC97. Poor creative.

I noticed the mb has an AGP 8x slot for the card. So logically I should find a 8x AGP card. Oh what do we have?

With binary drivers. I never had much success with ATI drivers so I think I will choose a GeForceFX 5200.

It should work judging by this Debian users post.

This box will cost 300UKP in total, at least.

It would be cool to play Doom3, but I do not think there are Linux binaries out yet. Sigh…

I used to play 3D games. And this will hopefully be the last computer I ever assemble.

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