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Moore's law hits my pocketbook    [ Geekiness ]

So it's been nearly a year since I last upgraded my home PC.   The 1.4Ghz Athlon is running on an EPoX 8KTA3+ mobo with two sticks of 256MB PC133 modules from Crucial and PNY and is supplemented by an eVGA 64MB NVidia GeForce2 MX card that got decent reviews and was comparatively cheap at the time.   The system works pretty well minus occasional overnight random reboots, but the latest and greatest games slow down a bit, and the Civ3 PTW TETurkhan Test of Time mod takes a looong time to get through turns.

It's time to start looking around and see what's on the market, and play the "how much can I get for how little?" game again.

Sharky Extreme did a KT333(CE) mobo roundup about 8 months back, and the EPoX 8K3A+ came out on top.   Pricewatch lists the 8K3AE boards starting around $67, and the 8K3A+ boards starting around $89.   Combined with either an Athlon XP 2100 at $80 or an XP 2200 for $110, plus a 512MB PC2700 module starting at $73, I'm looking at $220 to $272 total for a new board + processor + memory.

But should I be looking at KT333(CE)-based mobo's, or perhaps some of the new KT400 boards or the nForce2 boards?   Consensus from Sharky, Tom's and AnandTech is that the KT400's aren't worth anything more than the KT333's, but that the nForce2's are a force to be reckoned with.   VIA has the KT400A chipset "just around the corner", but banking on it'll-be-there-next-version-I-swear promises doesn't pay off in general.

Tom's Hardware did a review of nForce2 boards back in November, and the Asus A7N8X did well - not surprising given Asus's reputation for speed.   Since then a number of other nForce2 mobo's have come on the market, including the EPoX 8RDA and 8RDA+ boards.   AnandTech ran a comparison of nForce2 boards and had nice things to say about both the Asus A7N8X and the EPoX 8RDA+ mobo's.   The Asus A7N8X is currently priced around $111 shipped, compared to $92 for the EPoX 8RDA and $110 for the 8RDA+.   Along with two 256MB PC3200 modules starting at $44 apiece and an Athlon XP 2100 at $80 or an XP 2200 at $110, this ends up being $260 to $309 total for the latest fastest motherboard + memory platform.

So on the low end, I could get a KT333-based system with 512MB PC2700 memory and an Athlon XP 2100 (1.73GHz) or 2200 (1.8GHz) in the low-to-upper $200's, or an nForce2-based system with 512MB PC3200 memory and an Athlon XP 2100 or 2200 in the upper $200's to low $300's.