Best place to shop for computer hardware?

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)
#21

The onboard sound is good. The LAN cards added a bit to my ping–noticeable–but if you’re not a gamer, you probably wouldn’t even notice. I just had some BIOS bugs and kinks that needed to get worked out.

#22

I didn’t have any kind of bugs with Asus A7N8X (rev 1.04, Deluxe).

The only problem I had was when I tried to enable one of the onboard LANs (I had previously disabled both of them). Couldn’t get any of them to work right. A Windows re-install solved that. It was the chipset’s drivers (apparently you may encounter problems if you don’t follow the right installation path).

No other issues. Not a single BSOD. Oh and the best feature: it does NOT have a whinny little fan on the chipset!

#23

Well, while we’re waiting for updates I have two questions, actually 3.

  1. I play a good deal of Quake 3. After playing for years on a 56k, I finally got 1.5 mps DSL, which of course dropped my ping down to 20 on a good day. I was, and am, still surprised at how much I get beat down sometimes, because I consider myself a pretty good player. I’ve noticed that my roomie, who has a faster computer, seems to run Q3 a little more “fluidly” then I do, so I look at my FPS which is in the 30’s. Anyway my long winded question is this. I currently game on a win98, P3 600 Mhz with an ancient Nvidia TNT2 with 512meg of Sdram. In a few weeks, I’ll be playing on a P4 2.8 Ghz 800 FSB, 512 DDR, and Radeon 9700 pro. What type of difference should I expect?

  2. Why is the P4 so much cheaper at Newegg then anywhere else I look, it kinda freaks me out.

  3. I wasn’t aware that onboard lan could effect ping. My mobo will have it, should I use it or my old card.

  4. I’ve heard nightmare stories and fairytale stories about the 9700 AIW, what’s the dope?

Whoops, 4 questions, thanks.

#24

A lot of places just sell Retail stuff, meaning it comes in a box with a bunch of crap. NewEgg sells a lot of OEM stuff meaning it comes wrapped in bubblewrap with the manual taped alongside. Also, NewEgg sometimes sells just the ship, without the fan/whatever.

My A7N8X was an earlier revision (can’t remember off the top of my head), but I had a month of BSoDs and CTDs that four Windows format/reinstalls, constant driver updates, etc. didn’t fix, but a BIOS upgrade did.

My ping on my dedicated network card was 75-100, on the onboard LAN it ran 100-125. YMMV. I’d try it with the onboard LAN and see if your ping is any worse than usual, then mess with it.

#25

Sounds good.