I haven’t been keeping up with their technology, so can someone give me a refresher… which intel chipset is newer, the 845 or 850? what are the pros/cons of each (other than them being intel)?
They were launched rougly simultaneously. i850 is Intel’s Pentium 4 chipset that uses Rambus DRAM, or RDRAM. i845 is Intel’s Pentium 4 chipset that uses PC133 SDRAM or DDR SDRAM. I would suggest that you go with DDR for a P4, as RDRAM is now dead technology that will not likely be usable if you upgrade. You can find some information on the newest Intel i845 chipsets at Anandtech.com
Of course, I’m also biased towards AMD, so my overwhelming suggestion would be to go with a nice Athlon XP based system. But if you’re determined to go the P4 route, an i845E-based motherboard would look to be your best bet.