Need some motherboard info and help...
 

Guys, I'll admit it...I'm ------ stone age when it comes to computers. The last one I built about 5 years ago is the same one I'm still running now, and it's getting slow as ----. It's an old AZ11 board running an AMD duron 700mhz (overclocked to 970 and getting a little too warm) running a 133mhz bus, and I'm getting tired of the frequent crashes and intermittent problems with the IDE controllers working when they want to, so it's time to majorly upgrade. Only problem is I've been out of the loop for so long all I know is a Pentium 4 around 3.40ghz is king ---- right now. I don't know what socket numbers are anymore, what boards are decent anymore, I'm ------- lost. I need some advice on what would be a good board/processor combo to bring me somewhat back to reality here. I just spent the past 2 hours wandering around ebay checking out what's on there, and honestly I'm more confused now than before. I'm not looking for fancy, just something kinda cheap for my broke ass that's faster than a 2ghz.

Re: Need some motherboard info and help...
 

LOL.

Most of the equivalent AMD offerings kill the P4s dead in the water due to better bus architecture; surfing the web right now on a 1.8 Ghz Sempron 3400+ w/ 1.6 Ghz FSB and 512 Mb dual channel DDR2 setup that was bought for low $300 range retail, open box sale @ Best Buy. The new Intel Core series are really nice, slower clocks with better bus structure, FTW. Most of the modern computers, if you just want to websurf and do misc ------- around, are so overbuilt it's hilarious. Run a stripped down version of XP, and disable most TSR type apps, and you'll be really pleased with bottom of the line retail store offerings.

Newegg recently had a deal on 2.8 Ghz Pentium D processor (dual processor) with rebate that came to $99 total, add $50-75 for decent but nothing flashy motherboard with dual channel memory support, and you'll be surfing that into the '10s.