Buffy ,'Potential'
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Will the onboard video be sufficient? In the past, I've always gotten a video card.
Here's a link to the motherboard information page, it should detail video capability. It has a HDMI interface so I suspect it has good video playback capability.
Unless you are doing lots of 3D modeling and rendering I think it should handle anything.
I am still partial to Seagate drives yes.
Oh an important note if you are putting in existing drives. Almost all new motherboards only support 2 IDE drives. You'd have to get an IDE adapter to attach more IDE drives (it's probably better to get an adapter than search for a board that has more IDE connectors built-in as you won't have many choices). Also, that motherboard I linked to is a low feature Gigabyte motherboard that I would likely go for and only has 4 SATA connectors (4 SATA + 2 IDE for up to 6 drives). You might want to find something with more SATA connectors.
Additional note, the motherboard chipsets that natively support 4 IDE drives tend not to be good ones.
I second the Seagate nod. But look at the specs. How much on board RAM does it have? And how much warranty it has. I've come across a few Seagates with only a 1 year warranty, thou most are longer.
Oh an important note if you are putting in existing drives...
Yeah, I'd noticed that. What I'll probably do is put my two existing DVD/CD drives in the IDE slots, and go all SATA for the HDs. I'll check the computer when I get home to make sure I'm not forgetting anything. Thanks for all the help!
From the sublime to the mundane, what is the best video card for low-end gaming and Internet video watching and DVD watching? I'm not much into numbers, though I know bigger is better, but which brand is best? I'm using XP and looking towards beefing up some power there (I'm on a Pentium 3 at the moment), and I need to know what neighborhood I should look at for video.
Will you be upgrading the processor and motherboard anytime soon?
But look at the specs. How much on board RAM does it have? And how much warranty it has.
Mmmn. Good point. The Seagate has a 5 year warranty (vs. 3 for the WD) and 32MB cache (vs. 16MB for the WD). The WD supposedly uses less power, but I think the Seagate wins out.
Will you be upgrading the processor and motherboard anytime soon?
Probably, but not to anything top end. I inherit most of my computer parts from the tech heads who need the newest and hottest. I'm going to have multiple options that are unknown at this point, but I'd like to have a list of recommendations.
Here is the problem. A Pentium 3 motherboard will have an AGP interface for the video card. A newer system, even a low end system will have a PCI Express interface for the video card, so you won't be able to carry over the video card. There are a lot more options for PCI Express as well.
If you want to get an AGP card I'd go for for something like this.
POWERCOLOR X1650PRO 256/64 AGP Radeon X1650PRO 256MB 64-bit GDDR2 AGP 4X/8X Video Card - Retail
Anything more powerful will be too limited by the CPU to make the money worth it. For that matter, this card might be overkill as well.